My attention span is not what it used to be, and I couldn't force myself to get to the end of this. A summary or TLDR (on the part of the original author) would have been helpful.
What is it with rationalists and their inability to write with concision? Is there a gene for bloviation that also predisposes them to the cult? Or are they all just mimicking Yud's irritating style?
Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man is always a good place to start.
This is good:
Take the sequence {1,2,3,4,x}. What should x be? Only someone who is clueless about induction would answer 5 as if it were the only answer (see Goodman’s problem in a philosophy textbook or ask your closest Fat Tony) [Note: We can also apply here Wittgenstein’s rule-following problem, which states that any of an infinite number of functions is compatible with any finite sequence. Source: Paul Bogossian]. Not only clueless, but obedient enough to want to think in a certain way.
Also this:
If, as psychologists show, MDs and academics tend to have a higher “IQ” that is slightly informative (higher, but on a noisy average), it is largely because to get into schools you need to score on a test similar to “IQ”. The mere presence of such a filter increases the visible mean and lower the visible variance. Probability and statistics confuse fools.
And:
If someone came up w/a numerical“Well Being Quotient” WBQ or “Sleep Quotient”, SQ, trying to mimic temperature or a physical quantity, you’d find it absurd. But put enough academics w/physics envy and race hatred on it and it will become an official measure.
"TempleOS on the blockchain"
Ok that's some quality sneer. A bit obscure and esoteric, but otherwise perfect for those who know anything about Temple OS.
Yeah, Behe's one of the leading lights (dimmest bulbs?) of the so-called "Intelligent Design" movement: a molecular biologist who knows just enough molecular biology to construct strawmen arguments about evolution. Siskind being impressed by him tells me everything I need to know about Siskind's susceptibility to truly stupid ideas.
What a bunch of monochromatic, hyper-privileged, rich-kid grifters. It's like a nonstop frat party for rich nerds. The photographs and captions make it obvious:
These are not serious people. Effective altruism in a nutshell.