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OT43: Roses Are Thread…
This is the bi-weekly-ish open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. You might remember my nootropics survey from two years ago. I’m running an updated version...
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Links 2/16: N-Acetyl Selink
Famous books rewritten in the style of Donald Trump: Lord Of The Rings, Atlas Shrugged Confucianism is newly popular in China after bouncing back from its Cultural Revolution-era ban. The government...
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Nonfiction Writing Advice
People have asked me for advice on writing nonfiction online, so here are some tips: 1. Divide things into small chunks Nobody likes walls of text. By this point most people know that you should have...
View ArticleTwo Attitudes In Psychiatry
Attitude 1 says that patients know what they want but not necessarily how to get it, and psychiatrists are there to advise them. So a patient might say “I want to stop being depressed”, and their...
View ArticleOT44: Open Primary
This is the bi-weekly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. Sorry about the decreased volume of blogging lately. I’ve been working night shift, plus I...
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2016 Nootropics Survey Results
[Disclaimer: Nothing here should be taken to endorse using illegal or dangerous substances. This was a quick informal survey and you should not make any important health decisions based on it. Talk to...
View ArticleAgainst Interminable Arguments
[Epistemic status: something I’ve been thinking about recently. There’s a lot of complication around these issues and this is more to start a discussion than to present any settled solution] There’s a...
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Reverse Voxsplaining: Prison and Mental Illness
I. German Lopez of Vox writes that “America’s criminal justice system has in many ways become a substitute for the US’ largely gutted mental health system”. He says that starting in the 1970s the US...
View ArticleLinks 3/16: Rulink Class
New research: toxoplasma’s effects on cats and animals are as creepy as ever, but it probably doesn’t affect human behavior. New drug nilotinib looks very promising for Parkinson’s disease, may clean...
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OT45: Opal Thread
This is the bi-weekly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. I’m going to be running a psychiatry journal club at my clinic in a few weeks. Any suggestions...
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Non-Shared Environment Doesn’t Just Mean Schools And Peers
[Epistemic status: uncertain. Everything in here seems right, but I haven’t heard other people/experts in the field talk about this nearly as much as I would expect them to if it were true. Obviously...
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Book Review: The Art Of The Deal
I. Many of my friends recommend Robert Cialdini’s Influence, a book about how to be persuasive and successful. I read a most of the way through, and it was okay, but I didn’t have it in me to finish...
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The Price Of Glee In China
[Epistemic status: Overly simplistic treatment of a horrifyingly complex topic; I can only hope I haven’t missed enough to completely embarrass myself] I. Noah Smith reviews recent economic research...
View ArticleLinks 3/16: Klapaucius And URL
“All infinite regresses are at most three levels deep”, versus the US military’s R4D program to build a radar detector detector detector detector. Jury fines Gawker $115 million + for releasing a sex...
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OT46: Open Rebellion
This is the bi-weekly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. Some corrections and clarifications about Saturday’s links thread: Fort Galt isn’t that cheap...
View ArticleBook Review: My Brother Ron
[Content warning: mental illness, forced institutionalization, anorexia. As always all patient anecdotes are obfuscated composites of multiple cases with all the details changed in order to protect...
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Beware Regional Scatterplots
[Epistemic status: Not original, but worth mentioning] I’ve been using scatterplots of different states and countries a lot here lately. For example, this one in the discussion about guns: And this one...
View ArticleThe Ideology Is Not The Movement
I. Why is there such a strong Sunni/Shia divide? I know the Comparative Religion 101 answer. The early Muslims were debating who was the rightful caliph. Some of them said Abu Bakr, others said Ali,...
View ArticleA Theory About Religion
Related to Monday’s post but spun off for length reasons: my crazy theory about where religion comes from. (this is not the day we start heeding warnings to beware amateur sociology) The near-universal...
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OT47: OpenAI
This is the bi-weekly open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. There’s a new ad on the sidebar for Signal Data Science. This is a rare ad I can (sort of)...
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