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Thanks. I ended up putting them under the TLDR section. (I tend to find that once I make a TLDR section it turns out the rest of the post wasn't especially necessary. Do you think the rest of the story is helpful?)
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The 12 Second Rule (i.e. think before answering) and other Epistemic Norms
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The 12 Second Rule (i.e. think before answering) and other Epistemic Norms
There are two stories. One story is about NY vs CA. It illustrates the importance of making practice explicit. But maybe this is more appropriate for the future meta post. The other story is about atrophy. I think it is a useful elaboration. It may also be valuable for moderating the risk of condescension.
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The 12 Second Rule (i.e. think before answering) and other Epistemic Norms
That's a good summary. I wasn't sure from your phrasing of this, if I had worded things such that the reasons were confusing. (Were you suggesting I make the reasons more explicit/summarized?)
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The 12 Second Rule (i.e. think before answering) and other Epistemic Norms
I think it would be useful to be more explicit. I think that as currently structured it is easy to read the several reasons being the same, and then just remember one. Indeed, when I came to the second group reason, I felt a little confused as to whether this was the same or not. Putting them together explicitly says that they are different, but also putting them next to each other makes it obvious. If you think that one reason is much more important, maybe the others should go. Or maybe they should be introduced as merely "another reason." It jumped out at me that you were promoting this as a group practice, but had given an individual reason.
You mention three different reasons to take a moment to think. One was an individual reason: avoid cached thoughts. Two were group reasons: avoid anchoring the group; and involve slower people, both directly and for practice.
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Open Thread, Aug 29. - Sept 5. 2016
Anyone know where I can find melatonin tablets <300 mcg? Splitting 300 mcg into 75 mcg quarters still gives me morning sleepiness, thinking smaller dose will reduce remaining melatonin upon wake time. Thanks.
The Netherlands. I think that they will ship anywhere in the EU, even places where it requires a prescription. I don't know about the US. But I'm skeptical that dose is your problem.
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Hedging
This sounds very a priori, like you noticed that people sometimes misinterpret and tried to figure out how without paying attention to the specific ways in which they actually do. I recommend Robin Hanson, although I think that post is way too much in favor of disclaimers.
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Inefficient Games
I thought that PD and "stag hunt" were standard names for these classes, but I generally prefer description ("inefficient") over metonymy. Maybe "perverse incentive game" or "antisocial game"?
Given population growth, it's not obvious to me that more people lived until 5k years ago than since then.
That's true, the population estimates used in the models James cites are dominated by the agricultural era. But the claim that half of deaths are due to malaria is based on the contrary assumption that most humans lived in subsaharan Africa.
Here is some commentary on the two most popular models.
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Now is the time to eliminate mosquitoes
If it is possible to drive mosquitoes to extinction, it is a good idea, but it sounds difficult to me. It would be easier to to use gene drive to spread antimalarial drugs. This sounds complicated, but people have done it in the lab. By aligning the gene drive with the fitness of the mosquitoes, it is more likely to work. It does not preclude future extermination. But this is a complicated mechanism, not easily adaptable to, say, Zika.
Some may hope that if you do population control long enough, they eventually go extinct, but I think the evidence for that is pretty low.
We already eliminated Malaria carrying Mosquitos from large parts of the West with DDT and related techniques. Those mosquitos didn't manage to easily recolonize the areas from which they were driven away.
Louie Helm article suggest that SIT is enough to drive mosquito species to extinction. Do you think there a reason he's wrong? His numbers might be on the low end but spending a few billions would very much be worth it to eliminate all human biting mosquitos.
We already eliminated Malaria carrying Mosquitos from large parts of the West with DDT and related techniques. Those mosquitos didn't manage to easily recolonize the areas from which they were driven away.
No, the extent of mosquitoes was reduced by draining swamps. Other methods, such as DDT did not reduce the extent of mosquitoes, but eliminated malaria from them.
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Can anyone give a steelman version of Chomsky's anti-statistics colorless green ideas sleep furiously argument? The more I think about it, the more absurd it seems.
Here's my take on Chomsky's argument:
Naively, this seems plausible enough. But consider the following mirror-image argument, about physics:
The mirror image argument seems patently absurd, but it follows the exact same line of reasoning.
The passage seems silly. It is easy to make statistical models that contradict Chomsky's claim. But I think he means something else, that whether a sentence is grammatical, while not a binary, admits sharply discrete levels. The concept of grammar cuts human understanding of language at its joint and statistical understanding is largely on the other side. At least, that is the claim; I think introspection is difficult and usually turns statistical understanding into an illusion of discreteness.