frankybegs

Dumbass here with close to zero knowledge about finance stuff- why a call? A call is basically an option to buy at a certain price, right? So why would that be better than just buying the stock now at current price?

I'm not sure if that weak correlation would persist at the extremes, though; when there are basic failures of execution, such as having an apparently abandoned website, I think there is some reason for concern, if only because it might indicate a shortage of resources or inactivity. An organisation's longevity and funding security are obviously of the utmost importance here, and the website doesn't fill me with confidence in that regard.

Is this unfounded? I don't know much about the company and couldn't see anything about this on the site.

Is the argument for the s-risk concern just basically that the suffering in some scenarios could be so great that you have to get sort of Pascal mugged? Or is there reason to think there actually a significant probability of extreme suffering scenarios?

The weed thing is not true. It can sap your motivation acutely, and perhaps even have a more sustained (if definitely temporary) effect. But it certainly doesn't ruin your life by instantly "knocking your motivational system off balance".

in fact, never use an inhaled or injected recreational drug, period - the fast uptake is extremely dangerous and will likely actually knock your motivation system off balance hard enough to probably ruin your life.

I don't think this can be remotely justified by the evidence, formal or anecdotal. Inhaling weed isn't dangerous, let alone extremely so, and will almost certainly not ruin anyone's life, as the hundreds of millions of happy users can attest (get yours today!) Hell, shisha is an inhaled recreational drug!

I'm not sure it makes sense to generalise about an entire method of delivery, when all sorts of substances with very different effects can be consumed that way.

By what mechanism could natural selection have optimised our diets? Why should we expect long-tenured features of our diet to be necessarily healthy? We have consumed alcohol since long before we were modern humans, as one obvious counter-example to this sort of argument.

I think much of this is quite unreasonable (and some very unreasonable- you "don't like that I spoke as spoke as an authority on her life" because I wondered if what she observed was truly attributable to a causal effect?!), but I don't see the value in going over it, especially as others have made the points I would make about your tone and framing elsewhere. I continue to find your contributions on this topic a  little more combative and "soldier mindset" than is ideal, but clearly you strongly disagree. (Although it's tempting to suggest that your ... (read more)

I do not believe that Cade Metz used specialized hacking equipment to reveal Scott's last name

I said "specialist journalist/hacker skills".

I don't think it's at all true that anyone could find out Scott's true identity as easily as putting a key in a lock, and I think that analogy clearly misleads vs the hacker one, because the journalist did use his demonstrably non-ubiquitous skills to find out the truth and then broadcast it to everyone else. To me the phone hacking analogy is much closer, but if we must use a lock-based one, it's more like a lock... (read more)

I didn't, thanks! I'm a fairly long-time visitor but sporadic-at-best commenter here, primarily because I feel I can learn much more than I can contribute (present case included).

I'd love to know why you think it's weak. As I mentioned before, it doesn't seem any more than suggestive to me (and to be fair Chen acknowledges as much), but it does seem quite suggestive, and it has introduced a hint of doubt in me.

I get the sense that I've gotten your back up slightly here, which is perhaps not without justification as I admit to having been a touch suspicious... (read more)

it is hard to write a NYT article

Clearly. But if you can't do it without resorting to deliberately misleading rhetorical sleights to imply something you believe to be true, the correct response is not to.

Or, more realistically, if you can't substantiate a particular claim with any supporting facts, due to the limitations of the form, you shouldn't include it nor insinuate it indirectly, especially if it's hugely inflammatory. If you simply cannot fit in the "receipts" needed to substantiate a claim (which seems implausible anyway), as a journalist you should omit that claim. If there isn't space for the evidence, there isn't space for the accusation.

Scott thinks very highly of Murray and agrees with him on race/IQ. 

This is very much not what he's actually said on the topic, which I've quoted in another reply to you. Could you please support that claim with evidence from Scott's writings? And then could you consider that by doing so, you have already done more thorough journalism on this question than Cade Metz did before publishing an incredibly inflammatory claim on it in perhaps the world's most influential newspaper?

This is reaching Cade Metz levels of slippery justification.

He doesn't make the accusation super explicit, but (a) people here would be angrier if he did, not less angry

How is this relevant? As Elizabeth says, it would be more honest and epistemically helpful if he made an explicit accusation. People here might well be angry about that, but a) that's not relevant to what is right and b) that's because, as you admit, that accusation could not be substantiated. So how is it acceptable to indirectly insinuate that accusation instead? 

(Also c), I think yo... (read more)

So despite it being "hard to substantiate", or to "find Scott saying" it, you think it's so certainly true that a journalist is justified in essentially lying in order to convey it to his audience?

Your argument rests on a false dichotomy. There are definitely other options than 'wanting to know truth for no reason at all' and 'wanting to know truth to support racist policies'. It is at least plausibly the case that beneficial, non-discriminatory policies could result from knowledge currently considered taboo. It could at least be relevant to other things and therefore useful to know!

What plausible benefit is there to knowing Scott's real name? What could it be relevant to?

It's almost the only comment you haven't replied to, aside from the downvoted ones at the bottom. Third one down if your comments are sorted by top scoring, which I assume is default? It's by Alex K. Chen.

It honestly seems kind of hard to miss, and cites some interesting suggestive evidence that low iron levels could actually be healthy, which is why I asked.

Not hugely important, but I want to point out because I think the concept is in the process of having its usefulness significantly diluted by overuse: that's not a straw man. That's just a false reason.

A straw man is when you refute an argument that your opponent didn't make, in order to make it look like you've refuted their actual argument.

One specific thing that I'd definitely have challenged is the 'I don't think the New Yorker article was very fair to my point of view'. What point of view, specifically, and how was it unfair? Again, very much easier from the comfort of my office than in live conversation with him, but I would have loved to see you pin him down on this.

I agree on the latter example, which is a particularly unhelpful one to use unless strictly necessary, and not really analogous here anyway.

But on the lock example, what is the substantive difference? His justification seems to be 'it was easy to do, so there's nothing wrong with doing it'. In fact, the only difference I detect makes the doxxing look much worse. Because he's saying 'it was easy for me to do, so there's nothing wrong with me doing it on behalf of the world'.

So while it's also heat-adding, on reflection I can't think of any real world exampl... (read more)

This frankly enraged me. Good job on the directness of the opening question. I think you fell back a little quickly, and let him get away with quite a lot of hand-waving, where I would have tried to really nail him down on the details and challenge him to expand on those flimsy justifications. But that's very easy to say, and not so easy to do in the context of a live conversation.

Can I ask, a year later, why you didn't reply to the person who cited evidence that low iron is good?

Of the comments, that one seems by far the most productive for you to engage with, at least for me as an almost-zero-knowledge reader (and recently converted ethical vegan who is eager to mitigate any health tradeoff). But it's the only upvoted comment you haven't replied to! I'd be really interested in what you have to say about it.