MichaelDickens's Shortform

post by MichaelDickens · 2021-10-18T18:26:53.537Z · LW · GW · 7 comments

7 comments

Comments sorted by top scores.

comment by MichaelDickens · 2022-09-08T15:27:41.366Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

What's going on with /r/AskHistorians?

AFAIK, /r/AskHistorians is the best place to hear from actual historians about historical topics. But I've noticed some trends that make it seem like the historians there generally share some bias or agenda, but I can't exactly tell what that agenda is.

The most obvious thing I noticed is from their FAQ on historians' views on other [popular] historians. I looked through these and in every single case, the /r/AskHistorians commenters dislike the pop historian. Surely at least one pop historian got it right?

I don't know about the actual object level, but a lot of /r/AskHistorians' criticisms strike me as weak:

  • They criticize Dan Carlin for (1) allegedly downplaying the Rape of Belgium even though by my listening he emphasized pretty strongly how bad it was and (2) doing a bad job answering "could Caesar have won the Battle of Hastings?" even though this is a thought experiment, not a historical question. (Some commenters criticize him for being inaccurate and others criticize him for being unoriginal, which are contradictory criticisms.)
  • They criticize Guns, Germs, and Steel for...honestly I'm a little confused about how this person disagrees with GGS.
  • Lots of criticisms of popular works for being "oversimplified", which strikes me as a dumb criticism—everything is simplified, the map is always less detailed than the territory.
  • They criticize The Better Angels of Our Nature for taking implausible figures from ancient historians at face value (fair) and for using per capita deaths instead of total deaths (per capita seems obviously correct to me?).

Seems like they are bending over backwards to talk about how bad popular historical media are, while not providing substantive criticisms. I've also noticed they like to criticize media for not citing any sources (or for citing sources that aren't sufficiently academic), but then they usually don't cite any sources themselves.

I don't know enough about history to know whether /r/AskHistorians is reliable, but I see some meta-level issues that make me skeptical. I want to get other people's takes. Am I being unfair to /r/AskHistorians?

(I don't expect to find a lot of historians on LessWrong, but I do expect to find people who are good at assessing credibility.)

comment by MichaelDickens · 2024-04-26T01:20:24.277Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Have there been any great discoveries made by someone who wasn't particularly smart?

This seems worth knowing if you're considering pursuing a career with a low chance of high impact. Is there any hope for relatively ordinary people (like the average LW reader) to make great discoveries?

Replies from: niplav, Gunnar_Zarncke, carl-feynman
↑ comment by niplav · 2024-04-26T11:29:45.418Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

My best guess is that people in these categories were ones that were high in some other trait, e.g. patience, which allowed them to collect datasets or make careful experiments for quite a while, thus enabling others to make great discoveries.

I'm thinking for example of Tycho Brahe, who is best known for 15 years of careful astronomical observation & data collection, or Gregor Mendel's 7-year-long experiments on peas. Same for Dmitry Belayev and fox domestication. Of course I don't know their cognitive scores, but those don't seem like a bottleneck in their work.

So the recipe to me looks like "find an unexplored data source that requires long-term observation to bear fruit, but would yield a lot of insight if studied closely, then investigate".

↑ comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2024-04-26T09:16:27.243Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I asked ChatGPT 

Have there been any great discoveries made by someone who wasn't particularly smart? (i.e. average or below)

and it's difficult to get examples out of it. Even with additional drilling down and accusing it of being not inclusive of people with cognitive impairments, most of its examples are either pretty smart anyway, savants or only from poor backgrounds. The only ones I could verify that fit are:

  • Richard Jones accidentally created the Slinky
  • Frank Epperson, as a child, Epperson invented the popsicle
  • George Crum inadvertently invented potato chips

I asked ChatGPT (in a separate chat) to estimate the IQ of all the inventors is listed and it is clearly biased to estimate them high, precisely because of their inventions. It is difficult to estimate the IQ of people retroactively. There is also selection and availability bias.

↑ comment by Carl Feynman (carl-feynman) · 2024-04-26T19:38:19.182Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Various sailors made important discoveries back when geography was cutting-edge science.  And they don't seem particularly bright.

Vasco De Gama discovered that Africa was circumnavigable.

Columbus was wrong about the shape of the Earth, and he discovered America.  He died convinced that his newly discovered islands were just off the coast of Asia, so that's a negative sign for his intelligence (or a positive sign for his arrogance, which he had in plenty.)

Cortez discovered that the Aztecs were rich and easily conquered.

Of course, lots of other would-be discoverers didn't find anything, and many died horribly.

So, one could work in a field where bravery to the point of foolhardiness is a necessity for discovery.

comment by MichaelDickens · 2021-10-18T18:26:53.854Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When people sneeze, do they expel more fluid from their mouth than from their nose?

I saw this video (warning: slow-mo video of a sneeze. kind of gross) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNeYfUTA11s&t=79s and it looks like almost all the fluid is coming out of the person's mouth, not their nose. Is that typical?

(Meta: Wasn't sure where to ask this question, but I figured someone on LessWrong would know the answer.)

Replies from: Pattern
↑ comment by Pattern · 2021-10-19T05:51:23.031Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This could be tested by a) inducing sneezing (although induction methods might produce an unusual sneeze, which works differently). and b) using an intervention of some kind.

Inducing sneezing isn't hard, but can be extremely unpleasant, depending on the method. However, if you're going to sneeze anyway...