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casebash comments on Yvain's most important articles - Less Wrong Discussion

21 Post author: casebash 16 August 2015 08:27AM

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Comment author: MarsColony_in10years 18 August 2015 04:39:12PM 2 points [-]

This got linked to on facebook, and Rob Bensinger made the following comment:

I included most of these in my list, but I wouldn't include The Virtue of Silence, Biodeterminist's Guide to Parenting, Burdens, Nobody is Perfect, Toxoplasma OF Rage, Chronicles of Wasted Time, The Categories Were Made for Man, Radicalizing the Romanceless, Living by the Sword, Meditations 1-3, Untitled, Social Justice and Words Words Words, Fetal Attraction, I Do Not Understand Rape Culture, Unspoken Ground Assumptions, Should You Reverse Any Advice You Hear?, Joint Over- and Under-Diagnosis, What Human Universal Experiences Are You Missing Without Realizing It?, Phatic and Anti-Inductive, Beware Isolated Demands for Rigor, Giving and Accepting Apologies, The Courtier's Reply and the Myers Shuffle, My Id on Defensiveness, The Zombie Preacher of Somerset, Rational Home-Buying, Apologia pro Vita Sua, Money Money Everywhere, Fish (Now By Prescription), An Iron Curtain Has Descended Upon Psychopharmacology, Schizophrenia and Geomagnetic Storms, And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes, Five Years and One Week of LessWrong, Highlights From My Notes From Another Psychiatry Conference. And I included many that were left out. A few of these I think are unusually bad posts, but most just don't seem essential for people getting started on his writing (or their points are made better elsewhere), though there are lots of fun/interesting bits in them for the completionists.

Might consider Parable of the Talents and Epistemic Learned Helplessness. I haven't read Why I Defend Scoundrels, Mitt Romney, Non-Conformism, Offense versus Harm Minimization, or Towards a Theory of Drama, Straw Individual, Revenge as a Charitable Act, Hope! Change!, Approving Reinforces Low-Effort Behaviors, What's in a Name, Why Support the Underdog?, That Other Kind of Status, A Parable on Obsolete Ideologies, Bogus Pipeline, I Appreciate the Situation.

Stingray suggested that a condensed list would be useful, and judging by the 6 upvotes several other people agree. In order to do this, I've taken the intersection of the two lists (by removing the items that didn't make Rob Bensinger's list from the OP list). I'd expect what's left to be higher value pieces. (although a few removed items definitely sound interesting.)

Important

Meditations on Moloch: An explanation of co-ordination problems within our society

Weak Men are Superweapons (supplement - feminists will like this one less)

You Kant Dismiss Universalizability - Kant is about not proposing rules that would be self-defeating

The Spirit of the First Amendment

Red Plenty - Why communism failed

All in all, another brick in the motte - Motte-and-bailey doctrine

Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism

Reactionary Philosophy in an Enormous, Planet-sized Nutshell

Anti-reactionary FAQ

Right is the new Left

Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism - different countries based on different principles

Parable of the talents - nature vs. nurture

Why I defend scoundrels

Non-conformism

Towards a theory of drama, Further towards a theory of drama

All debates are bravery debates

I can tolerate anything except the outgroup - what tolerance really mean

Who by very slow decay - Euthanasia

Non-libertarian FAQ

Consequentialism FAQ

Efficient Charity: Do Unto Others

Eight Short Studies on Excuses

Generalising from one example

Game theory as a dark art

What is signaling really?

Social Justice General

Offense versus harm minimisation

Fearful Symmetry - Politicization, Micro-aggressions, Hyperviligance

In favor of niceness, community and civilisation - Importance of the social contract

Social justice for the highly-demanding of rigour

Meditation 5 - True love and creepiness

Meditation 8 on Superweapons and Bingo

Triggers

I believe the correct term is "straw individual"

Five case studies on politicization

Social Justice Careful

Why I defend scoundrels part 2

A Response to Apophemi on Triggers - Should the rationality community be a safe space?

Meditation on Applause Lights

Arguments about Male Violence Prove too Much

Mitt Romney

Useful concepts

Introduction to Game Theory - main ones:

  • Nash Equilibria and Schelling Points

  • Bargaining and auctions

  • Prisoner's dilemma includes discussion of limited crimes

Revenge as a charitable act

Hope! Change! - how much change can we expect from our politicians

A Thrive-survive Theory of the Political Spectrum

Read History of Philosophy Backwards

Against bravery debates

Searching for One-Sided Tradeoffs

Proving too much

Non-central fallacy

Schelling fences on slippery slopes

Purchase fuzzies and utilitons separately

Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease

Confidence levels inside and outside an argument

Least convenient possible world

Epistemic learned helplessness

Approving reinforces low-effort behaviors - wanting/liking/approving

What's in a name

How not to lose an argument

Beware trivial inconveniences

When truth isn't enough

Why support the underdog?

