Calorion

They think that the rule of consequentialism is, "If you show me a good consequence, I have to do that thing."

This is wise, and probably mostly true, but we need an actual concerted effort to discover the truth of such things and how they actually work.

>John had previously observed me making contrarian claims where I’d turned out to be badly wrong, like endorsing Gary Taubes’ theories about the causes of the obesity epidemic.

Um…what? This might not be the *only* cause, but surely emphasizing sugar over fat has been a *major* one. What am I missing here?

I really dislike the “stepping out of character” bit. It disrupts the flow and ruins the story. Instead, just say, “Eliezer Yudkowski tells the story that…” and leave it at that.

You should just flip it around and call it evaporative *heating.* Human groups work exactly opposite to hot atoms; it is the *cooler* ones who find it easier to escape. Then those who are left get hotter and hotter until they explode.

Technically, the fact that her ultimate fictional hero was John Galt is a spoiler too.

I don't care. Lots of people have published things that they wish they hadn't. That doesn't give them the right to demand that every book or newspaper or magazine issue that carried those undesirable words be destroyed.

I'm not railing against Scott here; he does have the right to remove things off of his LiveJournal. I'm railing against the nature of the Internet, that makes "de-publishing" not only possible, but easy.

1. The link for "Epistemic Learned Helplessness" goes to another article entirely.

2. "Epistemic Learned Helplessness" (and all other entries) have disappeared off of Scott Alexander's LiveJournal.

3. I found a copy on the Wayback Machine.

4. This is a travesty. Why have all these posts disappeared? Do they exist elsewhere?

5. *incoherent mumbling about the ephemeral nature of the Internet, and what a gigantic problem this is*

The Patri Friedman links are dead, and blocked from archive.org. Anyone have access to another archive, so I can see what he's talking about? There has got to be a better way to link. Has no one come up with a distributed archive of linked material yet?

Yes, this. It simply shouldn't be necessary—ever—to loudly defy a single result. An I replicated result should not be seen as a result at all, but merely a step in the experimental process. Sadly, that's not how most people treat results.