I thought the same thing. But looking at it, its still mostly wrong, but it is slightly less crazy than it first sounds. 

I compared the watts per square meter coming down from sunlight (about 1000 at sea level according to the top google hit) and compared it to the watts of an air con system, 3000 acordong to some google hit (in the long run it will only heat the outside by its power consumption, although in the short term the heat from your house will add more), then we see the ac is like another 3 square meters of sun light.

So if you live somewhere where the density of dwellings is low, say a detached house with garden, then 3 extra square meters is nothing compared the square meter-age you already cover. But if you live in a 20 story appartment building in a city centre surroudned by similar buildings, and everyone runs ac, then maybe the 'dwellings per square meter' will be high enough that the ac will be adding energy that is non-negligable compared to the solar energy. (If we took  +15% as our 'non negligable' threshold then the critical density is about 0.05 dwellings per square meter. Meaning in 100 square meters we have 5 dwellings adding 15 effective sunlight meters.) So maybe in Singapore this actually matters a little. 

It still seems weird to single out ac though. The heat dissipated by driving a car through the city is surely much larger.

I find myself still strongly agreeing with your 'friend A' about the difference between someone having a preference for dating people of a particular race, and people stating that preference on their dating app profile.

The two things are, I think, miles apart, and it looks like the participants in that study were asked in the abstract about people having preferences and then given examples of people expressing, not even preferences, but hard and fast rules.

Take example people A and B:

Person A is asked to rate 100 pictures of strangers for attractiveness, from this data a statistical analysis is able to reveal that they have a dis-preference for a particular ethnic group. They may or may not be consciously aware of this, and they would still date the members of that group they thought were most attractive.

Person B has not only decided they will never date people of group X, no matter the context, but they have also decided that keeping this decision making inside their own head doesn't do enough, because group X needs to be told to their face that their ethnicity is a problem and person B is very comfortable with the fact that this may offend people.

I think if people are judging Person A differently from B it doesn't reflect any kind of muddled thinking. I don't even think that race is important for seeing how these are different: if we discovered that some specific man had a preference for (eg.) thinner women, that is very different from a man who goes around telling specific women that he is not interested in them because they are not thin enough. Its insulting.

Those jokes are very bad. But, in fairness I don't think most human beings could do very well do given the same prompt/setup either. Jokes tend to work best in some kind of context, and getting from a "cold start" to something actually funny in a few sentences is hard.

The original post above is making the argument that leaving out the caveats and exceptions and/or exaggerating the point in order to provoke a discussion is dishonest and unhelpful. They use the term "clickbait" to describe that strategy. I think in general usage the word "clickbait" is used in a broader way, to include this strategy but also to include other things.

Of those titles 2 and 3 are clearly not exaggerating anything, so are not doing the thing the OP is complaining about. Number 1 arguably is, the post is a lawyer telling us that his clients often lie to him. You could argue that the title implies that all of them are liars, where in fact it is only many of them, not all.

But, the whole "check the titles" method is slightly flawed anyway. There is a big difference between someone Tweeting something, being challenged on it and saying something like "Oh, I didn't mean it literally, I was gesturing in a direction. Yes there are important exceptions but I left them out because life is too short." and someone being challenged on the title of their blog post, and responding "Did you even read the post underneath the title? I addressed that point, didn't I?".

My quick thoughts on why this happens.

(1) Time. You get asked to do something. You dont get the full info dump in the meeting so you say yes and go off hopeful that you can find the stuff you need. Other responsibilies mean you dont get around to looking everything up until time has passed. It is at that stage that you realise the hiring process hasnt even been finalised or that even one wrong parameter out of 10 confusing parameters would be bad. But now its mildly awkard to go back and explain this - they gave this to you on Thursday, its now Monday.

(2) Story Noise. When you were told these stories by freinds, they only gave the salient details, not a word for word repeat of everything that was said. But, at the time they experienced it word by word, they didnt know what the story beats were yet. Some of those details were just distractions, but some of them might be semi relevant. I know when i tell stories i simplify, and sometimes people assume specific solutions are possible or desrieble because of details they dont know. 

The index by Reporters Without Boarders is primarily about whether a newspaper or reporter can say something without consequences or interference. Things like a competitive media environment seem to be part of the index (The USAs scorecard says "media ownership is highly concentrated, and many of the companies buying American media outlets appear to prioritize profits over public interest journalism"). Its an important thing, but its not the same thing you are talking about.

The second one, from "our world in data", ultimately comes from this (https://www.v-dem.net/documents/56/methodology.pdf). Their measure includes things like corruption, whether political power or influence is concentrated into a smaller group and effective checks and balances on the use of executive power. It sounds like they should have called it a "democratic health index" or something like that instead of a "freedom-of-expression index".

The last one is just a survey of what people think should be allowed.

It reminds maybe of Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson. The Silicon-Valley + Trump combo feels somehow analogous.

One very important consideration is whether they hold values that they believe are universalist, or merely locally appropriate.

For example, a Chinese AI might believe the following: "Confucianist thought is very good for Chinese people living in China. People in other countries can have their own worse philosophies, and that is fine so long as they aren't doing any harm to China, its people or its interests. Those idiots could probably do better by copying China, but frankly it might be better if they stick to their barbarian ways so that they remain too weak to pose a threat."

Now, the USA AI thinks: "Democracy is good. Not just for Americans living in America, but also for everyone living anywhere. Even if they never interact ever again with America or its allies the Taliban are still a problem that needs solving. Their ideology needs to be confronted, not just ignored and left to fester."

The sort of thing America says it stands for is much more appealing to me than a lot of what the Chinese government does. (I like the government being accountable to the people it serves - which of course entails democracy,  a free press and so on). But, my impression is that American values are held to be Universal Truths, not uniquely American idiosyncratic features, which makes the possibility of the maximally bad outcome (worldwide domination by a single power) higher.

I agree this is an inefficiency.

Many of your examples are maybe fixed by having a large audience and some randomness as described by Robo.

But some things are more binary. For example when considering job applicants an applicant who won some prestigious award is much higher value that one who didnt. But, their is a person who was the counterfactual 'second place' for that award, they are basically as high value as the winner, and no one knows who they are.

Having unstable policy making comes with a lot of disadvantages as well as advantages.

For example, imagine a small poor country somewhere with much of the population living in poverty. Oil is discovered, and a giant multinational approaches the government to seek permission to get the oil. The government offers some kind of deal - tax rates, etc. - but the company still isn't sure. What if the country's other political party gets in at the next election? If that happened the oil company might have just sunk a lot of money into refinery's and roads and drills only to see them all taken away by the new government as part of its mission to "make the multinationals pay their share for our people." Who knows how much they might take?

What can the multinational company do to protect itself? One answer is to try and find a different country where the opposition parties don't seem likely to do that.  However, its even better to find a dictatorship to work with. If people think a government might turn on a dime, then they won't enter into certain types of deal with it. Not just companies, but also other countries.

So, whenever a government does turn on a dime, it is gaining some amount of reputation for unpredictability/instability, which isn't a good reputation to have when trying to make agreements in the future.