Basic game theory principles are so useful, tit for tat will iterate infinitely unless one side decides to take the immediate hit and be a first mover to opt out (in return for the LR benefit of not wasting resources on the game aka don’t fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy), the prisoner’s dilemma highlights how our fears/fixed beliefs incentivize us to choose suboptimal choices/not trust/listen to the devil on our shoulder... it was game theory that did the most in terms of educational payoff for me
My hands are waving and I’m freaking out after seeing the accusation of Peter Boghossian (or me, as his Director of Content) stealing your material!
You published an article about crime and absent fathers on April 20, 2023, while we released a video on the same topic on May 2, 2023. The thing is, our video (featuring Matt Thornton) was recorded months ago ahead of the release of his book, “The Gift of Violence.” Matt’s book was released on April 11, 2023 and addresses the exact same topic. Peter produced the video and wrote the afterward to the finished manuscript last year.
Back in November 2022, Matt was a guest on our “All Things Re-Considered” series (about the collapse of NPR’s journalistic integrity) and spoke about these issues. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb-ApHyd01I&t=3742s
Now, I wouldn’t dream of accusing you of stealing content from our channel (or from Matt’s book). I’d chalk it up to “great minds think alike” (plus “anyone with a brain can see what the media is doing”).
Regarding your request to be a guest with us, that’s an absolute possibility! While Peter is traveling over the next several weeks, I’ll see if he’d like to have a conversation later this summer.
Regarding the beer: Yes, please! What coast are you near?
It was totally a joke! I didn't even think you'd see it! :)
I love Peter's work and have been referencing it for years, since at least 2018, when I first stumbled into a youtube of him and James Lindsay describing the protestant religious mapping of Woke (then "PC") terms to a college class. Yet another case of "great minds think alike," because I was banging away at my own research on the same topic. Unfortunately I think Lindsay has fallen off the impartial observer wagon and decided to culture war for profit, similar to what happened to Jordan Peterson, but Peter seems at least somewhat away from that ledge right now.
Let's definitely have a beer sometime. I'm in Atlanta, and unfortunately can't travel much because I'm a single parent, but I'm sure we can work something out. Take care!
Thanks HWFO :) I was alerted to it by a friend! Many of us love your 'stack. I work too much to be a regular reader, but I'm always impressed when I read your analyses. I'm not too far from Atlanta and I'll make contact if I'm in the area!
You are right about Peter, he's amazing because of his superpower to consider every angle.
Regarding the 2 middle classes, I categorise them as the thinking-doing class and the bullshitting class.
The thinking-doing class are about manipulating external reality and its usually obvious when they get things wrong, e.g. if you build a bridge and it falls down, or write a program and it doesn't compile.
The bullshitting class, OTOH, are about manipulating consensus reality. Quintessential bullshitting class fields are marketing, politics, religion, law. It's not as co-incidence that wokism is strongest within the bullshitting class.
I’m no fan of academic papers for exactly this reason. The Manhattan institute flatly states “Furthermore, crime is concentrated in these densely populated counties.[5]” whoa, do they know crime rates, not totals but rates, were higher in densely populated areas? That is not my understanding so I get a bit surprised. Well hell, it’s got a little number next to it, must be sourced to something. Nope, I checked the endnote, it just defined the county sizes in its sample. So what we see is a bold claim with a little number next to it, textbook sourcing, but then no mention of the claim in the endnote at all. And that’s after you click through to the PDF because endnotes are not included in the HTML they ran out of space on their website, I imagine.
As charitable as I can think, they felt the need to drop an unexplained tautology in their paper, no rate claims just base “bigger = bigger” and then innocently wanted to cite something else in their one claim sentence. But now I’ve got it in my head that you’re intentionally gaming endnotes and then hiding them so you can appear to be sourcing your claims. Who the fuck knows what the graphs say, I couldn’t even get through the intro without being lied to.
If we look at gun homicide and suicide, we can see homicide clustering in densely populated areas nationwide, but that's largely due to black population rate. Maps:
Between being psychosomatic, being caused by mask-induced CO2 poisoning, being induced by the skyrocketing abuse of other drugs, and being faked for ever more lucrative disability benefits, I suspect that the percentage of "long COVID" cases that are not caused by COVID-19 starts with a nine.
