Astral Codex Ten Podcast

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/24/highlights-from-the-comments-on-pnse/ (original post) Alex M writes: I think one of the main problems with the current state of rationalism (and many other fake "sciences" such as economics or sociology) is fuzzy thinking and lack of falsifiable empirical testing. So somebody claims to be "enlightened." Does a smart person take that at face value? Of course not. Once you just start believing random shit, you're no better than a superstitious primitive cargo-cult. You have to TEST all claims. For example, I don't just take it at face value that economics is a real science just because a bunch of IYIs tell me so. I analyze economist predictions, see that their track record of successful predictions is atrocious, and then make the totally RATIONAL choice to discard my priors and treats economics as the laughable hocus-pocus that it is – because when you genuinely have an accurate view of reality, it doesn't collapse under scrutiny. We should treat mystical claims exactly the same way. So somebody claims to be enlightened? Fine. How can they substantiate it? Can they do things that unenlightened people can't, like clairvoyance, predicting the future, or sending messages through the collective subconscious in order to significantly impact world events? Do you see what I'm saying? Enlightenment should have some objectively quantifiable impact beyond just having a different internal narrative that is completely subjective and unprovable.

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/23/indian-economic-reform-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/ From a recent Charter Cities Institute report: From India's independence from the British Raj in 1947 to the early 1990s, the country's economic policy was largely socialist. In the 1980s some early steps were taken to open the Indian economy to increased trade, reduce controls over industry, and set a more realistic exchange rate. In 1991, more widespread economic reforms were introduced. These reforms included the end of government monopolies over certain sectors of the economy, reductions in barriers to entry for new firms, increased foreign investment was allowed, and tariffs and other barriers to trade were reduced or eliminated. After liberalization, exports increased substantially, and various service sector industries saw significant growth. India's growth has not just been good for the more educated segment of the population. Datt, Ravallion, and Murgai (2016) argue that India has made substantial progress in reducing the incidence of absolute poverty, and that this trend exists in both urban and rural areas. Historically higher rates of rural poverty have been converging with urban rates of poverty, and the overall poverty rate has been declining at an accelerating rate in the post-1991 reform era. In the 1970s over 60 percent of Indians were living in extreme poverty. As of 2011, only 20 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty. Between 2005 and 2016, an estimated 271 million Indians rose out of multidimensional poverty, which accounts for various health, education, and living standard indicators rather than just income (UNDP and OPHI 2018). Infant mortality has fallen from 161.4 deaths per 1,000 births in 1960 to just 32 deaths per 1,000 births in 2017, and India should soon converge with the world average if the current trend continues. Life expectancy has also improved dramatically, rising from 41 years in 1960 to nearly 69 years today.

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/21/the-pnse-paper/ I've mentioned this a few times, but it's worth going over in detail. The full title is Clusters Of Individual Experiences Form A Continuum Of Persistent Non-Symbolic Experiences In Adults by Jeffery Martin, with "persistent non-symbolic experience" (PNSE) as a scientific-sounding culturally-neutral code word for "enlightenment". Martin is a Reiki practitioner associated with the "Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic Consciousness", so we're not getting this from the most sober of skeptics, but I still find the project interesting enough to deserve a look. Martin searched various religious and spiritual groups for people who both self-reported enlightenment and were affiliated with "a community that provided validity to their claims". He says he eventually found 1200 such people who were willing to participate in the study, but that "the data reported here comes primarily from the first 50 participants who sat for in-depth interviews…based on the overall research effort these 50 were felt to be a sufficient sample to represent what has been learned from the larger population". Although Martin says he tried to get as much diversity as possible, the group was mostly white male Americans. Martin's research was mostly qualitative, based on in-depth interviews, so we're mostly going with his impressions. But his impression was that most people who self-described as enlightened had similar experiences, which could be be plotted on:

