Scott Alexander’s Mistakes, Dan Luu’s Major errors on this blog (and their corrections), Gwern’s My Mistakes (last updated 11 years ago), and Nintil’s Mistakes (h/t @Rasool) are the only online writers I know of who maintain a dedicated, centralized page solely for cataloging their errors, which I admire. Probably not coincidentally they’re also among the thinkers I respect the most for repeatedly empirically grounding their reasoning. Some orgs do this too, like 80K’s Our mistakes, CEA’s Mistakes we’ve made, and GiveWell’s Our mistakes.
I’m not convinced Scott Alexander’s mistakes page accurately tracks his mistakes. E.g. the mistake on it I know the most about is this one:
56: (5/27/23) In Raise Your Threshold For Accusing People Of Faking Bisexuality, I cited a study finding that most men’s genital arousal tracked their stated sexual orientation (ie straight men were aroused by women, gay men were aroused by men, bi men were aroused by either), but women’s genital arousal seemed to follow a bisexual pattern regardless of what orientation they thought they were—and concluded that although men’s orientation seemed hard-coded, women’s orientation must be more psychological. But Ozy cites a followup study showing that women (though not men) also show genital arousal in response to chimps having sex, suggesting women’s genital arousal doesn’t track actual attraction and is just some sort of mechanical process triggered by sexual stimuli. I should not have interpreted the results of genital arousal studies as necessarily implying attraction.
But that’s basically wrong. The study found women’s arousal to chimps having sex to be very close to their arousal to nonsexual stimuli, and far below their arousal to sexual stimuli.
Scott Alexander’s Mistakes, Dan Luu’s Major errors on this blog (and their corrections), Gwern’s My Mistakes (last updated 11 years ago), and Nintil’s Mistakes (h/t @Rasool) are the only online writers I know of who maintain a dedicated, centralized page solely for cataloging their errors, which I admire. Probably not coincidentally they’re also among the thinkers I respect the most for repeatedly empirically grounding their reasoning. Some orgs do this too, like 80K’s Our mistakes, CEA’s Mistakes we’ve made, and GiveWell’s Our mistakes.
While I prefer dedicated centralized pages like those to one-off writeups for long content benefit reasons, one-off definitely beats none (myself included). In that regard I appreciate essays like Holden Karnofsky’s Some Key Ways in Which I’ve Changed My Mind Over the Last Several Years (2016), Denise Melchin’s My mistakes on the path to impact (2020), Zach Groff’s Things I’ve Changed My Mind on This Year (2017), and this 2013 LW repository for “major, life-altering mistakes that you or others have made”, as well as by orgs like HLI’s Learning from our mistakes.
In this vein I’m also sad to see mistakes pages get removed, e.g. ACE used to have a Mistakes page (archived link) but now no longer do.
I’m not convinced Scott Alexander’s mistakes page accurately tracks his mistakes. E.g. the mistake on it I know the most about is this one:
But that’s basically wrong. The study found women’s arousal to chimps having sex to be very close to their arousal to nonsexual stimuli, and far below their arousal to sexual stimuli.
Thanks, good example.
I don’t have a mistakes page but last year I wrote a one-off post of things I’ve changed my mind on.
Thanks Michael. On another note, I’ve recommended some of your essays to others, so thanks for writing them as well.
I’m glad to hear that! I often don’t hear much response to my essays so it’s good to know you’ve read some of them :)
Another good blog:
https://nintil.com/mistakes
Thanks! Added to the list.