I don't think there's any way to tell except by careful analysis of anecdotes.
I know one lady who had pretty severe "long covid" symptoms that lasted six months to a year but they eventually cleared up. That's the only one I know. Among people who know people who I know (2nd order acquaintances) I've heard anecdotes of some real and some fake.
Look at where those goalposts are. It's not "here is a genuine case of harm done by the virus", it's "her symptoms didn't appear fake" without any attempt to establish that the virus caused them. When that's the motte, the argument isn't strong.
We can't even do real analysis because the First Rule of Long COVID Club is that you don't define the symptoms or diagnostic process of Long COVID Club.
He sat on the original manuscript of the book for over a decade because publishers didn’t want to touch it for fear of retaliation from the NYT themselves.
I'm not at all sure I buy that, because a lot of long covid stuff was happening before the vaccines were even released. But there's some study going on right now that prolonged masking might be causing it in some people.
I think since the symptoms are a wide profile, there may be a wide range of sources. And I definitely think the disease is responsible in some people. But the idea that some of it is psychosomatic or mask related shouldn't be off the table either.
I wouldn't be surprised if prolonged masking, and the bacteriological and fungal loads that come with fabric masks that, let's face it, haven't been washed and disinfected daily, could be a real factor that I bet isn't studied nearly enough.
I don't know enough about the idea of "Long Covid" to say one way or the other. I've seen a lot of other "malingerer" type diseases end up eventually being found to be real things, and have weird origins. A FOAF who had a couple of crappy decades out of nowhere was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease that had just absolutely kicked her ass.
Basic game theory principles are so useful, tit for tat will iterate infinitely unless one side decides to take the immediate hit and be a first mover to opt out (in return for the LR benefit of not wasting resources on the game aka don’t fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy), the prisoner’s dilemma highlights how our fears/fixed beliefs incentivize us to choose suboptimal choices/not trust/listen to the devil on our shoulder... it was game theory that did the most in terms of educational payoff for me
Dear HWFO,
My hands are waving and I’m freaking out after seeing the accusation of Peter Boghossian (or me, as his Director of Content) stealing your material!
You published an article about crime and absent fathers on April 20, 2023, while we released a video on the same topic on May 2, 2023. The thing is, our video (featuring Matt Thornton) was recorded months ago ahead of the release of his book, “The Gift of Violence.” Matt’s book was released on April 11, 2023 and addresses the exact same topic. Peter produced the video and wrote the afterward to the finished manuscript last year.
Back in November 2022, Matt was a guest on our “All Things Re-Considered” series (about the collapse of NPR’s journalistic integrity) and spoke about these issues. Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb-ApHyd01I&t=3742s
Now, I wouldn’t dream of accusing you of stealing content from our channel (or from Matt’s book). I’d chalk it up to “great minds think alike” (plus “anyone with a brain can see what the media is doing”).
Regarding your request to be a guest with us, that’s an absolute possibility! While Peter is traveling over the next several weeks, I’ll see if he’d like to have a conversation later this summer.
Regarding the beer: Yes, please! What coast are you near?
Sincerely,
Gina
Hi Gina!
It was totally a joke! I didn't even think you'd see it! :)
I love Peter's work and have been referencing it for years, since at least 2018, when I first stumbled into a youtube of him and James Lindsay describing the protestant religious mapping of Woke (then "PC") terms to a college class. Yet another case of "great minds think alike," because I was banging away at my own research on the same topic. Unfortunately I think Lindsay has fallen off the impartial observer wagon and decided to culture war for profit, similar to what happened to Jordan Peterson, but Peter seems at least somewhat away from that ledge right now.
Let's definitely have a beer sometime. I'm in Atlanta, and unfortunately can't travel much because I'm a single parent, but I'm sure we can work something out. Take care!
Thanks HWFO :) I was alerted to it by a friend! Many of us love your 'stack. I work too much to be a regular reader, but I'm always impressed when I read your analyses. I'm not too far from Atlanta and I'll make contact if I'm in the area!
