Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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Book Review: Why Are the Prices So D*mn High? Jun 12, 2019

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Why have prices for services like health care and education risen so much over the past fifty years? When I looked into this in 2017, I couldn't find a conclusive answer. Economists Alex Tabarrok and Eric Helland have written a new book on the topic, Why Are The Prices So D*mn High? (link goes to free pdf copy, or you can read Tabarrok's summary on Marginal Revolution). They do find a conclusive answer: the Baumol effect.

T&H explain it like this:

In 1826, when Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 was first played, it took four people 40 minutes to produce a performance. In 2010, it still took four people 40 minutes to produce a performance. Stated differently, in the nearly 200 years between 1826 and 2010, there was no growth in string quartet labor productivity. In 1826 it took 2.66 labor hours to produce one unit of output, and it took 2.66 labor hours to produce one unit of output in 2010.

Fortunately, most other sectors of the economy have experienced substantial growth in labor productivity since 1826. We can measure growth in labor productivity in the economy as a whole by looking at the growth in real wages. In 1826 the average hourly wage for a production worker was $1.14. In 2010 the average hourly wage for a production worker was $26.44, approximately 23 times higher in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. Growth in average labor productivity has a surprising implication: it makes the output of slow productivity-growth sectors (relatively) more expensive. In 1826, the average wage of $1.14 meant that the 2.66 hours needed to produce a performance of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 had an opportunity cost of just $3.02. At a wage of $26.44, the 2.66 hours of labor in music production had an opportunity cost of $70.33. Thus, in 2010 it was 23 times (70.33/3.02) more expensive to produce a performance of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14 than in 1826. In other words, one had to give up more other goods and services to produce a music performance in 2010 than one did in 1826. Why? Simply because in 2010, society was better at producing other goods and services than in 1826.

Put another way, a violinist can always choose to stop playing violin, retrain for a while, and work in a factory instead. Maybe in 1826, when factory owners were earning $1.14/hour and violinists were earning $5/hour, so no violinists would quit and retrain. But by 2010, factory workers were earning $26.44/hour, so if violinists were still only earning $5 they might all quit and retrain. So in 2010, there would be a strong pressure to increase violinists' wage to at least $26.44 (probably more, since few people have the skills to be violinists). So violinists must be paid 5x more for the same work, which will look like concerts becoming more expensive.

Addendum to "Enormous Nutshell": Competing Selectors Jun 09, 2019

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[Previously in sequence: Epistemic Learned Helplessness, Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success, List Of Passages I Highlighted In My Copy Of The Secret Of Our Success, Asymmetric Weapons Gone Bad]

When I wrote Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous Planet-Sized Nutshell, my attempt to explain reactionary philosophy, many people complained that it missed the key insight. At the time I had an excuse: I didn't get the key insight. Now I think I might understand it and have the vocabulary to explain, so I want to belatedly add it in.

The whole thing revolves around this rather dubious redefinition:

RIGHT-WING: Policies and systems selected by cultural evolution LEFT-WING: Policies and systems selected by the marketplace of ideas

The second line is ambiguous: which marketplace of ideas, exactly? Maybe better than "the marketplace of ideas" would be "memetic evolution". Policies and systems that are so catchy and convincing that lots of people believe in them and want to fight for them.

Under this definition, lots of conventionally right-wing movements get defined as left-wing. For example, Nazism and Trumpism both arose after a charismatic leader convinced the populace to implement them. They won because people liked them more than the alternatives. But "left-wing" is not equivalent to "populist". An idea that spreads by convincing intellectuals and building an academic consensus around itself is still left-wing, because it relies on convincing people. Even ideas like neoliberalism and technocracy are left-wing ideas, if they sound good to intellectuals and they spread by convincing those intellectuals.

Asymmetric Weapons Gone Bad Jun 09, 2019

Show notes

[Previously in sequence: Epistemic Learned Helplessness, Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success, List Of Passages I Highlighted In My Copy Of The Secret Of Our Success. Deleted a controversial section which I still think was probably correct, but which given the number of objections wasn't provably correct enough to be worth including. I might write another post giving my evidence for it later, but it probably shouldn't be dropped in here without justification.]

