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Is the existence of the Guinness World Records a positive or a negative for humanity on net?
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Bragging about material possessions is low-status in much of the West, forcing people to jostle through subtle wealth cues (travel, education, hobbies, food). But then why isn’t there another level where people embrace explicit materialism again to show that they are above such things? (Or is there, and it’s just invisible to me?)
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Say that if everyone voluntarily waited a bit longer to reproduce then after a hundred generations human life expectancy would increase by 25 years (edit: by providing selection pressure for genes that code for longevity, nothing to do with parenting). Would we be morally obligated to do that?
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Do we focus too much on classic books/music/movies/plays/art/ideas, or too little?
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Those lists of regrets people make at the end of life—how seriously should we take them? Profound wisdom or just how one version of yourself feels on one day?
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Generally speaking, is human progress more limited by our ability to build/orchestrate (1) technological systems or (2) social systems?
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What should we take from the existence of acquired tastes like spicy food or whiskey? Are they “fake”? Why aren’t we more intentional about which ones we acquire?
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If you take an octopus with most of its neurons in its arms and you cut one of the arms off and wait three months for it to regrow, what happened to the memories in those neurons? Did you destroy arm-specific memories or make all memories vaguer or is there some redundant coding scheme where the memories will be re-cached as the arm regrows? (Considered unsporting to use the scientific literature that no doubt exists in your argument although please send it to me.)
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Does all the excitement about GLP-1 agonists imply that the gastric bypass is underrated?
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Take this 2x2 matrix:
Stuff Spicy stuff Tortilla Wrap (BAD) Burrito (GOOD) Bread Sandwich (GOOD) Torta (VERY GOOD) Why does the upper-left corner exist?
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Is there any way to opt out of the signaling/counter-signaling game? If you could do it, should you, or is that pointless neuroticism?
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Is what we call “meaning in life” really just feeling respected and liked and important?
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Is utility one-dimensional? That is, is there just one kind of goodness/badness in subjective experience that comes mixed with neutral flavors, or can you feel immense pain and pleasure at the same time?
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How many attractors does the utility function landscape have? Like, say you are an AI and you can reprogram yourself at will with any CIRCUMSTANCE→REWARD mapping. Depending on the mapping, you may or may not decide to change your mapping again. Where do you stop? Are the attractors always “good” ones, or might you end up miserable but dead-set against changing?
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Mendel was only appreciated when his results were found independently decades later. So did he really achieve anything? Should we celebrate Mendel less and Carl Correns more?
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Is there a qualitative difference between drugs and music/games/video services? How addictive would a game have to be that we’d throw people in jail for making it?
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Why do most people seem to hold poetry and poets in high esteem yet have approximately zero interest in reading any poetry ever?
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Do some cultures come up with food traditions that are objectively better than others, and since yes, why?
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How is it that 100 years after zippers were invented, the high-end zipper market is almost completely controlled by a single company?
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Were earlier generations tougher than us? If so, what’s the best level of toughness? It’s unlikely that it’s where we are now, right?
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Say some crazy internet people do a non-randomized non-blinded trial where some other internet people self-select to try some diet and they (the latter group) report losing a massive amount of weight—how much does this change your opinion relative to a traditional RCT where people lose 0.1% of body mass with p<.001?
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If you accept that agriculture initially made life worse but hunter-gatherers had to adopt it or be vanquished, then are we going through any similar changes now?
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Of all the people who try newfangled note-taking systems like Zettelkasten or org-mode or Roam or Obsidian or Logseq, what fraction really end up getting more value out of them than they put in?
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Why does the West insist on “authenticity” in popular music where the performers are the songwriters? Why not specialize? Or why not insist the artist masters the music and creates the album art? Does this tradition give Western musicians more bargaining power than, say, K-pop artists?
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If people truly understood the sacrifices that are necessary to win the Tour de France (even ignoring drugs) would that increase or decrease how much they enjoy watching it?
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Why is pie so much better than cake and given that it is why do people continue to eat cake?
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There seems to be a core concept of a (non-religious) “Christmas spirit”, but what is it exactly? Family? Love? Giving? Appreciation? Togetherness?
