Counter signalling. The top end up having the same patterns as the bottom to differentiate themselves from the
middle.
”This sort of talk sounds Wise, whereas talk about how nice it is to have buses that don’t break down every half
mile sounds trivial and selfish” Having a thoughtful or at least contrarian to the thoughtful opinion
”So my hypothesis is that if a certain side of an issue has very obvious points in support of it, and the other
side of an issue relies on much more subtle points that the average person might not be expected to grasp, then
adopting the second side of the issue will become a signal for intelligence, even if that side of the argument is
wrong.”
recognising meta contrarian tendencies. Example “misogyny / women’s rights movement / men’s rights movement”
Uses the exmaple of policy brutality. When the media gives some rate of brutality, we rarely take into account what
the population size is. If the rate is 2% with 100,000 cops thats awful. Then what if its 500,000 cops, the rate gets
5 times smaller. We rarely take into account the population.
Interesting because he talks about cardiologists initially and kind of shows this dark side to them. We don’t even
question the population of cardiologists and how the rate of crime in them compares to the base rate of crime in the
population.
Very interesting as in a lot of posts you read there is sections of example here, here and here etc. useful habit
to keep is population and base rates.
Slippery slopes
Example also of a murderous Ghandi “Real slippery slopes will resemble this example if, each time we change the
rules, we also end up changing our opinion about how the rules should be changed. "
"Slippery slopes legitimately exist wherever a policy not only affects the world directly, but affects people’s
willingness or ability to oppose future policies. Slippery slopes can sometimes be avoided by establishing a
“Schelling fence” - a Schelling point that the various interest groups involved - or yourself across different
values and times - make a credible precommitment to defend.”
That idea of willingness or ability to oppose future policies is important. Its kind of similar to routine or a
study program. You put it in place as you will not be the person you were when you made it.
This similar with knowledge, we cannot say what comes of 10% more knowledge as we do not have it and can’t see
reality with it. If we assume knowledge increases then its inherently unknown when it stops.
Mad story about counting sheep. Are the sheep the pebbles. Do we all live in our own ‘belief’ realities, where
truth is a combination of our biology? It looks like those who just accept the world as it is might survive the
longest. Anyone who has broad range beliefs about the nature of the world , for instance that gravity doesn’t
exist, finds themselves royally booted out of the gene pool. The world just is the way it is, its not really a
product of our beliefs we are molded by it.