nathan98000

Karma: 211

nathan98000 13 Oct 2024 0:57 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Non-zero-sum James’s comment on: Why People in Poverty Make Bad Decisions
I’m familiar with psychology. But the causes and consequences of poverty are beyond my expertise.

In general, I think the case for alleviating poverty doesn’t need to depend on what it does to people’s cognitive abilities. Alleviating poverty is good because poverty sucks. People in poverty have worse medical care, are less safe, have less access to quality food, etc. If someone isn’t moved by these things, then saying it also lowers IQ is kind of missing the point.

Another theme in your post is that those in poverty aren’t to blame, since it was the poverty that caused them to make their bad decisions. I think a stronger case can be made by pointing to the fact that people don’t choose where they’re born. (And this fact doesn’t depend on any dubious psychology studies.) For someone in Malawi, it will be hard to think about saving for retirement when you make $5/day.

nathan98000 9 Oct 2024 19:44 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Non-zero-sum James’s comment on: Why People in Poverty Make Bad Decisions
The link I sent also discusses an article that meta-analyzed replications of studies using scarcity priming. The meta-analysis includes a failed replication of a key study from the Mani et al (2013) article you discuss in your post.

The Mani article itself has the hallmarks of questionable research practices. It’s true that each experiment has about 100 participants, but given that these participants are split across 4 conditions, this is the bare minimum for the standard (n = 20-30 / group) at that time. The main results also have p-values between .01-.05, which is an indicator of p-hacking. And yes, the abnormally large effect sizes are relevant. An effect as large as is claimed by Mani et al (d=.88-.94) should be glaringly obvious. That’s close to the effect size for the association between height and weight (r = .44 → d = .98)

And more generally at this point, the default view should be that priming studies are not credible. One shouldn’t wait for a direct failed replication of any particular study. There’s enough indirect evidence that that whole approach is beset by bad practices.

nathan98000 29 Sep 2024 2:50 UTC
3 points
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on: Capitalising on Trust—A Karmic Simulation

One phenomenon that has arisen through these explorations is that defectors gain a short term, relative advantage, while cooperators benefit from a sustained long term absolute advantage

It seems like you’re drawing a general conclusion about cooperation and defection. But your simulated game has very specific parameters. The pay off matrix, the stipulation that nobody dies, the stipulation that everyone who interacts with a defector recognizes so and remembers, the stipulation that there are only two types of agents, etc. It doesn’t seem like any general lessons about cooperation/defection are supported by a hyper-specific set up like this

nathan98000 12 Aug 2024 19:27 UTC
4 points
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on: Taking Uncertainty Seriously (or, Why Tools Matter)
I enjoyed this post and this series overall. However, I would have liked more elaboration on the section about EA’s objectionable epistemic features. Only one of the links in this section refer to EA specifically; the others warn about risks from group deliberation more generally.

And the one link that did specifically address the EA community wasn’t persuasive. It made many unsupported assertions. And I think it’s overconfident about the credibility of the literature on collective intelligence, which IMO has significant problems.

nathan98000 10 Aug 2024 17:22 UTC
5 points
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on: Why People in Poverty Make Bad Decisions
FWIW the study on scarcity priming that you cite on your website has failed to replicate.

nathan98000 30 Jun 2024 17:50 UTC
1 point
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on: EAs Shouldn’t Talk About (Most) Politics
It might help to provide a short summary of main points discussed in your post.

nathan98000 23 May 2024 15:40 UTC
1 point
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on: Moral Philosophy is Alchemy: Sam Harris Isn’t Pasta Man
You spend over a 1000 words saying that Sam Harris is correct. But at no point do you provide an argument for thinking he’s correct. You simply assert it. Over and over.

nathan98000 23 May 2024 15:29 UTC
6 points
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on: How science become unscientific
I downvoted this post. I watched the first hour of the video and was very unimpressed by the “argument” in it. It seems to be a mix of implicit conspiracism, irrelevant tangents, and intro philosophy of science.
It does (correctly) point out that the replication crisis revealed many weaknesses in the way science has been conducted, but the discussion is superficial. And whereas most scientists who learn about the replication crisis advocate for greater rigor (e.g. larger sample sizes, more diverse samples, preregistration), the video implies that the real problem is that scientists have been making some unwarranted metaphysical/ontological assumptions. For example, scientists should be more open to the idea that extra sensory perception is real??

I think a better use of time would be reading Stuart Ritchie’s book Science Fictions, which more clearly and cogently discusses the replication crisis and problems in science more generally.

nathan98000 22 May 2024 1:40 UTC
8 points
6 ∶ 0
on: Survey: bioethicists’ views on bioethical issues
I was quite surprised by bioethicists’ views on paying organ donors. I’d be curious to see what the best argument against it is. I’ve been extremely unimpressed by the arguments I’ve seen so far.

nathan98000 22 May 2024 0:23 UTC
2 points
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on: A Positive Double Standard—Self-help principles work for individuals, not populations.
I downvoted this post for a few reasons.

