19 Comments

The lit review fluff is a real thing. That's probably one of the reasons why open source scientific networks are outcompeting the legacy peer review system. Not only does bullshit get weeded out faster, but the leaner, meaner prose style cuts right to the point and communicates the important data faster and more effectively.

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Jun 9, 2022Liked by Richard Hanania

A few doctors in Sarasota wrote many exemptions for children last year: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/16/us/florida-chiropractor-mask-exemption/index.html

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"So, for example, in economics, my prior is that markets are better than central planning."

Mine too, but that's way too general to be of much use to bring to the issue of feature X of a "stimulus bill."

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As a person who strongly prefers not being infected by a virus with the potential to create long-term neurological, pulmonary and renal deficits, on top of above average mortality rates, I have considerable anger toward people who dismissed full adoption of public health initiatives meant to limit the spread of this highly contagious disease. I'm very curious why a thoughtful person like Mr. Hanania thinks such measures should be avoided, and whether he disagrees that full community implementation of transmission limiting measures would have drastically shortened the course of this pandemic?

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"If your IQ is 95, I’m going to suggest different heuristics from if your IQ is 130 or 140."

I think that's a great point, especially in the current environment. One of my heuristics used to be that I can read the New York Times, watch CNN, look at pronouncements from public health agencies, read respected academic journals, etc., and accept what they're saying as basically true, while maintaining awareness of the fact that plenty of bias goes into editorial decisions. Once that heuristic fails, as it has spectacularly in the past several years (and I now realize I put too much faith in the heuristic previously), things get complicated.

I feel pretty comfortable with the heuristics I've created since (however vaguely defined and admittedly relying more than I would like on intuition), though I've seen a lot of people drifting off into outer space. I've seen people - in Substack comments and IRL - who have gone from "the establishment lies a lot" to something like "the opposite of what the establishment says is the truth, everything is psyops and grand global conspiracies, and everyone who doesn't see the world through this lens is controlled opposition under the influence of mass psychosis." While there are undoubtedly some high IQ people who think this way, I think it is mostly lower IQ people who became completely untethered from reality due to the catastrophic failures of mainstream information channels. An interesting project would be to devise a set of heuristics specifically for lower IQ and/or busy people for making sense in a world of collapsing and corrupt mainstream information distribution channels. I think it would come down to something like read a diverse set of perspectives, take it all with a grain of salt, and learn to embrace uncertainty. Not sure we can do too much better than that in the current environment. Thoughts?

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Are there enough remaining mask mandates to make this a cost effective effort? [Living in the Libertarian paradise of Washington DC, I don't see the point. :)]

But if so I suggest a different strategy. Develop a methodology that on the basis of observation of specific phenomenon make the cost of wearing a mask to people in specific situations positive to themselves and others. Then show that these situations do not exist in the situation in which the mask mandate is being applied.

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