2019 December Links

Intelligence is Truth's Double Edged Sword

It might seem obvious that smarter people attain more truth. I don't think that's true. I see intellectual honesty as the prime driver of truth attainment, and intelligence is a stimulant to however much intellectual honesty one does or does not bring to the table.

Memecraft: Everything's Trying to Kill You

What's with Babylon Bee?

Good comedy transcends politics. It doesn't participate in it.

The Babylon Bee is a good example of this. It doesn't take much to figure out they're a Christian conservative organization - not a group I'd expect to make me laugh out loud. But man, their headlines are incredible. I think that's because someone in their organization has figured out how to transcend the culture war and write genuinely funny stuff.

Is My Penis Big Enough? And other important questions you search on the internet

Dozens of studies have been done on average penis size and they all come out to the same approximately the same thing. 99% of the people around you have a penis size anywhere from 13cm (5 inches) to 30cm (1 foot). They average at about 20cm, which is about as long as the typical remote control.

Does it matter? Researchers have looked at this too. Studies show penis size is the single most important determinant of male attractiveness. When shown figures of naked males, only 2% of women ranked any man with less than average penis size more than a 4 out of 10 in attractiveness. Basically, if you're not above average, it's impossible for the vast majority of women to find you attractive.

In Defense of Trivialization

I notice that, especially in the social media environment, if you do not exaggerate every problem to a 10 you can get called out for "trivializing" it. If by trivializing, they mean "make less important than the exaggerated claim" then good job. Trivialize away. If they mean, "make less important than appropriate", then that would be a serious mistake.

But the accusation of "trivializing" is a method of marking and swiping away anyone who does believe the problem is less than maximum. This dismissal ignores that one can trivialize from an exaggeration or from reality. If a claim is an exaggeration then trivializing it is good. If a claim is accurate then trivializing it is bad. Overrating or underrating problems is inferior to rating problems accurately. However, the accusation that one is trivializing expels all arguments without regard for the quality of the trivialization.

Parents: Make Norms not Rules

It is strange that parents will shut off the television running in the background because they don't want their child to pick up any bad language, but the same parents will also force their children to say please and thank you. For some reason, they seem to believe children will pick up bad language but need to be trained to use good language. I think this point of view especially prevalent among conservatives who think people start out evil and have to be fixed. But objectively, child language acquisition works the same way for bad words as for good.

"It only stops Unsafe Abortions"

Previously, I wrote that incentives almost always matter. The more interesting question is, how much do they matter?

Consider the argument, "making abortion illegal doesn't stop abortions, it only stops safe abortions."