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/10/16/is-enlightenment-compatible-with-sex-scandals/ Last year I reviewed The Mind Illuminated, a meditation guide by Buddhist teacher Upasaka Culadasa. Last month, Culudasa's Buddhist community accused him of cheating on his wife with prostitutes for many years. Culadasa doesn't seem to agree with the exact details of the accusations, but he also doesn't seem to deny that there was something in that general category of thing. What can this teach us about enlightenment? Culadasa has been meditating and studying Buddhism for over forty years and trained under some of the greatest teachers of his generation. I don't know if he's claimed to "be enlightened" in so many words, but he's written books that describe how to reach enlightenment and that assert you can do it in a few years if you follow his advice, which sounds a lot like claiming enlightenment by implication. Other self-proclaimed enlightened Buddhist teachers seem to respect him and treat him as being at around their level. And if Culudasa wasn't enlightened, there's a long list of other Buddhist masters with similar misdeeds. The Atlantic points out that three of the four great founders of American Zen "caused major public sex scandals"; the fourth, Shunryu Suzuki, was spotless, but his successor Richard Baker caused a major public sex scandal. The two most famous US teachers of Tibetan Buddhism, Chongyam Trungpa and Sogyal Rinpoche, both caused major public sex scandals. Trungpa's immediate successor Ösel Tendzin caused a particularly horrifying major public sex scandal, and the current head of Shambhala Buddhism, Sakyong Rinpoche, also caused a major public sex scandal. These teachers were among the most accomplished of our time. Many were officially certified as enlightened by

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of-control/ I. Allan Crossman calls parapsychology the control group for science. That is, in let's say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn't tell you much until you give some other people a placebo drug you know doesn't work – but which they themselves believe in – and see how many of them recover. That number tells you how many people will recover whether the drug works or not. Unless people on your real drug do significantly better than people on the placebo drug, you haven't found anything. On the meta-level, you're studying some phenomenon and you get some positive findings. That doesn't tell you much until you take some other researchers who are studying a phenomenon you know doesn't exist – but which they themselves believe in – and see how many of them get positive findings. That number tells you how many studies will discover positive results whether the phenomenon is real or not. Unless studies of the real phenomenon do significantly better than studies of the placebo phenomenon, you haven't found anything. Trying to set up placebo science would be a logistical nightmare. You'd have to find a phenomenon that definitely doesn't exist, somehow convince a whole community of scientists across the world that it does, and fund them to study it for a couple of decades without them figuring it out. Luckily we have a natural experiment in terms of parapsychology – the study of psychic phenomena – which most reasonable people believe don't exist, but which a community of practicing scientists believes in and publishes papers on all the time.

Explore the intriguing critique of high modernism through James Scott's work, where wheat takes center stage as a metaphor for state control. Delve into the transition from foraging to agriculture, revealing its negative health impacts and tax-driven motivations. Understand how grain cultivation shaped early civilizations and challenged traditional historical narratives. This discussion sheds light on the complexities of state dependencies and imagines a life beyond their control.

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-rigor/ I. From Identity, Personal Identity, and the Self by John Perry: "There is something about practical things that knocks us off our philosophical high horses. Perhaps Heraclitus really thought he couldn't step in the same river twice. Perhaps he even received tenure for that contribution to philosophy. But suppose some other ancient had claimed to have as much right as Heraclitus did to an ox Heraclitus had bought, on the grounds that since the animal had changed, it wasn't the same one he had bought and so was up for grabs. Heraclitus would have quickly come up with some ersatz, watered-down version of identity of practical value for dealing with property rights, oxen, lyres, vineyards, and the like. And then he might have wondered if that watered-down vulgar sense of identity might be a considerably more valuable concept than a pure and philosophical sort of identity that nothing has. Okay, but I can think of something worse than that. Imagine Heraclitus as a cattle rustler in the Old West. Every time a rancher catches him at his nefarious business, he patiently explains to them that identity doesn't exist, and therefore the same argument against private property as made above. Flummoxed, they're unable to think of a response before he rides off into the sunset. But then when Heraclitus himself needs the concept of stable personal identity for something – maybe he wants to deposit his ill-gotten gains in the bank with certainty that the banker will give it back to him next time he shows up to withdraw it, or maybe he wants to bribe the sheriff to ignore his activities for the next while – all of a sudden Heraclitus is willing to tolerate the watered-down vulgar sense of identity like everyone else. (actually, I can think of something even worse than that, which is a TV western based on this premise, where a roving band of pre-Socratic desperadoes terrorizes Texas. The climax is no doubt when the hero strides onto Main Street, revolver in hand, saying "There's a new sheriff in town." And Parmenides gruffly responds "No, I'm pretty sure that's impossible.") At its best, philosophy is a revolutionary pursuit that dissolves our common-sense intuitions and exposes the possibility of much deeper structures behind them. One can respond by becoming a saint or madman, or by becoming a pragmatist who is willing to continue to participate in human society while also understanding its theoretical limitations. Both are respectable career paths. The problem is when someone chooses to apply philosophical rigor selectively. Heraclitus could drown in his deeper understanding of personal identity and become a holy madman, eschewing material things and taking no care for the morrow because he does not believe there is any consistent self to experience it. Or he could engage with it from afar, becoming a wise scholar who participating in earthly affairs while drawing equanimity from the realization that there is a sense in which all his accomplishments will be impermanent. But if he only applies his new theory when he wants other people's cows, then we have a problem. Philosophical rigor, usually a virtue, has been debased to an isolated demand for rigor in cases where it benefits Heraclitus.