1. The post meanders too much.

For example, you briefly mention free will, quantum systems, Adler, and social mobility. None of these topics are covered in much depth, and they don’t support your central claim regardless. You explicitly say we should consider ourselves as personally responsible whether or not we actually have free will. But if it doesn’t matter whether or not we have free will, then don’t bring it up.
Discussing quantum systems was also not helpful. Few people have any familiarity with quantum systems, so it’s like explaining World War II in terms of Kabbalistic interpretations of the Bible. You shouldn’t expect people to say, “Ahh, now I get it!” In general, it’s better to explain things we don’t know in terms of things we do know. Not the other way around. And you definitely don’t need to invoke quantum systems to get people to understand that groups of people can exhibit patterns that are hard to predict when looking at individuals.

2. Dubious social science.

For the past decade, the social sciences have been undergoing a crisis of confidence. Many studies are fraudulent or the result of shoddy theory, methods, and analysis. Growth mindset has been a prominent target of these concerns. And though I haven’t read the links to Rotter’s and Bandura’s research, it seems your summary of them doesn’t strongly support your main claim. You say there’s a correlation between believing in yourself and achieving success, therefore we should believe in ourselves. But there’s a confound here: The people who believe in themselves are more likely to have the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to achieve success. So perhaps those are the things that drive success, not the mere belief in oneself.

3. Unclear argument for a double standard.

It seems like you take a scattershot approach to arguing against holding others responsible. I see a few possible arguments someone could take away from the post:

a) When holding others responsible we will often fail to consider (systemic) factors that were not in the others’ control.
b) Holding others responsible requires believing everyone will be their best selves, which is unrealistic.
c) Holding others responsible assumes we live in a meritocracy, which is unrealistic.
d) Holding others responsible doesn’t fix society-wide issues.

It’s unclear which of these you think the reader should pay most attention to, and you don’t elaborate much on any of the arguments enough to make them compelling.

nathan98000 10 May 2024 20:36 UTC
9 points
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in reply to: Non-zero-sum James’s comment on: Crabs in a Bucket ~ Or Links in a Chain
It’s odd that you say the reviewer provides no support for his assertions. It seems to me like the reviewer presents quite a bit of evidence.

For example, in responding to Bregman’s claim that male control over female sexuality (and gender inequality more generally) began with the rise of agriculture, Buckner (the reviewer) mentions arranged marriages among the !Kung, a hunter-gatherer society. Buckner also references husbands beating their wives for infidelity among the Kaska, a nomadic foraging society. He also references the Ache, a hunter-gatherer society, whose elite men “monopolized many fertile women in the population.” He also references the Mi’kmaq foragers, whose elite men get priority over the women and children for prime food.

In response to Bregman’s claim that sedentism and property ownership are responsible for the origins of warfare, Buckner cites a paper by Wrangham and Glowacki who summarize the literature: “cases of hunter-gatherers living with different societies of hunter-gatherers as neighbors show that the threat of violence was never far away.”

In response to Bregman’s claim that hunter-gatherers didn’t take ownership over inventions or tunes, Buckner contradicts this by referencing the Yolngu and Northwest Coast fisher-forager societies who do just that.

I don’t think anyone who actually read the review could honestly say, “The reviewer provides no support for his assertions.”

nathan98000 30 Apr 2024 21:46 UTC
3 points
3 ∶ 4
in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: An instance of white supremacist and Nazi ideology creeping onto the EA Forum
Just to reiterate your original claim, you said that Scott “has done a lot, entirely deliberately in my view, to spread that view [that black people have lower IQs for genetic reasons].”
And your evidence for this claim is that:
1. He linked to neo-reactionaries on his blogroll who hold this view.
2. He privately told friends that HBD (which isn’t exclusively about the causes of racial IQ differences) is “probably partially correct or at least very non-provably non-correct.” And he demanded they never reveal this publicly.
3. He isn’t “repulsed” or “creeped out” or “upset” by reactionaries.
I find this extremely unpersuasive and misleading.
1. I don’t know which neo-reactionaries you’re referring to when you say he linked to them on his blogroll, but he very clearly doesn’t agree with everything they say. He has explicitly disagreed with the neo-reactionary movement at length.
2. Telling something to friends in private and demanding secrecy seems like the exact opposite of trying to spread a view. And saying a view is “probably partially correct or at least non-provably non-correct” is hardly a ringing endorsement of the view.
3. Come on… He doesn’t have the right emotional vibes, therefore he must be deliberately spreading the view?? I’m personally a vegan for ethical reasons. In fact, I think factory farming is among the worst things humanity has ever done. But I’m not “creeped out” or “repulsed” by people who eat meat.
Your evidence is extremely weak, and it’s disappointing that as of my response, it has 18 upvotes.

nathan98000 21 Apr 2024 3:22 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: An instance of white supremacist and Nazi ideology creeping onto the EA Forum
Any links to where Scott Alexander deliberately argues that black people have lower IQs for genetic reasons? I’ve been reading his blog for a decade and I don’t recall any posts on this.

nathan98000 21 Apr 2024 3:11 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: 1mkl32j201091’s comment on: An instance of white supremacist and Nazi ideology creeping onto the EA Forum
I think any discussion of race that doesn’t take the equality of races as a given will be considered inflammatory. And regardless of the merits of the arguments, they can make people uncomfortable and choose not to associate with EA.

nathan98000 21 Apr 2024 2:15 UTC
−2 points
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on: Long Reflection Reading List
I think collections like this are helpful, but it’s a misleading to say it presents the “frontier of publicly available knowledge.”

