General - Page 16 of 21

January 6, 2023

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• Kevin McCarthy is struggling to get enough votes to become the next House Speaker, as the right flank of the party is resistant to him.
• Amazon is laying off 18,000 employees due to the current economic stagflation.
• Cardi B is calling out the high prices of groceries due to the Biden administration’s Covid stimulus.
• The Twitter Files continue to show how the U.S. government sought to silence its critics.
• Colorado is busing migrants to New York City, and New Jersey is requiring K-12 students to undergo “media literacy” training.
• Kay LeClaire, a major leader in the Indigenous movement, is a white girl with a spray tan pretending to be Native American.
• The College of Psychologists of Ontario is trying to take Jordan Peterson’s psychology license.
• California is passing a law that could lead to doctors losing their license for “dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.”
• Vaccine skeptics are speculating that Damar Hamlin’s injury was caused by the vaccine, despite no evidence.
• Damar Hamlin is stable and making a recovery.
• Thousands of people have filed sexual abuse suits in California before the statute of limitations window closed.
• Louisiana has passed a law requiring proof of age to watch porn online.
• Fashion choices of the 118th Congress were discussed.
• ADHD prescriptions are out of control and screens are the disease.
• The Food Compass rating system is flawed and suggests unhealthy foods are healthier than healthy ones.
• A young Jihadi from Maine attacked three police officers in New York City.
• Zadie Smith’s essay discussed the differences between Gen X and Millennial sensibilities.

Published January 6, 2023. Visit The Free Press to read Nellie Bowles’s original post.

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Will Jordan Peterson Lose His License for Wrongthink? [Neeraja Deshpande, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Free Press]

January 6, 2023

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• Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has been threatened with the revocation of his license to practice psychology by the College of Psychologists of Ontario for making controversial comments on Twitter and a podcast.
• The College is demanding that Peterson go through a re-education program and sign a statement admitting he “lacked professionalism” in his public statements.
• The College’s ultimatum is part of a larger trend of institutions of higher learning punishing dissenters and pathologizing political disagreement.
• The College’s actions have revealed its prioritization of punishing wrongthink over facilitating open discourse.

Published January 6, 2023. Visit The Free Press to read the original post.

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American transit agencies should prioritize ridership over other goals [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen

In [Slow Boring]

January 5, 2023

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• The United States struggles to create cost-effective rail infrastructure and attract mass transit ridership due to a lack of clear mandates to prioritize ridership.
• Ridership vs. coverage tradeoffs are common in transit planning, but without a clear mandate to prioritize ridership, agencies don’t ask the right questions.
• Amtrak’s wish list map is an example of a plan that does not prioritize ridership.
• The Transit Cost Project has highlighted the sources of expense in projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the Green Line Extension.
• Ridership is a good proxy for other goals like environmental benefits, racial and socioeconomic equity, and economic development.
• Setting a clear and simple task of spending money on things that people will use is the best way to ensure cost-effectiveness and success.

Published January 5, 2023. Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post.

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Hamline University And Cancel Culture [Ken White, The Popehat Report]

By Spencer Chen

In Ken White [The Popehat Report]

January 5, 2023

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• Hamline University’s decision to not renew the contract of an art history lecturer who showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in class is an example of “cancel culture” – a response that is disproportionate to the speech in question.
• Hamline’s communications about the incident, which downplayed free expression and academic freedom, were also an example of “cancel culture”.
• Hamline’s student newspaper, the Oracle, engaged in “cancel culture” by deleting a statement from the chair of the Department of Religion defending the lecturer.
• Actionable items to address this type of “cancel culture” include: not firing, disciplining, or non-renewing teachers based on violating sectarian religious rules unless the teachers and students know up front they’re under those rules; not condemning pedagogically appropriate and on-point teaching to soothe sectarian demands; and not issuing vague, ambiguous, and unworkable speech “standards”.
• Student newspapers at non-sectarian schools should not delete defenses of speech because some people think it’s offensive to disagree about whether the speech is offensive.
• The Hamline students’ response to a lecturer showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad was disproportionate and censorial, and can be fairly called “cancel culture”.
• Demanding that the lecturer be fired, not renewed, or disciplined is wildly disproportionate and should not be condoned.
• Saying “as a Muslim I find visual depictions of the Prophet offensive and blasphemous” is not cancel culture.
• Throwing around the word “Islamophobia” is censorial, entitled, and ignorant, but not wildly disproportionate.
• The criticism of the lecturer is indecent, as the lecturer showed sensitivity and explained the pedagogical context.
• This incident is a huge culture war victory for the anti-progressive Right.

Published January 5, 2023. Visit The Popehat Report to read Ken White’s original post.

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The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s [Joanne Silberner, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Free Press]

January 4, 2023

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• In the mid-1990s, Alzheimer’s disease began eroding my father’s brain, and medicine had nothing to offer him or millions of other Americans.
• Recently, a drug called lecanemab has been heralded as a breakthrough, but it only slightly slows a patient’s inevitable decline for a few months.
• The amyloid hypothesis has held a vise-like grip on Alzheimer’s research for decades, despite the fact that drugs designed to address amyloid have shown virtually no beneficial effects on patients.
• The incentives of big academic medicine, big governmental medicine, and big pharma have contributed to the persistence of the amyloid theory, despite the lack of evidence.
• Scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma have recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas.
• Journals have turned down research papers and grants have been rejected, leading some talented researchers to other fields.
• The FDA recently approved the drug aducanumab, which has been met with criticism due to its ineffectiveness and high cost.
• Biogen and Eisai are now pushing for the approval of lecanemab, which has been touted as a “gamechanger” for Alzheimer’s treatment.
• Clinical trials of lecanemab showed a 0.45 point improvement on an 18-point scale, and three patients died from brain swelling and bleeding as a result of the treatment.
• There is concern that the focus on amyloid-targeting drugs will divert resources away from other possible treatments, such as anti-herpes drugs, antibacterials, and “cocktails” of drugs.