Years ago, I wrote about symmetric vs. asymmetric weapons.

A symmetric weapon is one that works just as well for the bad guys as for the good guys. For example, violence – your morality doesn't determine how hard you can punch; they can buy guns from the same places we can.

An asymmetric weapon is one that works better for the good guys than the bad guys. The example I gave was Reason. If everyone tries to solve their problems through figuring out what the right thing to do is, the good guys (who are right) will have an easier time proving themselves to be right than the bad guys (who are wrong). Finding and using asymmetric weapons is the only non-coincidence way to make sustained moral progress.

The parts of The Secret Of Our Success that deal with reason vs. cultural evolution raise a disturbing prospect: what if sometimes, the asymmetry is in the wrong direction? What if there are some issues where rational debate inherently leads you astray?

List of Passages I Highlighted in My Copy of "The Secret of Our Success" Jun 08, 2019

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[Previously in sequence: Epistemic Learned Helplessness, Book Review: The Secret Of Our Success]

A rare example of cultural evolution in action:

Throughout the Highlands of New Guinea, a group's ability to raise large numbers of pigs is directly related to its economic and social success in competition with other regional groups. The ceremonial exchange of pigs allows groups to forge alliances, re-pay debts, obtain wives, and generate prestige through excessive displays of generosity. All this means that groups who are better able to raise pigs can expand more rapidly in numbers—by reproduction and in-migration—and thus have the potential to expand their territory. Group size is very important in intergroup warfare in small-scale societies so larger groups are more likely to successfully expand their territory. However, the prestige more successful groups obtain may cause the rapid diffusion of the very institutions, beliefs, or practices responsible for their competitive edge as other groups adopt their strategies and beliefs.

In 1971, the anthropologist David Boyd was living in the New Guinea village of Irakia, and observed intergroup competition via prestige-biased group transmission. Concerned about their low prestige and weak pig production, the senior men of Irakia convened a series of meetings to determine how to improve their situation. Numerous suggestions were proposed for raising their pig production but after a long process of consensus building the senior men of the village decided to follow a suggestion made by a prestigious clan-leader who proposed that they "must follow the Fore'" and adopt their pig-related husbandry practices, rituals, and other institutions. The Fore' were a large and successful ethnic group in the region, who were renowned for their pig production. The following practices, beliefs, rules, and goals were copied from the Fore', and announced at the next general meeting of the community:

1) All villagers must sing, dance and play flutes for their pigs. This ritual causes the pigs to grow faster and bigger. At feasts, the pigs should be fed first from the oven. People are fed second.

Book Review: The Secret of Our Success Jun 07, 2019

Show notes

[Previously in sequence: Epistemic Learned Helplessness]

"Culture is the secret of humanity's success" sounds like the most vapid possible thesis. The Secret Of Our Successby anthropologist Joseph Henrich manages to be an amazing book anyway.

Henrich wants to debunk (or at least clarify) a popular view where humans succeeded because of our raw intelligence. In this view, we are smart enough to invent neat tools that help us survive and adapt to unfamiliar environments.

Against such theories: we cannot actually do this. Henrich walks the reader through many stories about European explorers marooned in unfamiliar environments. These explorers usually starved to death. They starved to death in the middle of endless plenty. Some of them were in Arctic lands that the Inuit considered among their richest hunting grounds. Others were in jungles, surrounded by edible plants and animals. One particularly unfortunate group was in Alabama, and would have perished entirely if they hadn't been captured and enslaved by local Indians first.

These explorers had many advantages over our hominid ancestors. For one thing, their exploration parties were made up entirely of strong young men in their prime, with no need to support women, children, or the elderly. They were often selected for their education and intelligence. Many of them were from Victorian Britain, one of the most successful civilizations in history, full of geniuses like Darwin and Galton. Most of them had some past experience with wilderness craft and survival. But despite their big brains, when faced with the task our big brains supposedly evolved for – figuring out how to do hunting and gathering in a wilderness environment – they failed pathetically.