Applied picoeconomics

A signaling theory of class x politics interaction

That other kind of status

A parable on obsolete ideologies

Talking snakes: A cautionary tale

Beware the man of one study

Interesting

Bogus Pipeline, Bona Fide Piepline

"I appreciate the situation"

A Babylon 5 Story

Social Psychology is a Flamethrower

The Control Group is out of Control - parapsychology

The apologist and the revolutionary - Anosognosia and neuro-science

Comment author: casebash 19 August 2015 12:09:11AM 4 points [-]

One thing that I'd like to know before considering Rob Bensinger's suggestions is how strongly feminist he is (this doesn't count as an ad hominem, as that only applies when someone has given reasons and you ignore them in favour of who they are, not when they've stated an opinion with no reasons). Because a lot of those articles are rather highly critical of feminism and it wouldn't make much sense, for example, to ask a Christian whether you should read certain articles about atheism.

That said, maybe he just feels that these articles would turn people off - in which case - I probably should have done a better job of labelling than with my current system.

(For reasons of disclosure, my views on feminism are pretty close to Scott. I can appreciate that feminism has done lots of good in the past and that they make some good points, but I also don't like what the movement has become).

I'm much more interested in the articles that he would have included, then the ones that he excluded because I'm taking a completionist approach - the idea is that if you read through the list, you shouldn't miss anything important.

The other thing I did when compiling this list, which I wish I hadn't, was to include articles for a single strong section, without actually noting that this was the case. In particular, the useful concepts section contains many articles where I only want you to get a single concept out of the article. If someone already knows the concept, I guess you could skip them.

Actually, I definitely want to produce a revised version of the list that does a better job of breaking into sections based on why the articles were included so that people can decide for themselves which articles they want to read or not. It'll probably take me several months to get round to it, but I think that it could be valuable.

Comment author: RobbBB 25 August 2015 03:57:51AM *  3 points [-]

My list has a lot of added posts; I'll try to get a draft to link to in the next few weeks. I'd say there are different sets of introductory articles I'd recommend to people who I know to be feminists and people who I know to be anti-feminists, and the list I'm currently working on is one I'd feel comfortable giving to either group.

That means posts that take for granted at the outset that the reader thinks feminism is obviously terrible (e.g., Radicalizing the Romanceless, which quips that people who talk about Nice Guys are "blurring the already rather thin line between 'feminism' and 'literally Voldemort'") are less-likely-than-baseline to make my list, whereas ones that make a persuasive and sympathetic case against common ideas in feminism (e.g., Weak Men Are Superweapons) are more-likely-than-baseline to make my list.

Comment author: casebash 25 August 2015 10:22:10AM 2 points [-]

Looking forward to seeing the list when it is done.

Comment author: RobbBB 15 September 2015 09:25:48PM 3 points [-]
Comment author: RobbBB 25 August 2015 10:36:37AM 1 point [-]

I'll let you know! I'll also want feedback on what you and others think I should add/remove, since I don't expect the list to be perfect even at achieving my own Scott-promoting goals.

Comment author: hg00 19 September 2015 10:46:18PM *  0 points [-]

Off topic, but... since you are allegedly a strong feminist, maybe you can recommend specific feminist writing that you think is good reading as a counterpoint to SSC's stuff? I've read a fair amount of feminist writing but I haven't managed to find much that is as well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff. Ideally it would be feminist writing that attempts to respond to SSC directly.

Comment author: RobbBB 20 September 2015 08:08:23PM *  2 points [-]

"As well-argued/thoughtful/reasonable as the SSC stuff" is a pretty hard target to hit on most topics. Could you be more specific than "feminist writing", e.g., talk about a certain claim SSC makes that you'd like to see assessed by others?

Popehat's Shirts and Shirtiness strikes me as an especially high-quality post that's SSC-ish while coming out in favor of some ideas you see in feminism. Agenty Duck's Hasty Genderalizations gives a broader argument for worrying about gender bias. Ben Kuhn's On Inclusivity in Less Wrong is an example of a good feminism-relevant response to a specific SSC argument (though I don't necessarily agree 100% with Ben's arguments, and some of them may be dated at this point).

I'm not sure which of these is closest to what you're looking for. I find blogs like Thing of Things, Gruntled and Hinged, and The Unit of Caring useful both for clearly articulating ideas in the feminist memespace and for providing independent confirmation for some SSC views.