Collectivist

joined 11 months ago
[–] Collectivist@awful.systems -4 points 2 weeks ago

Well naive bayesianism, as practiced by the rationalists. Bayesianism itself can be reformed to get rid of most its problems, though I've yet to see a good solution for the absent-minded driver problem.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 4 points 3 weeks ago

This is another example of the dangers of wealth inequality. A lot of EAs tried to start a youtube channel (e.g.), but the only one that could get funded was this one, the one promoting bitcoins and charter cities. Now this is the largest EA channel, attracting more of those types and signalling clearly that if you want to succeed in EA you gotta please the capitalist funders.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 3 points 1 month ago

I read the article, not a single mention of things like the research on stereotype threat in chess. I wish rationalists would crack open a sociology book at some point in their lives. They're so interested in social phenomena, but while Less Wrong has a tag for psychology (with 287 posts), history (245 posts), and economics (462 posts), they seem unwilling to look at sociology for explanations, with it not even having a tag on LW.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 21 points 2 months ago (3 children)

How do you find these things? How do you read these things? I'm starting to worry about your health David; such a continuous stream of highly concentrated horseshit can't be good for you.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

This could be a sex thing or maybe they want young blood for their blood transfusions. Maybe they saw Marx's criticism that capitalists were akin to vampires, sucking the metaphorical blood out of the poor, and thought to themselves: he's right, we should take their literal blood too.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Some EAs have tried to make an "EA case" for cryonics, and I just want someone to comment on it: "But couldn't you safe many more people by using that money to buy malaria bednets, or vaccines, or almost anything else?"

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 6 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I didn't say he only makes those videos, just that he makes a lot of them

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

This guy has like a billion videos that are just some variation of "Here's a tech bro startup making a gadgetbahn and here's why it wouldn't work and trains are a thousand times better". Great that it exists, but since these startups never learn from others' mistakes and thus keep making the same missteps over and over and over again, it makes the videos very samey after a while. Not sure what I would do in his position.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 11 points 5 months ago (4 children)

He wanted to be the foundation, but he was scaffolding

That's a good quote, did you come up with that? I for one would be ecstatic to be the scaffolding of a research field.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 20 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I left a comment that made a similar point with some data:

4: Please stop sharing conspiracy theories

5: Higher wages are useless if your country's infrastructure and tax system is so piss poor that you need to spend more on basic necessities. We have economic metrics that account for some of this, such as the difference between income and discretionary income. Free-market propagandists always point to the US having high income, but the same can not be said for discretionary income. For example, if we compare the US to the Netherlands, we see that the US median disposable income is 41K while in the Netherlands it's 36K. But let's compare how much you have to spend in your day to day life and calculate the discretionary income based on that:

________________________US_______Netherlands

income________________41k_______36k

food___________________5.1k_______3.7k

shelter_________________13.2k______13k

clothing________________1.2k_______1.5k

transport______________6.3k_______3.4k

health__________________3.2k_______1.8k

student debt___________2.1k_______0.8k

discretionary income__9.9k_______11.8k

As we see, the case the free-market capitalist makes falls apart once we look at discretionary income, which collectivist and social policies ensure is higher in the Netherlands.

EDIT: Scott has edited the post to make 4 seem less like an endorsement and more an ironic share. This is better, but I still prefer it if these things aren't spread at all.

EDIT 2: Source for the 2021 US-Dutch disposable income vs discretionary income (as well as a lot of other comparisons between median US and Dutch expenditure): https://www.moneymacro.rocks/2021-07-02-dutch-vs-america-middle-class/

 

In his original post he said:

4: Related, breaking news: A popular Substack claims that COVID didn’t happen at all, and that both “lab leak” and “natural origins” are part of the higher-level conspiracy to distract people from the fact that there was never a virus in the first place.

He later edited the post to add:

I wonder if I could even more Substack likes if I one-upped them with a theory that lockdowns never even happened, and it was just one of those Berenstein Bear or Mandela Effect things where everyone has a false memory.

So now it's ironic, and therefore not harmful to spread the conspiracy theory to his large audience.

[–] Collectivist@awful.systems 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't phrenology about skull shape and its influence on mental traits in general? Otherwise it's not really a field of study, it's just one claim: larger skull = more intelligence (which is just a less precise version of more childhood nutrition = taller = larger skull = more intelligence), but phrenologists also claimed they could explain all sorts of traits like criminality and personality with things like bumps in the skull.

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