Open thread, Nov. 14 - Nov. 20, 2016

Thanks! Last time, the one I joined didn't manage to get off the ground, so I'm glad this is happening again.

Does anyone worry that (rot13 as possible memetic hazard for highly paranoid people)

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Edit: 3 slots remain.
15 hours left to fill up room, else room resets, please join soon and take part in your very own serious diplomacy simulation!

Mostly false, false, mixed, true, mixed, unfair, true.

Trump is clearly very good at getting his way and 'winning,' is demonstrably intelligent, but is operating in a new realm and so is missing a lot of the habits that people in that realm have. Lots of reports right now, for example, are talking about how the Trump team was surprised by just how many presidential appointments they would need to fill. They were probably expecting something like 20 cabinet heads, but in fact there are about 4000 roles that the president appoints for. It remains to be seen whether or not those appointments will be made on time or made well, but I'm somewhat more optimistic than journalists writing about it now (for similar reasons to why I was more optimistic than journalists about him winning the primary or the general election).

This hinges a lot on how you interpret 'thin-skinned.' The impression is that Trump will get distracted by personal slights and/or is 'unable to take a hit'; I think a fairer characterization is that Trump is the sort of person who hits back whenever hit. I think most fears based off this boil down to cultural misunderstanding--there's a worry that Trump will be the sort of person to murder critics who insult him, or go to war over diplomatic incidents, when in fact it looks like Trump will insult critics who insult him.

Trump is not a policy wonk, and this makes him seem deeply ignorant and bizarre to many policy wonks, which happens to be almost everyone with a major interest in politics. Trump is the sort of guy who will brainstorm in public to figure out people's reactions, rather than come up with a fifty point plan and then negotiate with the other guy who has a forty point plan. Trump does have lots of knowledge about the world and the state of it; it's sort of unfair to knock Trump for ignorance when he correctly calls a lot of things ahead of time in ways that policy wonks miss.

Trump is a pro wrestling fan, and many of the related correlations hold. This makes him 'boorish' in a lot of ways; he's also remarkably bad at verbal fluency compared to other national-level speakers (though he does, in fact, have the best words, to the chagrin of several critics).

Trump is a salesman and self-promoter; this puts him in a different reference class that is much more 'fraudy' than other reference classes. His approach to real estate development involved a lot of creating coordination out of nothing, which involved saying a lot of things that weren't true before they were said. (In the sense of, A will join only if B has already joined, B will join if C has already joined, C will join if A has already joined; Trump would tell all of them that 'yep, _ has already joined" and by the time things shook out this would be true, at least when it worked.) The later stage of his career involved a lot of licensing his name to someone else--you think the Trump brand is valuable, and so you pay Trump to put the Trump name on your thing. His quality standards seem to have been somewhat questionable. Trump University looks like it was mostly fraud (even if its customers liked it) and it's unclear why he thought it was a good idea to be involved. But his core businesses aren't fraudulent, and so he's not even close to someone like Madoff.

"Omnihypocritical" is unfair because it presumes that he's mostly saying final, considered policy statements instead of negotiating gambits. Trump at one point said he thought women who got abortions should be punished, not because of a deep desire for that to be true, but because he was guessing that was the right pro-life position to stake out when running for the Republican nomination. Once he learned that wasn't true, he backed off--in a way that would seem hypocritical to the sort of person who has deeply held political opinions about everything, but which doesn't at all seem that way to someone who mostly doesn't care about most issues.

Trump is obviously and deliberately a demagogue in the sense of appealing to popular desires instead of appealing to clear causal models of how those desires will be fulfilled. When asked "how will you accomplish X?" his response was generally "X will be accomplished, trust me. It's going to be great." To someone who cares deeply about evaluating plans to accomplish X, this is amazingly frustrating.

Most of the discussion is happening on /r/ssc: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/5ddf5i/you_are_still_crying_wolf/ (674+ comments; on Twitter, Yvain mentions the post has had 200k+ page views).