Taking just the first section on moral truth as an example, it seems like a huge overstatement to say this collection of podcasts and forum posts gets people to the frontier of this subject. Philosophers have spent a long time on this, writing thousands of papers. And at a glance, it seems like all of OPs linked resources don’t even intend to give an overview of the literature on meta-ethics. They instead present their own personal perspectives.

And all of the resources in this section are EA/rationalist affiliated. Surely there have been some people who’ve said intelligent things about the nature of morality prior to Yudkowsky’s birth, right? Neglecting these voices seems like an oversight, especially given the stated goal of getting readers to the frontier of publicly available knowledge.

Going forward, I’d suggest making more modest claims about what can be accomplished by a reading list like this and expanding the range of perspectives that’s considered worth listening to.

nathan98000 21 Apr 2024 1:22 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: Sean Sweeney’s comment on: Helping animals or saving human lives in high income countries is arguably better than saving human lives in low income countries?
The concept of self-esteem has a somewhat checkered history in psychology. Here, an influential review paper finds that self-esteem leads people to speak up more in groups and to feel happier. But it fails to have consistent benefits in other areas of life such as educational/occupational performance or violence. And it may have detrimental effects, such as risky behavior in teens.
Overall, the benefits of high self-esteem fall into two categories: enhanced initiative and pleasant feelings. We have not found evidence that boosting self-esteem (by therapeutic interventions or school programs) causes benefits. Our findings do not support continued widespread efforts to boost self-esteem in the hope that it will by itself foster improved outcomes. In view of the heterogeneity of high self-esteem, indiscriminate praise might just as easily promote narcissism, with its less desirable consequences. Instead, we recommend using praise to boost self-esteem as a reward for socially desirable behavior and self-improvement.

nathan98000 7 Apr 2024 19:23 UTC
1 point
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on: How I learned to stop worrying and love X-risk
FWIW standard conceptions of existential risk would categorize suffering risks as a type of existential risk. For example, Nick Bostrom has defined it as “threats that could cause our extinction or destroy the potential of Earth-originating intelligent life.” (emphasis mine)

nathan98000 1 Apr 2024 2:30 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Keen Visionary’s comment on: Education: Teaching Love (Philia/Brotherly love) as a Priority Cause
I think indoctrination (at least among adults) is actually surprisingly difficult. The psychologist Hugo Mercier was recently on the 80,000 Hours podcast to discuss why.
And the other thing which has had much more dramatic consequences is the idea of brainwashing: the idea that if you take prisoners of war and you submit them to really harsh treatment — you give them no food, you stop them from sleeping, you’re beating them up — so you make them, as you are describing, extremely tired and very foggy, and then you get them to read Mao for hours and hours on end. Are they going to become communists? Well, we know the answer, because unfortunately, the Koreans and the Chinese have tried during the Korean War, and it just doesn’t work at all. They’ve managed to kill a lot of POWs, and they managed to get I think two of them to go back to China and to claim that they had converted to communism. But in fact, after the fact, it was revealed that these people had just converted because they wanted to stop being beaten and starved to death, and that as soon as they could revert back to go back to the US, they did so.
I’d also echo others’ comments that I think testing a curriculum will be relatively hard. Even education programs with clear measurables (e.g. financial literacy programs, work-skills programs for former convicts, second language programs) often end up unsuccessful. It would be even more difficult to teach “love.” How do you measure how loving someone is and reliably teach it to others?

nathan98000 21 Mar 2024 3:22 UTC
11 points
2 ∶ 1
on: Crabs in a Bucket ~ Or Links in a Chain
Fwiw this review discusses why Rutger Bregman’s book is deeply flawed.

”That he felt the need to misrepresent the past and other cultures in order to provide a ‘hopeful’ history is rather a message of despair. Bregman presents hunter-gatherer societies as being inherently peaceful, antiwar, equal, and feminist likely because these are commonly expressed social values among educated people in his own society today. This is not history but mythology.”

nathan98000 28 Feb 2024 18:25 UTC
1 point
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on: Refining My Moral Values Using Steelman Solitaire
Interesting post! I think what would have made this more helpful would be a discussion of the kinds of arguments that led you to change your mind in each case. For example, you note that you were convinced of universal prescriptivism but then later came to reject it. A brief discussion of the relevant arguments for/against would be interesting!