Astral Codex Ten Podcast

[Some changes to the conclusions in this post; see edit at the end and entry 21 on Mistakes page] US News: DC Schools Brace For Catastrophic Drop In Graduation Rates. "Catastrophic" isn't hyperbole; the numbers are expected to drop from 73% (close to the national average of 83%) all the way down to 42%. There's no debate about why this is happening – it's because the previous graduation rate was basically fraudulent, inflated by pressure to show that recent "reforms" were working. Last year there was a big investigation, all the investigators agreed it was fraudulent, DC agreed to do a little less fraud this year, and this is the result. It's pretty damning, given how everybody was praising the reforms and holding them up as a national model and saying this proved that Tough But Fair Education Policy could make a difference: As far as scandals in the education policy world go, D.C. schools so profoundly miscalculating graduation rates at a time when the high-profile school district had been so self-laudatory about its achievements may be difficult to top […] Indeed, when Michelle Rhee took the reins of the flailing school system a decade ago, it galvanized the education reform movement, which had just begun blossoming around the country, and ushered in a host of controversial changes that included the shuttering of multiple schools, firing of hundreds of teachers and the institution of new teacher evaluation and compensation models. The changes not only dramatically altered the local political landscape in Washington but also shined a national spotlight on D.C. schools that prompted other urban school districts and education policy researchers to consider the nation's capital a bellwether for the entire education reform movement. Well, darn.

This podcast explores the previous belief that neurons cannot replicate and discusses various research studies on adult neurogenesis. It examines the role of neurogenesis in learning, memory, disease, and depression. The chapter also discusses the controversy surrounding adult neurogenesis in humans and the challenges in accepting its discovery. Additionally, it highlights the replication crisis in neuroscience and speculates on the importance of adult hippocampal neurogenesis in humans.

From sclmlw: While I don't agree with lots of Jordan Peterson, I think Scott fundamentally missed the boat in some of his criticisms because he systematically views things from a different perspective than Peterson, which was missed. From what I can tell, Peterson is intensely interested in the idea, "Everyone has the capacity to become a Nazi war criminal. What causes that phenomenon?" His answer, and the central driving idea of his philosophy, seems to be, "Anarchy/chaos is worse for society/humanity than horrific, unimaginable cruelty. So evolution pushed society to develop in a way that will always choose cruelty over chaos. Thus, if you were in Stalin's Russia, you'd run the gulags to stave off anarchy, and you'd kill hundreds of people if you had to. You may hate it, but it was required for humanity to soldier on, so it's what evolutionary forces produced." Peterson cares because he wants to understand how to steer societies away from the gulags and the killing fields.

Recently on Marginal Revolution: Are the Amish unhappy? The average levels of life satisfaction [among the Amish] was 4.4; just above the neutral point…the Amish fall lower than members of many other groups. In a study of more than 13 thousand college students from 31 nations, for example, only students from Kenya (whose average life satisfaction was 4.0) scored lower than the Amish (Diener & Diener, 1995). Sounds like Amish people are quite unhappy. This came as a surprise to me, since I'd heard from Jonah Lehrer and Business Insider that the average Amish person is as happy as the average non-Amish billionaire, proving once and for all that community and old-fashioned values are more important than money: As an illustration of the striking disconnect between money and happiness, the average life satisfaction of Forbes magazine's 400 richest Americans was 5.8 on a 7-point scale. Yet the average life satisfaction of the Pennsylvania Amish is also 5.8, despite the fact that their average annual salary is several billion dollars lower.

There's a Jewish tradition that laypeople should only speculate on the nature of God during Passover, because God is closer to us and such speculations might succeed. And there's an atheist tradition that laypeople should only speculate on the nature of God on April Fools' Day, because believing in God is dumb, and at least then you can say you're only kidding. Today is both, so let's speculate. To do this properly, we need to understand five things: acausal trade, value handshakes, counterfactual mugging, simulation capture, and the Tegmarkian multiverse.

I got Jordan Peterson's Twelve Rules For Life for the same reason as the other 210,000 people: to make fun of the lobster thing. Or if not the lobster thing, then the neo-Marxism thing, or the transgender thing, or the thing where the neo-Marxist transgender lobsters want to steal your precious bodily fluids. But, uh…I'm really embarrassed to say this. And I totally understand if you want to stop reading me after this, or revoke my book-reviewing license, or whatever. But guys, Jordan Peterson is actually good

This is in response to questions I get about how to interact (or not interact) with the inpatient mental health system and involuntary commitment. The table of contents is: 1. How can I get outpatient mental health care without much risk of being involuntarily committed to a hospital? 2: How can I get mental health care at a hospital ER without much risk of being involuntarily committed? 3. I would like to get voluntarily committed to a hospital. How can I do that? 4. I am seeking inpatient treatment. How can I make sure that everyone knows I am there voluntarily, and that I don't get shifted to involuntary status? 5. How can I decide which psychiatric hospital to go to? 6. I am in a psychiatric hospital. How can I make this experience as comfortable as possible? 7. I am in a psychiatric hospital and not happy about it and I want to get out as quickly as possible. What should I do? 8. I am in the psychiatric hospital and I think I am being mistreated. What can I do? 9. I think my friend/family member is in the psychiatric hospital, but nobody will tell me anything. 10. My friend/family member is in the psychiatric hospital and wants to get out as quickly as possible. How can I help them? 11. How will I pay for all of this? 12. I have a friend/family member who really needs psychiatric treatment, but refuses to get it. What can I do?

I sometimes advertise sci-hub.tw – the Kazakhstani pirate site that lets you get scientific papers for free. It's clearly illegal in the US. But is it unethical? I can think of two strong arguments that it might be: First, we have intellectual property rights to encourage the production of intellectual goods. If everyone downloaded Black Panther, then Marvel wouldn't get any money, the movie industry would collapse, and we would never get Black Panther 2, Black Panther Vs. Batman Vs. Superman, A Very Black Panther Christmas, Black Panther 3000: Help, We Have No Idea How To Create Original Movies Anymore, and all the other sequels and spinoffs we await with a resignation born of inevitability. This is sort of a pop-Kantian/rule-utilitarian argument: if everyone were to act as I did, our actions would be self-defeating. Or we can reframe it as a coordination problem: we're defecting against the institutions necessary to support movies existing at all, and free-loading off our moral betters.

A few months ago, I wrote Toward A Predictive Theory Of Depression, which used the predictive coding model of brain function to speculate about mood disorders and emotions. Emotions might be a tendency toward unusually high (or low) precision of predictions: Imagine the world's most successful entrepreneur. Every company they found becomes a multibillion-dollar success. Every stock they pick shoots up and never stops. Heck, even their personal life is like this. Every vacation they take ends out picture-perfect and creates memories that last a lifetime; every date they go on leads to passionate soul-burning love that never ends badly.

Topics include measured forgiveness, misconceptions about forgiveness and tolerance, outgroups and unexpected ingroups, living in a liberal bubble, genetic contribution to political association and attitudes toward gay rights, America's rankings and perceptions, coded language and tribal identity, and reflections on identity, criticism, and tolerance.