[Repost] Epistemic Learned Helplessness Jun 06, 2019

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[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal]

A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing arguments. That is, if you have a valid argument for something, then you should accept the conclusion. Even if the conclusion is unpopular, or inconvenient, or you don't like it. He envisioned an art of rationality that would make people believe something after it had been proven to them.

And I nodded my head, because it sounded reasonable enough, and it wasn't until a few hours later that I thought about it again and went "Wait, no, that would be a terrible idea."

I don't think I'm overselling myself too much to expect that I could argue circles around the average uneducated person. Like I mean that on most topics, I could demolish their position and make them look like an idiot. Reduce them to some form of "Look, everything you say fits together and I can't explain why you're wrong, I just know you are!" Or, more plausibly, "Shut up I don't want to talk about this!"

And there are people who can argue circles around me. Maybe not on every topic, but on topics where they are experts and have spent their whole lives honing their arguments. When I was young I used to read pseudohistory books; Immanuel Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos is a good example of the best this genre has to offer. I read it and it seemed so obviously correct, so perfect, that I could barely bring myself to bother to search out rebuttals.

And then I read the rebuttals, and they were so obviously correct, so devastating, that I couldn't believe I had ever been so dumb as to believe Velikovsky.

And then I read the rebuttals to the rebuttals, and they were so obviously correct that I felt silly for ever doubting.

In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization [Classic] Jun 01, 2019

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[Content warning: Discussion of social justice, discussion of violence, spoilers for Jacqueline Carey books.]

[Edit 10/25: This post was inspired by a debate with a friend of a friend on Facebook who has since become somewhat famous. I've renamed him here to "Andrew Cord" to protect his identity.]

Andrew Cord criticizes me for my bold and controversial suggestion that maybe people should try to tell slightly fewer blatant hurtful lies:

I just find it kind of darkly amusing and sad that the "rationalist community" loves "rationality is winning" so much as a tagline and yet are clearly not winning. And then complain about losing rather than changing their tactics to match those of people who are winning.

Which is probably because if you *really* want to be the kind of person who wins you have to actually care about winning something, which means you have to have politics, which means you have to embrace "politics the mindkiller" and "politics is war and arguments are soldiers", and Scott would clearly rather spend the rest of his life losing than do this.

That post [the one debunking false rape statistics] is exactly my problem with Scott. He seems to honestly think that it's a worthwhile use of his time, energy and mental effort to download evil people's evil worldviews into his mind and try to analytically debate them with statistics and cost-benefit analyses.

He gets *mad* at people whom he detachedly intellectually agrees with but who are willing to back up their beliefs with war and fire rather than pussyfooting around with debate-team nonsense.

It honestly makes me kind of sick. It is exactly the kind of thing that "social justice" activists like me *intend* to attack and "trigger" when we use "triggery" catchphrases about the mewling pusillanimity of privileged white allies.

In other words, if a fight is important to you, fight nasty. If that means lying, lie. If that means insults, insult. If that means silencing people, silence.

It always makes me happy when my ideological opponents come out and say eloquently and openly what I've always secretly suspected them of believing.

My natural instinct is to give some of the reasons why I think Andrew is wrong, starting with the history of the "noble lie" concept and moving on to some examples of why it didn't work very well, and why it might not be expected not to work so well in the future.

But in a way, that would be assuming the conclusion. I wouldn't be showing respect for Andrew's arguments. I wouldn't be going halfway to meet them on their own terms.

The respectful way to rebut Andrew's argument would be to spread malicious lies about Andrew to a couple of media outlets, fan the flames, and wait for them to destroy his reputation. Then if the stress ends up bursting an aneurysm in his brain, I can dance on his grave, singing:

♪ ♬ I won this debate in a very effective manner. Now you can't argue in favor of nasty debate tactics any more ♬ ♪

I'm not going to do that, but if I did it's unclear to me how Andrew could object. I mean, he thinks that sexism is detrimental to society, so spreading lies and destroying people is justified in order to stop it. I think that discourse based on mud-slinging and falsehoods is detrimental to society. Therefore…

Postscript to APA Photo-Essay May 30, 2019

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I was surprised how many people responded to my APA photo-essay with comments like "Seems psychiatry as a field is broken beyond repair" or "This proves you should never trust psychiatrists".