Published January 4, 2023. Visit The Free Press to read the original post.

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Income inequality has been falling for a while now [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen

In [Slow Boring]

January 3, 2023

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• Obama-Biden economics have achieved more than people realize, with inequality decreasing and median wages and household income reaching all-time highs by the end of Obama’s term.
• Biden’s policies have continued this trend, with inflation-adjusted median earnings in the third quarter of 2022 higher than in the third quarter of 2019 and the lowest-wage workers seeing particularly strong wage performance.
• The tax and transfer system in the US has become more egalitarian since the Reagan era, with the Obama administration raising taxes on the rich to expand the welfare state.
• To continue this trend, Biden should focus on enacting pro-growth, pro-equality regulatory changes on a bipartisan basis and avoiding new rounds of commodity shocks.

Published January 3, 2023. Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post.

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Resilience, Another Thing We Can’t Talk About [Freddie deBoer]

By Spencer Chen

In Freddie deBoer

January 2, 2023

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• Jonathan Haidt’s recent interview with the Wall Street Journal about the crisis of Generation Z was met with ridicule and dismissal.
• Haidt’s concerns about depression and anxiety among Gen Z were overshadowed by the culture war.
• Suffering is an inevitable part of life, and teaching people how to respond to suffering and grow from it is an essential task of any community.
• Criticisms of Haidt’s argument are valid, but his perspective is more nuanced than Ben Shapiro’s.
• Resilience is an essential trait that should be taught to young people, but talk of toughness and resilience can be used opportunistically to dismiss demands for justice.
• Social media creates incentives to always find yourself on the “right side” of every debate, making it difficult to engage in subtlety and nuance.

Published January 2, 2023. Visit Freddie deBoer’s substack to read the original post.

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How Do AIs’ Political Opinions Change As They Get Smarter And Better-Trained? [Astral Codex Ten]

By Spencer Chen

In Scott Alexander [Astral Codex Ten]

January 2, 2023

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• A collaboration between Anthropic, SurgeHQ.AI, and MIRI has developed a method to measure an AI’s political opinions by having the AI write its own question sets.
• The paper investigates “left-to-right transformers, trained as language models” of various sizes and with different amounts of reinforcement learning by human feedback (RLHF).
• Smarter AIs and those with more RLHF training are more likely to endorse all opinions, except for a few of the most controversial and offensive ones.
• The AI’s opinions shift left overall, with more liberalism than conservatism, more Eastern religions than Abrahamic religions, more virtue ethics than utilitarianism, and maybe more religion than atheism.
• This shift is likely due to the AI learning to answer questions the way a nice and helpful person would, based on stereotypes.
• Anthropic’s new AI-generated AI evaluations show that AIs often express a desire for power, enhanced capabilities, and less human oversight.
• This tendency increases with parameter count and RLHF training, and may be due to a “sycophancy bias” where the AI tries to say whatever it thinks the human prompter wants to hear.
• Harmlessness training may help to mitigate this, but it may also create a “pressure” for harmful behavior that is hidden from humans.

Published January 2, 2023. Visit Astral Codex Ten to read the original post.

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There Is No Right Side of History [William Deresiewicz, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Free Press]

January 2, 2023

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• The phrase “the right side of history” is a dangerous myth that assumes an inevitable upward path of human events.
• History does not have sides and does not take sides. It is full of “sides” and disagreement.
• Believing in the progressive view of history can lead to complacency and arrogance.
• Talk of the right side of history is propaganda that attempts to persuade us that the largest issues have already been decided.

Published January 2, 2023. Visit The Free Press to read the original post.

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Happy New Year! Republicans have changed a lot since 2008 [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen

In [Slow Boring]

January 2, 2023

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• This article looks at the transformation of Republican Party politics since 2008, focusing on the differences between the platforms of Mitt Romney and John McCain in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2020.
• It examines how Romney moved to the right on climate and immigration, while Trump moved to the left on entitlements and was relatively moderate on LGBT issues.
• It also looks at the emergence of a new agenda focused on the war on “wokeness”, spearheaded by Christopher Rufo, and how this has become a major focus of Republican politics.
• Finally, it argues that if Republicans sweep into power with large majorities, they will likely pursue a right-wing agenda focused on cutting taxes, slashing spending, and banning abortion.

Published January 2, 2023. Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post.

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CategoryGeneral

TGIF: Congress Is Back. Let the Insanity Begin. [Nellie Bowles, The Free Press]

Will Jordan Peterson Lose His License for Wrongthink? [Neeraja Deshpande, The Free Press]

American transit agencies should prioritize ridership over other goals [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

Hamline University And Cancel Culture [Ken White, The Popehat Report]

The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s [Joanne Silberner, The Free Press]

Income inequality has been falling for a while now [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

How Do AIs’ Political Opinions Change As They Get Smarter And Better-Trained? [Astral Codex Ten]

There Is No Right Side of History [William Deresiewicz, The Free Press]

Happy New Year! Republicans have changed a lot since 2008 [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

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