First you misrepresent Scott Alexander's post. Scott didn't write that the media invented the narrative that Trump is racist.

The media isn't really responsible for coming up with the narrative. Trump himself came up with it because it was a good way to get attention. Trump purposefully spoke about how Mexico sends rapists to create that narrative. At least that's the version if you think Trump has at least a tiny shred of awareness of the moves he makes.

I don't remember anybody in the rationality community attacking Trump based on the theory that the main problem with him is that he's racist.

So when I hear an admission that many of the charges against Trump were lies (and that Scott didn't want to draw attention to this before the election), I must update towards thinking any other given charge is likely to be a lie too.

I think the references classes are bad.

Media economics produced an environment where it's profitable to write certain stories. Accusing people of racism is very profitable. The story is easy to write without engaging in any research. There's little cost to be payed by the journalist. It get's well shared on social media for signaling tribal loyalty.

On the other hand describing interaction of Trump with the mob isn't profitable. Writing those stories would likely anger powerful people who are connected to the mob. As a result the media tried not to report those stories and sometimes they cut out the parts of interviews where the people they interviewed tried to talk about that connection.

When I conclude that the characterization of Trump's ghostwriter who spend 1 1/2 years with him provides valuable information about his character that's a completely different way of accessing him than judging him based on his answers about David Duke or even his speeches about Mexican rapists.

The ones of those that can be proven solely via twitter use have already been pretty well-established. So: unsure, true, true, true, true, either false or an exaggeration, and he's a politician, so of course. My biggest caveat to these is that they're situational - someone can be ignorant about some things and not others, for example. Or someone might be a complete ass on the internet but reasonably nice in person. Or someone might be a competent TV personality and even a competent real-estate developer without being a competent university-owner.

One of the more stark examples are his statements regarding regarding global warming. It's reasonable to expect that his remarks on the subject would be ignorant and boorish, because calling climate scientists ignorant frauds is just "playing to the base" for republican nominees for president - this is so predictable it's even tempting to give him a pass. But when he says that it's all a chinese hoax to hurt the u.s. economy, and then later denies ever saying that, as if people couldn't just check the record, this is a level of disdain for the truth that is notable even in the context of the U.S. Republican party's position on climate change.

And unlike others, I don't see any compelling reasons why Trump's policy desires should be much less ignorant than what's come out of his mouth.

Guessing by the number of downvotes you received, probably yes.

This garden is officially dead now.

He doesn't seem to be, at least by the scrolling the history of his posts.

I believe you have your answer.

I think there are three main uses of which I am aware:

1) General sense of wonder and awe at real things: pantheistic 'the universe is god'; sacred geometry; nature worship.

2) Rituals, yoga, meditation without religious or paranormal baggage.

3) Paranormal beliefs that do not fit into an existing religious framework, possibly because you don't want to cause conflict between different religions so you believe in a non-denominational 'supreme being'.

Can anyone explain to me what non-religious spirituality means, exactly?

It's when you get high on magic mushrooms which allow you a glimpse of the True Authentic Spirituality of the Native People Who Live in Harmony with Nature and the Whole Cosmos.

On a bit more serious note, apparently a large majority of humans have a need for something... spiritual. Living in a world made entirely of atoms and nothing else (and when you die, you return to dust and that's it) seems unsatisfying to them. If you kill religions you're left with a large void which gets colonised by a variety of things, from totalitarian ideologies to new-age woo.

