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...

Report back on how it goes

1. Is the existence of the Guinness Book of World Records a positive or a negative for humanity on net? 2. Bragging about material possessions is low-status in much of the West, forcing people to jostle through subtle wealth cues...

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...