2020 February Links

This post is my list of links for February 2020. My intellectual trade deficit every month is usually massive - I import a lot more information than I output. Link posts largely, though nowhere near entirely, track my intellectual imports.

Link posts give me a log to look back on. Moreover, the act of writing these links posts is a practice that helps embed the information into my head.

In a lot of ways writing these link posts throughout the month is one of my favorite things about keeping this blog.

Now the links:

Pro-Choice for the Wrong Reasons

I don't believe life begins at conception. I think an embryo is far too unlike anything that has right's worth respecting, or dignity worth preserving. The more you know about the characteristics of an embryo (or lack thereof) the more claims about it deserving protection violates normal human intuitions.

Some people might call my position pro-choice. Regardless of whether that label truly applies to me, I notice the people who call themselves pro-choice generally justify their position on very different grounds.

In Defense of Eugenics

Recently Richard Dawkins got in trouble for this Tweet pictured on the left.

His Tweet is structurally equivalent to,

"You may object to me killing you by shooting you in the head on moral or ideological grounds. It's quite another to conclude it wouldn't physically work in practice."

This should be pretty uncontroversially true. But saying "Eugenics would work in practice" is like saying, "Hitler didn't eat babies." Sure it's true, but why are you saying it?

Missing Half the Story

In this post I'm going to talk about areas where researchers only look at half the story. When I notice something like this; a big gaping mistake that all the smart people seem to ignore, I'm very open to the possibility that I'm the one who's missing something. But since I can't seem to figure out where I've gone awry, this is much a post about pointing out other's mistakes as asking to be shown my own.

The two topics where I see half the story notably absent from researcher's view are climate change and the gender wage gap. I will start with climate change.

"Paying" Attention and "Spending" Time

Somehow, despite anyone's insight or directive, the phrases "paying" attention and "spending" time got built into our vocabulary. I think this is amazing because attention and time are overlooked currencies. The opportunity cost of wasted time and the depletion of cognitive resources are heralded as great insights by economists and psychologists. But they're right beside us, nested within our language.

Your Brain is an Organ

We think differently about muscles than we do organs. Generally, we consider organs robust, and muscles anti-fragile.

Remember that robust refers to the kind of thing that does not easily break under pressure, and anti-fragile refers to the kind of thing that actually gets stronger under pressure.

The heart is largely made up of cardiac muscle, which is why exercising your heart by jogging is good for your heart. This is anti-fragile. Your liver is an organ, which is why it can probably tolerate excessive amounts of alcohol, but ultimately the drinking will wear your liver down not make it stronger. This is robust.

My society has a popular saying: "the brain is a muscle," often followed by the words, "use it or lose it." The Use it/Lose it part accurately depicts the anti-fragile quality that they're trying to bestow upon the brain. But it's important to understand, the brain is not a muscle in any literal sense. It is an organ. This expression that I hear all the time is an explanation of what society believes, it is not evidence.