Moralistic therapeutic deism

I won't speak to the content, but can wave towards the form: basically, there is a set of brain modules / neural pathways, which, when triggered by a set of thoughts, fills one with hope / drive / selflessness. Specifically for me, one of these thoughts include:

| "That was humanity in the ancient days. There was so much wrong with the world that the small resources of altruism were splintered among ten thousand urgent charities, and none of it ever seemed to go anywhere. And yet... and yet..." .. "There was a threshold crossed somewhere," said the Confessor, "without a single apocalypse to mark it. Fewer wars. Less starvation. Better technology. The economy kept growing. People had more resource to spare for charity, and the altruists had fewer and fewer causes to choose from. They came even to me, in my time, and rescued me. Earth cleaned itself up, and whenever something threatened to go drastically wrong again, the whole attention of the planet turned in that direction and took care of it. Humanity finally got its act together." Three worlds collide

How much this neural pathway is developed, and what specific form the actual software takes varies enormously between individuals. This is a problem with how atheism is being propagated currently: when you're telling a person "god does not exist", you're basically denying him the reality of this brain module, while at the same time taking away a core motivator, without substituting it with anything even barely close to it, motivation / qualia-wise.

So, my import of people checking "non-religious spirituality", is that they both have this brain module somewhat developed, and there exists some thoughts by which they can readily trigger it.

Meditating to face the question of "Who am I?" is an activity that would be traditionally in the realm of spirituality.

Sam Harris would be an example of a person who meditates and who's self image changed as a result.

In the interview of Sam Harris with Andrew Sullivan, Andrew (who's a Christian) said that the Buddhist ideas that Sam Harris propagates where useful for Andrew's spiritual life.

Sam Harris is a clear atheist and not Buddhist in the strict religious sense but Buddhist ideas did influence Sam Harris spiritual life (his sense of who he is at a basic level).

I consider myself an atheist that dabbles with spirituality on occasion, mainly with drugs. Part of it is escapism no doubt, but I am also very deliberate and ceremonial about it, I'm trying to get more out of the experience than just feeling high. If you read more about the Psychonaut community where ever websites you can find them at, you would get some sort of feeling for what non-religious spirituality means. I wouldn't consider myself part of that community, I just pass by. sdr gave a pretty good go at it.

I'm assuming that the reason these people are pushing the idea that at least 50% of the US population are racist is because they want to normalise racism. Otherwise, they'rd be shooting themselves in the foot, normalising the very idea they are trying to stop, and no-one could be that stupid ... right?

\s

Huh? That doesn't make much sense. Let's translate it from the political minefield to standard statistics.

You have some value (say, the population mean) which you don't know, but which exists. You get an estimate of it (say, the sample mean) and another guy gets another estimate (say, the mean of a different sample). You are asking what should be the statistical significance of your estimate in order for you to be confident that the other guy must believe your estimate and not his own.

That's... a weird question.

Do you have a citation for Obama's libel suits?

Update: googling "rezko libel" worked.

Gonna try to just talk about policy and not talk about personal honesty or staffing decisions or the like.

Staffing decisions are decisions about who's going to make the policy. They provide more information than campaign promises. Especially in the case of Trump who didn't had experts to develop a comprehensive policy platform before the election.

Various expounded plans over the months to defeat ISIS were all stupid.

Team up with Russia to have a shared agenda on ISIS is a decent plan. Being more serious about the fact that we don't want our "allies" to support ISIS would also make sense and seems to be implicit.

Stopping Turkey from buying ISIS oil isn't rocket science if there's real willingness and a decision to be okay with Assad ruling Syria.

impractical (various comments about doing something with healthcare other than using republican majority to repeal whatever Obama did),

The Republican do have a majority but Democrats can filibuster. That means there's room for compromise.

Japan manages to have an environment where an MRI costs one order of magnitude less then it costs in the US. Deregulation of the healthcare has the chance to lower costs a lot.

Peter Thiel is big on deregulating healthcare. Robert Mercer, the billionaire who's the father of Rebekah Mercer who's on Trump transition team, is also invested in ventures that benefit from healthcare deregulation.

Do you think there's no way that bills to deregulate healthcare could pass?

Editing tags seems a bit pedestrian to bother announcing. There is an automatically generated edit log, although it doesn't seem to indicate tag edits. Instead, it says that you changed a link from absolute to relative.

