Robuta

Suppose you are an admissions official for a moderately prestigious college, which is neither the best nor the worst in your state. Your job is to look over...

As before, feel free to treat this as an open thread for all coronavirus-related issues. Everything here is speculative and not intended as medical advice. How...

[Content warning: some ideas that might make you feel anxious about your political beliefs. Epistemic status: very speculative and not necessarily endorsed....

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This is an experiment to test more frequent open threads. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1. Six months ago I posted a...

[Epistemic status: fiction] Thanks for letting me put my story on your blog. Mainstream media is crap and no one would have believed me anyway. This starts in...

[This is an entry to the 2019 Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Cindy Lou Who and the Grinch] Christmas Day is a a time full of laughter and cheer which is...

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I. Did cultural evolution create sexual purity taboos to prevent the spread of STIs? A few weeks ago, I wrote a post assuming this was obviously true; after...

I thought the piece ("The New York Times's Inconsistent Standards Drove Slate Star Codex To Self-Cancel") was thoughtful and sober,...

[Previously in series: Antidepressant Pharmacogenomics: Much More Than You Wanted To Know; SSRIs: Much More Than You Wanted To Know, etc. This is all...

A while ago when we discussed drug tolerance here, some people taught me about receptors that activated two different second messenger chains, and how you...

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Today on Trump Twitter: "@DanScavino: Ford to scrap Mexico plant, invest in Michigan due to Trump policies" Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017...

In 1926, a rich guy died and willed all of his money to whichever Toronto woman could have the most babies in the next ten years. So began the Great Stork...

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When I hear scientists talk about Thomas Kuhn, he sounds very reasonable. Scientists have theories that guide their work. Sometimes they run into things their...

When you first take the Artifact, you will see a vision of ALPHANION, Demon-Sultan of the Domain of Order, who appears as a grid of spheres connected by...

Join me at 3:30 PM on Sunday, 1/6 for the traditional once-every-three-months big SSC Bay Area meetup. Meet on the Berkeley campus at the open space beside the...

A friend recently told me about a self-help tactic that has become popular in the circles I move in: the idea of applying behaviorism to yourself (sometimes...

I. A lot of libertarians and anarcho-capitalists envision a future of small corporate states competing for migrants and capital by trying to have the best...

Suppose a lot of that stuff about bravery debates is right. That lots of the advice people give is useful for some people, but that the opposite advice is...

Going around the psychiatry blogosphere recently: this segment by John Oliver about doctors who take pharmaceutical company money: I will resist the urge to...

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[Content warning: religious people might feel kind of like this objectifies them and treats them as weird phenomena to be explained away.] A major theme of...

This is an entry to the Adversarial Collaboration Contest by Mark Davis and Mark Webb, who sent the following introduction along with their entry: Mark Davis...

Last year in January I made some predictions for 2014 and gave my calibration level for each. Time to see how I did. Ones in black were successes, ones in red...

I got many good responses to my Considerations On Cost Disease post, both in the comments and elsewhere. A lot of people thought the explanation was obvious;...

I. Imagine a little kingdom with a quaint custom: when a man likes a woman, he offers her a tulip; if she accepts, they are married shortly thereafter. A...

Some of my friends have depression and have asked me for some suggestions. These will be inferior to reading official suggestions, but you will probably not...

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This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. As the off-weekend thread, this is culture-war-free, so please try to avoid overly controversial topics. You can...

I took a break from my busy schedule at Our Lady Of An Undisclosed Location to attend another local Psychiatry Conference. This conference consisted of a...

[Content warning: discussion of chronic pain and related conditions, and the debate over whether some of them may be psychological in origin. None of this is...

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread. There are hidden threads every few days here. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. Also: 1....

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever.

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page)....

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page)....

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC...

A few years ago, I wrote the online serial novel Unsong. Someday I want to get it published. But I want to fix it up before I try. I know publishers will have...

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[This is a slightly edited repost of an essay from my old LiveJournal] A friend recently complained about how many people lack the basic skill of believing...

This is the bi-weekly visible open thread (there are also hidden open threads twice a week you can reach through the Open Thread tab on the top of the page)....

(inspired by Zombies: Seriously, Enough, Zombies Are So Overdone, and Scifi/Fantasy Stories Editors Are Tired Of Seeing: Zombies) He walked into my office and...

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[Content note: Gender, relationships, sexuality. Some sexually explicit content. Discussion without endorsement of various forms of transphobia, homophobia, et...

I said a few days ago that I would be a terrible businessman because my attempts to promote things tend to meander into attempts to steelman the case against...

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC...

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever.

This is the twice-weekly hidden open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. You can also talk at the SSC subreddit or the SSC...