Month: January 2018

President Donald Trump Just Delivered His First State of the Union. Read The Full Transcript Overall, not surprisingly, it was one of those we-must-spend-more-money-on-stuff speeches. It was good in terms of exceeding expectations, demonstrating leadership qualities on Trump’s part, and signaling to voters. I would say Trump gets an ‘A’ in this regard even though… Continue reading Trump speech brief analysis

A LessWrong Crypto Autopsy According to the recent SSC survey, 9% of SSC readers made $1000+ from crypto as of 12/2017. Among people who were referred to SSC from Less Wrong – my stand-in for long-time LW regulars – 15% made over $1000 on crypto, nearly twice as many. A full 3% of LWers made… Continue reading The LessWrong Crypto Autopsy

Sam Harris’ takedown of Nassim Taleb is hilarious and true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZmAmok5M3s&feature=youtu.be&t=48m51s I don’t agree with Sam Harris on everything, although I agree with him about Islam being a threat to western civilization, about the perniciousness of SJWs and political correctness, about some aspects of ‘materialist philosophy’, his denial of free will, and his criticism of… Continue reading Sam Harris’ takedown of Nassim Taleb

Excellent post by Scott CONFLICT VS. MISTAKE. Here is the gist: Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many… Continue reading Conflict vs. Mistake Theorists (analysis)

When operant conditioning fails: The stock market has smoother and more consistent returns returns because it’s linked to something that is concrete and consistent: the health and dominance of the U.S. economy and multinational firms–but Bitcoin has no such anchoring. It’s tied to sentiment, combined with whatever value is derived from being a ‘store of… Continue reading Bad Bitcoin Analysts

P-p-p-Peterson won’t d-d-d-bate millennial woes-oes-oes-oes. Woes offered $500 for a debate, but Peterson didn’t respond, and then on Twitter Peterson continued to take potshots at the alt-right, and Woes was correct to point out such arguments are infantile, if not unbecoming, for someone who is supposed to be learned as Jordan Peterson. Yes, Japanese people… Continue reading Jordan Peterson won’t debate the alt-right

The post-2017 meteoric rise of Jordan Paterson and Quillette mirrors the fall/irrelevance of Milo, Spencer, Lauren Southern, and the rest of the alt-right. The funny thing is, when Trump won everyone thought that the alt-right would become even more powerful than it already was, but then Dr. Peterson comes along and suddenly centrism is cool… Continue reading Rise of Jordan Peterson mirrors the decline of alt-right

–Beliefs may be true or false. If the latter, they are delusions. –One may either knowingly or unknowingly subscribe to delusions. The former may leads to cognitive dissonance. There is an internal conflict between two ‘avatars’ that represent differing beliefs, that are at war with each other. The one that ‘wins’ is accepted by observer… Continue reading Rules for rationalism