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Astral Codex Ten Podcast


Sep 29, 2018

A neglected gem from Less Wrong: Why The Tails Come Apart, by commenter Thrasymachus. It explains why even when two variables are strongly correlated, the most extreme value of one will rarely be the most extreme value of the other. Take these graphs of grip strength vs. arm strength and reading score vs. writing...


Sep 23, 2018

A prodrome is an early stage of a condition that might have different symptoms than the full-blown version. In psychiatry, the prodrome of schizophrenia is the few-months-to-few-years period when a person is just starting to develop schizophrenia and is acting a little bit strange while still having some insight...


Sep 21, 2018

I.

Writing a review of The Black Swan is a nerve-wracking experience.

First, because it forces me to reveal I am about ten years behind the times in my reading habits.

But second, because its author Nassim Nicholas Taleb is infamous for angry Twitter rants against people who misunderstand his work. Much better men than...


Sep 15, 2018

The collective intellect is change-blind. Knowledge gained seems so natural that we forget what it was like not to have it. Piaget says children gain long-term memory at age 4 and don’t learn abstract thought until ten; do you remember what it was like not to have abstract thought? We underestimate our intellectual...