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Whatever the Christmas spirit is, it seems pretty nonmaterialistic. So how is it that Christmas is simultaneously a colossal festival of consumption?
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Why is Christmas such a uniquely successful cultural export?
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Christmas is (at least partly) about togetherness and there’s strong evidence that togetherness makes us happier, so why are we less together than ever?
Dec 2022
report back on how it goes
How much should a couple talk if they are having dinner in a restaurant, after being together for one month/year/decade?
even more
That you can apparently learn to meditate your way into a state of profound relaxation and bliss and pleasure on par with heroin or orgasm, which was certainly not on my bingo card, which is good because bliss is good,...
Report back on how it goes
Should you try to make your life historically significant? Or should you specifically not do that? Is there too much glamour in modern life, or too little? Why doesn't basketball have height classes, like boxing has weight classes? Would a...
even more
That Earth is hot—maybe half from radioactive decay and half from leftover heat from when the planet formed—and heat is atoms jiggling around and the faster they jiggle the more often electrons absorb some kinetic energy and spit it out...
insensitivity to evolution and engineering?
We all have our peculiarities. One of mine is an obsession with tunnel man. A few years ago, a 31-year-old man inherited some land and decided—for no particular reason—to dig a tunnel. He found that he liked tunneling so he...
Maybe they're bad
I wouldn't suggest literally dismantling Harvard. (Caution is advised before destroying your most successful institutions.) My real thesis is more like: College admissions are (1) highly competitive and (2) consequential. Maybe those alone are bad? Maybe we should think about...
An unhinged polemic
Say that when people apply for their first driver's license, 1% get Executive Platinum licenses. For life, they get free use of toll roads and can drive 20% over the speed limit. People argue—fiercely argue—if these should be awarded based...
subterfuge, berries, Bayes, billboards, stop signs
Some time ago, I was driving somewhere with a friend and I claimed that someone was operating with subterfuge. There was an odd silence, after which my friend quietly asked, 'What was that?' Something was wrong. Was she offended? I...
More of them
That when cyanobacteria arose 2 billion years ago and filled the atmosphere with oxygen which killed off most species and removed methane from the air so temperatures crashed and the entire planet was encased in ice, this didn’t quite extinguish...
We believe stuff because it benefits us to believe it, not necessarily because it is true.
We believe stuff because it benefits us to believe it, not necessarily because it is true. Phrased that way, it seems like an obvious point—of course evolution made us like that, what else could it have done? But this has...
A debate about humanity's ultimate adversary
Evil. The problem is people doing bad things that they know are bad. Everyone just needs to stop demanding bribes and littering and murdering each other. Moral confusion. No, in reality, most people try to do the right thing most...
The puzzling movement reduce diagnostic tests because of harmful downstream treatments
1. Say we’re detectives. We’re getting a drink and have the following conversation: Me: Ah, this case is killing me. You: Then why don’t you go talk to Big Eddie? Me: Nah—that would do more harm than good. You: How’s...
Dark patterns in social behavior
I was working in a cafe when a woman sat nearby and asked me if there was anywhere in the neighborhood she could see some art. Hoping to get back to work, I made a couple of suggestions. She asked...
Do we really know what the future needs?
The argument for long-term thinking goes something like this: ● There are X people alive today. ● In the future, there will be Y≫X people alive. ● All people have equal moral weight. ● Therefore the state of the world...
Here are some things that I hated as a student. At the time, I thought my teachers didn't understand or care how terrible they were.
In a recent post, Parrhesia suggested that course grades should be 100% determined by performance on a final exam—an exam that could be taken repeatedly, with the last attempt being the course grade. (See also the discussion at r/slatestarcodex.) The...
When does talking about a plan ruin it? Marriage, CO2, religion, self-promotion, edgelords, and Chinese medicine.
You're in love. The two of you want to share the rest of your lives. So, being good game theorists, you have a romantic dinner and plan how to align your interests for mutually beneficial optimal strategic behavior. Your goals...
30 underrated reasons to be thankful, starting with the fact that atomic bombs don't ignite the atmosphere
That our atmosphere has low enough pressure and levels of deuterium that nuclear fission in air doesn’t cause hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium, meaning that the first nuclear bomb test in 1945 didn’t in fact ignite the atmosphere and...