The OKCupid Bullshit-To-English Filter makes dating site cliches more interesting. “Random” becomes “banal”, “I love X” becomes “I for the most part tolerate X”, and “I like to have fun” becomes “I like institutionalized racism”. And it only gets worse from there.
People predicted online education would give everyone access to free courses on every subject taught by the world’s top experts. It did exactly that and disrupted approximately nothing. So how do we adapt online education to a credentialist world?
I liked this idea when it was speculative. Now it’s supported: Anorexia and body dysmorphic disorder have similar brain anomalies.
Here’s some utopian but creative speculation about weird alternative basic income systems.
Political bubble segregation alert: did you know Fox News is the most trusted news channel in America, and it’s not even close? But beware – the article claims this is true “even among Democrats”, which seems to contradict its own data.
When I lived in Ireland I never really got the impression that the government was very good at what it did. Sure enough, in one week Ireland manages to accidentally legalize all drugs, and almost accidentally ban non-homosexual marriage. On the plus side, they’ve finally gotten around to repealing the law that anyone selling horses outside Dublin will be put to death.
Researchers who probably have never done calibration training are 99% sure endocrine disrupting pollutants are linked to diabetes, ADHD, etc.
Astrology meets economics: In Singapore, kids born in the Year Of The Dragon are considered lucky. So lots of parents have kids in the Year Of The Dragon, the class sizes are bigger those years, and it’s harder to get into good colleges and entry-level jobs. Not so lucky now, are you?
More than 6% of American synaesthetics have color-letter associations that match a popular set of Fisher-Price alphabet magnets.
Marginal Revolution: Larger companies means more income inequality.
The 2014 Effective Altruist survey results are out.
An article on divestment which makes a point I’m slapping myself for not realizing earlier: divestment can’t possibly have any economic consequences on the companies it targets because of the efficiency of the stock market. It then goes on to point out that the largest divestment campaign in history, against apartheid South Africa, didn’t change the prices of South African company shares one bit. It concludes divestment might be a good way to raise discussion, but nothing more.
The Justice Department recently joined all the other experts who took a careful look at the case in concluding that Darren Wilson shot Mike Brown in self-defense, and the whole “hands up, don’t shoot” story was made up by Brown’s friend. That isn’t news. What’s news is that a columnist who pushed the opposite narrative has apologized.
Speaking of Ferguson, why are there more than twice as many black women as black men there and what effect does it have on the culture? (h/t Marginal Revolution)
The Most Decade Specific Words In Billboard Hits, 1890 – 2014. One day our children are going to be astounded that we survived the 2010s.
I recently wrote about the Bay Area rationality community being difficult to get into. Well, not anymore! www.bayrationality.com is a central listing of all their events and directory of people to contact. Thanks, Oliver!
The social justice movement is telling people to stop reading books by white male authors to fight the “inherent bias” of the literary world. But if you know how these things work, you shouldn’t be surprised that a rudimentary investigation finds that books written by women are just as likely to get reviewed in prestigious publications as those by men, and there are simply fewer of the former.
More shared-environment-mattering-blogging: a natural quasi-experiment in Norway finds that when maternity leave is increased, the children do better in school and make more money growing up.
More money-not-mattering-blogging: a natural quasi-experiment in Sweden finds that lottery winners’ children (who are raised rich) do no better than other children in school, in avoiding drugs, etc (suggesting that the clear real-world correlation between wealth and child success is genetic rather than financial). But of course Sweden has one of the world’s strongest social safety nets, so money may matter more in other countries.
Why are so many people myopic (ie need glasses) these days? It used to be thought that the problem was kids straining their young eyes reading too many books. A new study convincingly finds that it’s more likely kids not spending enough time in bright sunlight outside.
One reason California has become such an important tech center despite having some pretty terrible laws is that it got the important law right, says a group who track inventor movements and find the most important factor is banning non-compete agreements. This kind of thing could form the core of an interesting argument against libertarianism.
The Battle Of Castle Itter was the only time in history the US military defended a besieged castle.
I’ve seen a lot of smart people defending the Trans-Pacific Partnership recently. Here’s Noah Smith: A Trade Deal Liberals Can Live With. And Tyler Cowen: Why Paul Krugman Is Wrong To Oppose Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Scientists cure Alzheimers in mice. Human trials to begin in 20-something something who cares THEY’RE ONE WEEK LATE! A WEEK! WHY COULDN’T YOU HAVE JUST CURED ALZHEIMERS ONE WEEK EARLIER!
A pretty good explanation of the conflicting claims about sea ice at the South Pole.
As far as I can tell, this is not an early April Fools’ joke, a viral marketing campaign, or an urban legend. As far as I can tell, this is actually true: Mr. T will star in a home improvement show called “I Pity The Tool”
Bleeding Heart Libertarians argues against compulsory voting – not only won’t it help, but if it’s a sneaky plot to get the Democrats to win elections, it won’t do that either.
Colleges improve critical thinking skills, says research with no control group so they can’t differentiate it from the effects of normal aging. I dunno, maybe they didn’t go to college so they didn’t think of that.
Buying copies of your own music or books to game the best-sellers charts is practically universal.
It’s like rain on your wedding day. It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife. It’s like…
Hospitals are starting to try to address poverty among their patients to prevent easily preventable poverty-related problems from eating up too many health resources. Don’t be fooled by this looking like an expansion of the creeping social services bureaucracy – this is highly-competent profit-seeking institutions being given an economic incentive to improve the lives of specific poor people assigned to them, which is the same kind of promising as social impact bonds.
The Less Wrong Sequences by Eliezer Yudkowsky are now available as an ebook:
But those of you who are looking for something steamier
