Codex: effective altruism, priests, racism, AI, Israel
Learn why EA is a motte & bailey, the relationship between gay marriage and priesthood, why humor is good, actually, and more.
Dear Aspiring Polymath,
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family!
Over the Thanksgiving break, we rolled out a huge improvement to Learn Arena: Final Skill Challenges can now be taken anytime you want! No longer are the skill challenges tied to a specific day and time, but rather open to you to complete at your own pace. You’ll be competing against your fellow learners on monthly basis now—you’ll get your results instantly, and your rank and payouts on the 1st day of each month.
Lots more cool stuff coming very soon, so stay tuned. :)
Now, on to today’s Codex!
November 28th, 2023 Learn Arena Codex
Another scathing critique of effective altruism, this time focused on trying to parse how a philosophy of “do charity gooder” got to “we should kill all predatory animals on earth” so fast.
Another anti-EA piece, this one simply a list of all of the insane thought experiments and bullet biting and immoral things effective altruists are all too happy to accept (like killing a man and harvesting his organs—no joke, that’s the first one offered that most EA’s accept).
This is a fantastic book review covering a recent book about how badly all levels and organs of government handled the COVID pandemic. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/11/the-big-fail.html
What a study: researchers find that when gay marriage is legalized in a state, Catholic priest studies enrollment falls by over 15%. This is not true of protestant seminary studies in these states, and the drop only occurs in the year after gay marriage is legalized. Why? Priests are celibate, so gay men with guilty consciences when gay marriage is illegal opt for celibacy rather than going to jail for their desires. https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/esi_working_papers/344/
In defense of your “racist” uncle at Thanksgiving.
Excellent overview of the neural architecture of an AI, and why we can’t really figure out what’s going on inside AI’s processing neurons.
A common refrain against Israeli war tactics against Palestine is that “Israel is creating more terrorists than it’s killing.” The logic goes that if you saw your brother get blown up, you’d become a terrorist too. Here, the author argues this is not the right model for this conflict—in essence, the Palestinians want to kill Jews no matter what, so the author argues Israel must crush the Palestinians until they lose hope entirely. Interesting perspective, although not one I think I’m comfortable with.
A comprehensive, data and research driven argument that we should respect our elders.
This is a surprising research finding: influencer marketing is much more effective when using lower follower influencers rather than the largest influencers. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00222429231217471
An argument we should start creating courts—that is, judicial-like institutions—inside of large private firms. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/blog/detail/findings-a-daily-roundup/marketing-plans#:~:text=The%20Basketball%20Court