You are right about Peter, he's amazing because of his superpower to consider every angle.
He's in Atlanta.
Gina, It would be so awesome to have Peter and BJ on a show together as a follower of both.
Regarding the 2 middle classes, I categorise them as the thinking-doing class and the bullshitting class.
The thinking-doing class are about manipulating external reality and its usually obvious when they get things wrong, e.g. if you build a bridge and it falls down, or write a program and it doesn't compile.
The bullshitting class, OTOH, are about manipulating consensus reality. Quintessential bullshitting class fields are marketing, politics, religion, law. It's not as co-incidence that wokism is strongest within the bullshitting class.
I’m no fan of academic papers for exactly this reason. The Manhattan institute flatly states “Furthermore, crime is concentrated in these densely populated counties.[5]” whoa, do they know crime rates, not totals but rates, were higher in densely populated areas? That is not my understanding so I get a bit surprised. Well hell, it’s got a little number next to it, must be sourced to something. Nope, I checked the endnote, it just defined the county sizes in its sample. So what we see is a bold claim with a little number next to it, textbook sourcing, but then no mention of the claim in the endnote at all. And that’s after you click through to the PDF because endnotes are not included in the HTML they ran out of space on their website, I imagine.
As charitable as I can think, they felt the need to drop an unexplained tautology in their paper, no rate claims just base “bigger = bigger” and then innocently wanted to cite something else in their one claim sentence. But now I’ve got it in my head that you’re intentionally gaming endnotes and then hiding them so you can appear to be sourcing your claims. Who the fuck knows what the graphs say, I couldn’t even get through the intro without being lied to.
If we look at gun homicide and suicide, we can see homicide clustering in densely populated areas nationwide, but that's largely due to black population rate. Maps:
https://hwfo.substack.com/p/geographic-evidence-that-gun-deaths
If they said homicide i never would have found out they were playing with endnotes because I already believe that to be true and would have glided by
Long COVID is the Stone Soup of diseases.
Between being psychosomatic, being caused by mask-induced CO2 poisoning, being induced by the skyrocketing abuse of other drugs, and being faked for ever more lucrative disability benefits, I suspect that the percentage of "long COVID" cases that are not caused by COVID-19 starts with a nine.
Perhaps more than one nine.
I don't think there's any way to tell except by careful analysis of anecdotes.
I know one lady who had pretty severe "long covid" symptoms that lasted six months to a year but they eventually cleared up. That's the only one I know. Among people who know people who I know (2nd order acquaintances) I've heard anecdotes of some real and some fake.
Look at where those goalposts are. It's not "here is a genuine case of harm done by the virus", it's "her symptoms didn't appear fake" without any attempt to establish that the virus caused them. When that's the motte, the argument isn't strong.
We can't even do real analysis because the First Rule of Long COVID Club is that you don't define the symptoms or diagnostic process of Long COVID Club.
For media/NYT deep dive, I recommend Batya Ungar-Sargon’s book!
“Grey Lady Winks” by Ashley Rindsberg too.
He sat on the original manuscript of the book for over a decade because publishers didn’t want to touch it for fear of retaliation from the NYT themselves.
I saw a theory recently that most of -- if not all -- "Long Covid" is actually vaccine injuries from the Jab itself.
I'm not at all sure I buy that, because a lot of long covid stuff was happening before the vaccines were even released. But there's some study going on right now that prolonged masking might be causing it in some people.
I think since the symptoms are a wide profile, there may be a wide range of sources. And I definitely think the disease is responsible in some people. But the idea that some of it is psychosomatic or mask related shouldn't be off the table either.
I wouldn't be surprised if prolonged masking, and the bacteriological and fungal loads that come with fabric masks that, let's face it, haven't been washed and disinfected daily, could be a real factor that I bet isn't studied nearly enough.
I don't know enough about the idea of "Long Covid" to say one way or the other. I've seen a lot of other "malingerer" type diseases end up eventually being found to be real things, and have weird origins. A FOAF who had a couple of crappy decades out of nowhere was eventually diagnosed with Lyme disease that had just absolutely kicked her ass.