The mood I was going for was more "let's share a laugh at the excesses of the profession" than "everything must be burned down". Looks like I missed it.

I was disappointed to see a lot of the most hostile comments coming from people in tech. It would be easy to write an equally damning report on the tech industry. Just cobble together a few paragraphs about Juicero and Theranos, make fun of whatever weird lifestyle change @jack is supporting at the moment, and something something Zuckerberg something Cambridge Analytica something. You can even throw in something about James Damore (if you're writing for the left) or about the overreaction to James Damore (if you're writing for the right). And there you go! Tech is a malicious cancerous industry full of awful people and everyone should hate it. We've all read this exact thinkpiece a thousand times.

I've tried to push back against this line of thinking. A lot of the most visible and famous things in tech are bad, because scum tends to rise to the top. But there's also some extraordinary innovation going on, and some extraordinarily good people involved. "@jack invents new health fad of rolling around naked on glaciers" is a much juicier story than "we can now fit twice as many billions of transistors on a chip as we could last year", but tech journalism that only reports on the former is missing an important part of the story.

I feel the same way about psychiatry. There's a lot of cringeworthy stuff going on at conferences, but conferences are designed to be about signaling and we shouldn't expect otherwise. There's also a lot of great people working really hard to help fight mental illness and support the mentally ill. "Most Americans remain alive and basically functional despite record-breaking amounts of depression and anxiety" isn't sexy any more than "Internet continues to connect billions of people around the world at the speed of light" is sexy. But it's a much bigger part of the story than the part where silly people do silly things at conferences.

The APA Meeting: A Photo-Essay May 25, 2019

Show notes

The first thing you notice at the American Psychiatric Association meeting is its size. By conservative estimates, a quarter of the psychiatrists in the United States are packed into a single giant San Francisco convention center, more than 15,000 people.

Being in a crowd of 15,000 psychiatrists is a weird experience. You realize that all psychiatrists look alike in an indefinable way. The men all look balding, yet dignified. The women all look maternal, yet stylish. Sometimes you will see a knot of foreign-looking people huddled together, their nametags announcing them as the delegation from the Nigerian Psychiatric Association or the Nepalese Psychiatric Association or somewhere else very far away. But however exotic, something about them remains ineffably psychiatrist.

The second thing you notice at the American Psychiatric Association meeting is that the staircase is shaming you for not knowing enough about Vraylar®.

Seems kind of weird. Maybe I'll just take the escalator

…no, the escalator is advertising Latuda®, the "number one branded atypical antipsychotic". Aaaaaah! Maybe I should just sit down for a second and figure out what to do next…

AAAAH, CAN'T SIT DOWN, VRAYLAR® HAS GOTTEN TO THE BENCHES TOO! Surely there's a non-Vraylar bench somewhere in this 15,000 person convention center!

A Critical Period for Lactation Fetishes May 17, 2019

Show notes

Enquist et al on lactation fetishes is one of my favorite papers.

They wonder – as we've all wondered at one point or another – how people develop fetishes. One plausible hypothesis is "sexual imprinting". During childhood, you have a critical period (maybe ages 1 to 5) where you figure out what sex is. If you see some weird stuff during that time, you could end up with a fetish. For example, a child who sees latex used in a sexualized way (for example, they catch a glimpse of a sexy movie where someone is wearing latex) might grow up with a latex fetish.

Enquist et al realize lactation fetishes offer a natural test of this hypothesis. Children with younger siblings will see a lot of breastfeeding going on during their critical window; children without younger siblings will see less. Since it's easy to ask people how many siblings they have, you can see if younger siblings correlate with lactation fetishes.

They survey some online lactation fetishist communities and ask everyone how many older and younger siblings they have. Although by chance we would expect an equal number of both, in fact the fetishists have many more younger than older siblings:

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