A better argument for the minimum wage is that empirically it doesn't have much of a negative effect on employment - see below - but it placates the political demands of a largely uninformed populace that might otherwise try to get much worse policies enacted.

(I seem to recall that Bryan Caplan originally made this argument, but I can't source with a quick google search.)

(1) seems pretty common, and from what I know of Mr Sailer, I imagine it underlies most of his examples- there'll be an article highlighting some inequality or problem and the "facts which undermine the premises of the piece" are the suggested causes, the "joke" is that the author's see the outcome as undesirable while Sailer sees attempts to change the outcome as foolish.

Conspicuous wrongness sounds close to belief as attire (the article with the pagan lady who believed something she obviously didn't think was true) but with the addition that someone believes it's true, so the motive is not to disagree with them. I think ideologues often identify each other by the viewpoints they can be certain nobody else shares- how else to explain why the unreadable Atlas Shrugs remains more popular than Rand's other books, which are no less strident but considerably more appealing to outsiders.

It's pretty easy to see why the Victorians were wrong. The social norms (especially middle class) cherished female chastity, since chastity is an important virtue for monogamous societies. This is because men are more reluctant to form long-term mating commitments to women with a reputation for strong sex desire (this increases paternal uncertainty). So over centuries, the parochial assumption that women were genuinely chaste would have become common among men. Now that female chastity is out, marriage rates are declining, and we seem to be evolving to a more "forager" sexual style (this trend is currently incomplete).

I've also read anti-porn radical feminists who argue that women only pretend to accept male use of porn (or bondage/discipline in the bedroom) to seem "cool", when really they find it disgusting/evil.

Currently, The Economist is the only news paper I read on a weekly basis. Generally, the writing seems more informed by sound social science and a historical perspective than The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal.

I haven't read this Salam but that "not a partisan so they must be unbiased" heuristic is pretty dodgy, particularly for an American columnist- that two party duopoly means you have a lot of right-libertarian and socialist/green analysts who regard each party as identical but are toting around some pretty serious ideological blinkers of their own, not to mention the cult of the sensible centrist people.

The right-wing meltdown you've got going on kind of screws with this though- for most countries I'd suggest that heterodox/lesser-of-two-evils party members from any group tend to suffer the least from illusions, but the impression I get is that in the US, the conservative variety no longer feels comfortable with the Republican party. This is all second hand though...

66% pullback in price this weekend. This certainly isn't a market for the fainthearted.

Clearly, the market is responding to people questioning its efficacy on Less Wrong. :P

My probability distribution looks something like 90% chance of going to 0 and 10% chance of going to multiple hundreds of dollars.

Are you buying bitcoins? Expected utility is in the multiple tens of dollars if you believe that.

I've kind of stayed out of this discussion because I think one's interpretation of the product depends on more on your views about economics and politics than any disagreement about bitcoin's properties. And Tyler Cowen's skepticism makes me think that bitcoin proponents are deep enough into Rothbardville that our lines of engagement would get fruitlessly broad.

But I'm curious on one point - why do some people have this dramatic 'coins'll be worth thousands or nothing" attitude. I can see the zero, and I can get my head round the viewpoint where it's plausible that a large chunk of the economy gets covered by bitcoins and they're worth thousands. But what about it staying where it is now, as a complementary used for drug deals, money laundering and Konkin t-shirts? Is there some reason that wouldn't be stable?

I've often thought that comedy is useful because it breaks down compartmentalisation, and more generally because it creates a sort of mental safe space in which ideas can be thought about without triggering the usual mental defences. I'll go as far as to say it's the safest way of breaking down compartmentalization- that if you do it while precommitting to accept the result, you'll tend to select the synthesis consistent with your most cherished beliefs, rather than the one which most accurately reflects reality. On a related note, humor-intolerance is a great warning sign for mentally dangerous ideologies.

I'd be wary of attempting to derive any universal "theory of comedy" though- this doesn't account for clowning or really any types of physical humour for instance. The only thing that seems to be universal about comedy is that it demonstrates awareness of/ability to manipulate multiple levels of meaning or interpretation - which isn't a sufficient condition.

I've often thought that comedy is useful because it breaks down compartmentalisation, and more generally because it creates a sort of mental safe space in which ideas can be thought about without triggering the usual mental defences. I'll go as far as to say it's the safest way of breaking down compartmentalization- that if you do it while precommitting to accept the result, you'll tend to select the synthesis consistent with your most cherished beliefs, rather than the one which most accurately reflects reality. On a related note, humor-intolerance is a great warning sign for mentally dangerous ideologies.

I'd be wary of attempting to derive any universal "theory of comedy" though- this doesn't account for clowning or really any types of physical humour for instance. The only thing that seems to be universal about comedy is that it demonstrates awareness of/ability to manipulate multiple levels of meaning or interpretation - which isn't a sufficient condition.

If I understand correctly, a pyramid scheme is something like when you try to convince me that 2 people will send me a dollar if I agree to send you a dollar. Is bitcoin really like that? In what sense do I have to send someone "already enrolled" in the scheme a dollar to get my two dollars?