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in-almonds/ Everyone always talks about how much money there is in politics. This is the wrong framing. The right framing is Ansolabehere et al's: why is there so little money in politics? But Ansolabehere focuses on elections, and the mystery is wider than that. Sure, during the 2018 election, candidates, parties, PACs, and outsiders combined spent about $5 billion – $2.5 billion on Democrats, $2 billion on Republicans, and $0.5 billion on third parties. And although that sounds like a lot of money to you or me, on the national scale, it's puny. The US almond industry earns $12 billion per year. Americans spent about 2.5x as much on almonds as on candidates last year. But also, what about lobbying? Open Secrets reports $3.5 billion in lobbying spending in 2018. Again, sounds like a lot. But when we add $3.5 billion in lobbying to the $5 billion in election spending, we only get $8.5 billion – still less than almonds. What about think tanks? Based on numbers discussed in this post, I estimate that the budget for all US think tanks, liberal and conservative combined, is probably around $500 million per year. Again, an amount of money that I wish I had. But add it to the total, and we're only at $9 billion. Still less than almonds!

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/ I. Imagine a little kingdom with a quaint custom: when a man likes a woman, he offers her a tulip; if she accepts, they are married shortly thereafter. A couple who marries sans tulip is considered to be living in sin; no other form of proposal is appropriate or accepted. One day, a Dutch trader comes to the little kingdom. He explains that his homeland also has a quaint custom involving tulips: they speculate on them, bidding the price up to stratospheric levels. Why, in the Netherlands, a tulip can go for ten times more than the average worker earns in a year! The trader is pleased to find a new source of bulbs, and offers the people of the kingdom a few guilders per tulip, which they happily accept. Soon other Dutch traders show up and start a bidding war. The price of tulips goes up, and up, and up; first dozens of guilders, then hundreds. Tulip-growers make a fortune, but everyone else is less pleased. Suitors wishing to give a token of their love find themselves having to invest their entire life savings – with no guarantee that the woman will even say yes! Soon, some of the poorest people are locked out of marriage and family-raising entirely.

Link: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudoaddiction/ I. "Pseudoaddiction" is one of the standard beats every article on the opioid crisis has to hit. Pharma companies (the story goes) invented a concept called "pseudoaddiction", which looks exactly like addiction, except it means you just need to give the patient more drugs. Bizarrely gullible doctors went along with this and increased prescriptions for their addicted patients. For example, from a letter in the Wall Street Journal: Parroting Big Pharma's excuses about FDA oversight and black-box warnings only discounts how companies like Johnson & Johnson engaged in pervasive misinformation campaigns and even promoted a theory of "pseudoaddiction" to encourage doctors to prescribe even more opioids for patients who displayed signs of addiction. Or from CBS: But amid skyrocketing addiction rates and overdoses related to OxyContin, Panara claimed the company taught a sales tactic she now considers questionable, saying some patients might only appear to be addicted when in fact they're just in pain. In training, she was taught a term for this: "pseudoaddiction." "So the cure for 'pseudoaddiction,' you were trained, is more opioids?" Dokoupil asked. "A higher dose, yes," Panara said.