Thanks, that's one thing I easily forgot.

so being Muslim literally only provides two bits of information.

I suggest you read up on the concept of information before commenting further.

If 1/4 of people are Muslim, the fact that someone is Muslim gives you two bits to help identify them uniquely. True, but irrelevant. We don't want to identify them uniquely, we want to know if they are a terrorist.

However, if hypothetically all "purple people" are terrorists and all terrorists are "purple people" then the fact that someone is a "purple person", or is not, tells you 100% of what you want to know in respect of their being a terrorist. Which is one bit of information: terrorist or not.

Update: In fact he said following: "Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next 1,000 or 10,000 years," and it is still unclear.

To me it doesn't seem unclear but the claim seem uncertainty attached to it.

By "pod" do you mean the Keurig/Nespresso things? Why would there be any difference? it's just a matter of packaging.

It's just a pun. Islam = SLM = salaam = peace. But yes, people do argue about it as though it was a real claim about the nature of Islam.

Standard followup to all such "is it worth X" questions: compared to what? What's your opportunity cost of reading such books? More valuable than Call of Duty? than Harry Potter? Than watching football? I'd say probably so, if you need to ask the question. More valuable than learning a new language, bonding with friends/family, or conquering an enemy? Probably not.

I've read a fair few, and I think the primary rationality benefit I get is temporal perspective. Really incorporating the belief that real people made real decisions decades, centuries, and millenia ago into my life has been a change (note: not clear that it's a beneficial change, as I'm a lot less inclined to think that very much of my experience will actually matter in 1000 years). I also get some status and interpersonal interaction benefits by being known as "well read" and able to cite some of the statements and events in such books.

If I'm honest, though, I wouldn't read them if they weren't entertaining and enjoyable.

Well, this probably won't help much, but my preferred source is a totally fictional narrative - Dumas's Twenty years after. I find comfort in how it treats personal ambition, rivalry, motivation nuances ("for old times' sake"/"for honour"/"for fame"/"for money"/"for family"...) without explicit judgement; I re-read it in early 2014, to ease myself into the thought that the political situation [in Kyiv] would likely get worse (and you probably can't imagine how we wished that there would be no lives lost); and last but not least, I have, for personal reasons, largely fallen out of touch with some of my dear friends, and this novel gives me hope that I might be able to love them just as truly even decades later. I think it is worth reading.

I would also recommend Daniel Granin's "Bison", which is a biography of N. Timofeyev-Resovsky, or in the author's words, "a book on honour and dishonour".

I don't really see how this could be helpful. The biographer would have to be able to discern which qualities made the person successful and translate them into actionable specifics. In practice, it's pretty hard for highly successful people to explain their own success in an actionable way even when they seem to be sincerely trying (e.g. Warren Buffet.)

What kind of engineering? Algae are pretty darn good at carbon fixation especially in optimized conditions, though there are people trying to muck with land plants to put the more efficient C4 carbon fixation pathway in economically important plants. There are methanotrophs that will turn methane into biomass with high efficiency, and recently discovered bacteria that will take electrical current and use it to power their metabolisms.

As for fertilizer, I mean, genetic modification doesn't move elements around, but if you have another idea I'm all ears!

Almost always a better idea to avoid anything preemptive. You never really know that you're going to need it done anyway (see bbleeker's comment), even if you might need it done in 5 or 10 years you might be dead of other things by that time anyway, and medical techniques improve over time (so surgery in 5 or 10 years is likely enough to be safer and less painful than surgery now.)

I guess that would depend on how likely your dentist thinks they're going to cause problems. Personal anecdata: I had to have a back molar extracted one time, and a wisdom tooth started growing right into the vacant spot, giving me a brand-new tooth. :-) I still have a wisdom tooth on the other side; I can feel the point under my gums, but it's not causing any problems so far (I'm 61).