And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident [as the destruction of China] had happened.

Now that we are informed of disasters worldwide as soon as they happen, and can give at least money with a few mouse clicks, we can put this prediction to the test. What in fact we see is a very great public response to such disasters as the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

Anybody had success in dealing with acne?

This "intelligent reputation" discussion is interesting.

I had kind of an odd situation as a kid growing up. I went to a supposedly excellent Silicon Valley area elementary school and was generally one of the smartest 2-4 kids in my class. But I didn't think of myself as being very smart: I brushed off all the praise I got from teachers (because the villains and buffoons in the fiction I read were all arrogant, and I was afraid of becoming arrogant myself). Additionally, my younger brother is a good bit smarter than me, which was obvious even at that age. So I never strongly identified as being "smart".

When I was older I attended a supposedly elite university. At first I thought there was no way I would get in, but when I was accepted and got in I was astonished by how stupid and intellectually incurious everyone was. I only found one guy in my entire dorm building who actually seemed to like thinking about science/math/etc. for its own sake. At first I thought that the university admissions department was doing a terrible job, but I gradually came to realize that the world was just way stupider than I thought it was, and assuming that I was anything close to normal was not an accurate model. (Which sounds really arrogant; I'm almost afraid to type that.)

I wonder how else being raised among those who are smarter/stupider than you impacts someone's intellectual development?

People who are pro-life in the abortion debate should also be pro- free birth control pills (those not requiring a co-pay).

If pro-lifers were more pragmatic, they would rank the issues that they care about from least-bad to worst. Most would agree that abortion is worse than pre-marital sex. Therefore, they should support efforts to eliminate the need for abortions (not just seek to eliminate the ability to have an abortion). As access to birth control reduces the likelihood of the need to have an abortion, free birth control pills would reduce the overall number of abortions, thus supporting the pro-life stance.

Also, if you agree with the analysis done by Steven Levitt in the book Freakonomics (availability of abortion services led to a drastic decrease in crime), by the same logic, free birth control should lead to a decrease in the crime rate as well.

The catch: That pro-lifers have to believe that they will not be able to get everything that they want politically, and must prioritize their goals.

I've found that it is difficult to become any better at argument and persuasion when you have a reputation as an intelligent person and can convince anyone of anything by merely stating it with a sufficiently straight face.

Or even without a straight face. Sometimes I've made wild guesses (essentially thinking aloud) and, no matter how many “I think”, “may”, “possibly” etc. I throw in, someone who has heard that I'm a smart guy will take whatever I've said as word of God.

Congrats! Some topics I'd like to see, most of which you'll probably already cover (though they may be more on general "sleep" than "self-experimentation and sleep"):

1) distributions of sleep in general population and any information you can find on correlates

2) any well-powered interventions to see whether sleeping more correlates with success in any way (more working memory, decreased bias, real-world measures, etc.)

3) whether lucid dreaming really might make your memory worse because you need that REM sleep to be "random" (generally, trade-offs to lucid dreaming)

4) trade-offs in sleep: what are the upsides/downsides to more, what are the upsides/downsides to less, and how might drugs like modafinil play into this.

Edit 7/30: fixed typo in #4

Interestingly, the Authority Card seems subject to the Rule of Separate Magisteria. I'm sure you've also noticed this at some point. Basically, the reputedly-intelligent person will convince anyone of any "fact" by simply saying it convincingly and appearing to themselves be convinced, but only when it is a fact that is part of the Smart-person Stuff magisterium within the listener's model. As soon as you depart from this magisterium, your statements are mere opinion, and thus everything you say is absolutely worthless, since 1/6 000 000 000 = 0 and there are over six billion other people that have an opinion.

In other words, I agree that it constitutes somewhat of a problem. I found myself struggling with it in the past. Now I'm not struggling with it anymore, even though it hasn't been "solved" yet. It becomes a constant challenge that resets over time and over each new person you meet.

Hi Petra! Minor nitpick, its rationality not rationalism. Rationalism is something completely different.

Hello!

I'm 18, an undergraduate at University of Virginia, pre-law, and found you through HPMOR.

Rationality has been a part of me for almost as long as I can remember, but for various reasons, I'm only recently starting to refine and formalize my views of the world. It is heartening to find others who know the frustration of dealing with people who are unwilling to listen to logic. I've found that it is difficult to become any better at argument and persuasion when you have a reputation as an intelligent person and can convince anyone of anything by merely stating it with a sufficiently straight face.

More than anything else, I hope to become here a person who is a little less wrong than when I came.