I thought it was a nice example of status quo bias in ethics / deathism and reversal tests. I guess the point of the Onion article was not as obvious as I thought.
I see the core point as philosophical: criticizing an unjustified asymmetry in the way we think about things. It may be funny, but the humor is nonessential and the criticism is essential.
Short Online Texts Thread
Technology:
“Human Performance”, 2008 JASON (excerpts)
Spreadsheet mistakes
“Scholarly Context Not Found: One in Five Articles Suffers from Reference Rot”, Klein et al 2014
“The Hundred-Year Language”
M50 Ontos
Photoacoustic spectroscopy
“Turing Drawings”: flowing sand
The NSA copes with a volcano
Project Iceworm
“The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator, Visionary and Genius”
Economics:
College major salary premiums
“What Are Foundations For?” (principal-agent conflicts; against perpetuities)
“A lucky little fish turns out to be the solution to iron deficiency among women in Cambodia, a problem solved by a University of Guelph researcher.”
“Should Psychological Neuroscience Research Be Funded?” (discussion)
Kids for cash scandal
“Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements.”
“The Coase Theorem is false: contracts depend on tort law”
“One Kind of Lawlessness: Estimating the Welfare Cost of Somali Piracy”
Philosophy:
“Bayesian Adjustment Does Not Defeat Existential Risk Charity”
“Transhumanist Fables”
“Study: Wolf Attacks Still Leading Cause Of Death In U.S.”
“Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0”, James Richardson
Misc:
“Limits”, Jorge Luis Borges
Great mistakes in history: the scuttling of the German navy
Hollywood Archaeology: The Super Mario Bros. Movie; Unearthing a major disaster to learn the lessons held within
“On Pins and Needles: Stylist Turns Ancient Hairdo Debate on Its Head”
Why is the Onion article under Philosophy?
I thought it was a nice example of status quo bias in ethics / deathism and reversal tests. I guess the point of the Onion article was not as obvious as I thought.
I saw how it was applicable to LW, no doubt. I just thought it would go under Rationality-related humor rather than Philosophy.
I see the core point as philosophical: criticizing an unjustified asymmetry in the way we think about things. It may be funny, but the humor is nonessential and the criticism is essential.
Everything is heritable:
“Genome-wide meta-analysis identifies six novel loci associated with habitual coffee consumption”, The Coffee and Caffeine Genetics Consortium et al 2014 (excerpts)
“Results of a ‘GWAS Plus’: General Cognitive Ability Is Substantially Heritable and Massively Polygenic”, Kirkpatrick et al 2014
“Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?”, Johnson 2010 (excerpts)
“The impact of neighbourhood deprivation on adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: A longitudinal, quasi-experimental study of the total Swedish population ”, Sariaslan et al 2013 (excerpts)
“Rabbit genome analysis reveals a polygenic basis for phenotypic change during domestication”, Carneiro et al 2014 (the power of selection—complex behaviors influenced by many small changes; excerpts)
Politics/religion:
“Why the World Is Not Falling Apart: Never mind the headlines. We’ve never lived in such peaceful times.”, Pinker & Mack; “Good News You May Have Missed in 2014″, Gates
“Race and Justice: Much More Than You Wanted To Know”
“The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side”
“Police, Paramilitaries, Nationalists and Gangsters: The Processes of State Building in Korea”, Porteux 2013 (excerpts)
“Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the US”
Sacculina parasite
“Truncated transcript from today’s SCOTUS argument” (parody)
“Question 94. The relations of the saints towards the damned: Whether the blessed in heaven will see the sufferings of the damned?”
Statistics/AI/meta-science:
“Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research”, Ioannidis 2005 (excerpts)
“A ‘Sham Procedure’ Leads to Disappointing Multiple Scelerosis News”
The power of placebos: when water feels like LSD.
“What Went Wrong? Reflections on Science by Observation and The Bell Curve”, Glymour 1998 (correlation & causation)
“Full publication of results initially presented in abstracts (Review)”, Scherer et al 2008 (publication bias & incorrect papers; excerpts)
“Prisons Are Built With Bricks Of Law And Brothels With Bricks Of Religion, But That Doesn’t Prove A Causal Relationship”
“Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial”, Leibovici 2001 (Norvig comments)
“What effect size would you expect?”
“On the distribution of time-to-proof of mathematical conjectures”, Hisano & Sornette 2012
“Bayes’ rule in Haskell, or why drug tests don’t work”
“Kalkalash! Pinpointing the Moments The Simpsons became less Cromulent”
“Bayes Academy: Development report 1”
Psychology/biology:
“Thank you for doing something ambiguously between smoking and not smoking”
“CBD in Colorado: Seeking a marijuana miracle [for children with severe epilepsy]” (“The question is not whether it is ethical to run a randomized trial, but whether it is ethical to not run a randomized trial”, I found myself thinking again and again in this sad and pitiable story of being fooled by randomness.)
“Morningness-eveningness and educational outcomes: The lark has an advantage over the owl at high school”, Preckel et al 2013
“What Do You Desire?” (on the porn company Kink.com)
“Suicide: An Economic Approach”, Becker & Posner 2004 (excerpts)
“The Graying of Academia: Will It Reduce Scientific Productivity?”, Stroebe 2010 (excerpts)
“Can Behavioral Tools Improve Online Student Outcomes? Experimental Evidence from a Massive Open Online Course”, Patterson 2014 (excerpts)
“Direct Effect of Sunshine on Suicide”, Vyssoki et al 2014
“The future of teratology research is in vitro”, Bailey et al 2005
“Spaced Repetition and Mnemonics Enable Recall of Multiple Strong Passwords”, Blocki et al 2014 (excerpts)
“Subu Must Die: How a nation of junkies went cold turkey”
Golden Gate Bridge suicides
“Refugees of the Modern World: The “electrosensitive” are moving to a cellphone-free town. But is their disease real?”
“Secrets of the Magus: Ricky Jay does closeup magic that flouts reality”
“How fast does the Grim Reaper walk? Receiver operating characteristics curve analysis in healthy men aged 70 and over”
“The drugs do work: my life on brain enhancers”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/confirmation-bias-is-a-basic-human-frailty-1420045281