All Ideas I don't like

I think the biggest mistake I made on my blog was focusing too much of my effort into deconstructing other people’s bad ideas and not constructing my own. I’ll dedicate this post to finding all of them so I can focus on “building”, as the kids say. The list will be expanded as I find more and more bad ideas on the internet.

YIMBYism

There is a desirable area shortage, not a housing shortage.

Political optimism

Defined as the belief that political problems can be solved with politics.

There is no political or economic system that can solve our problems. Democracy is stable, but mediocre. Dictatorships are volatile. Oligarchies and “cathedrals” devolve into unaccountable systems ruled by mediocrities.

Everybody loves deregulation until a nuclear facility explodes, a virus leaks from a research facility, or somebody dies of food poisoning. Reducing taxes would improve economic growth, but by a marginal amount that would be unlikely to translate into compound gains. Locking up criminals works but it’s not like crime is that bad in most developed nations (as in, gunshots sounding off at night or robbery being the norm). Throwing money at scientists doesn’t make them discover things.

See Max’s post on the topic.

Religious optimism

There is no religious revival. The religious are more fertile than the non-religious, but religiosity isn’t that heritable and the environmental trend towards atheism is currently stronger than the genetic trend towards religiosity.

New religions can’t be started because modern culture is not compatible with it, and old ones will likely die or become marginal in size.

Hereditarian optimism

Posting race and IQ charts isn’t going to change the world.

Vital pessimism

There is no rational answer to the question of whether life is worth living. If you are healthy, you say yes. If you are sick, you say no.

Be healthy.

Lottery of fascinations theory

Some people are fascinated with cars. Others are fascinated with speedrunning.

One could argue that this is analogous to a lottery, where some people have fascinations that lead them towards more rewards, while others lead them to being watched by 200 people on youtube.

Which is wrong. Your passions and fascinations, while irrational, reveal who you are. If you spend your entire career arguing that women are less intelligent than men, that says something about you. If you are interested in designing video games, that says something about you. And so on.

“Do things because other people think they are cool”

I still endorse some of my old post on the signalling theory of hobbies, but I don’t think the theory itself is important with regards to your own choices. The fact that some hobbies are more socially desirable than others should not affect whether you do them. It should just affect whether you say you do them on a first date…

Cofnas’ theory of right wing stupidity

Cofnas’ theory is more or less that the right is losing because conservatism is irreconcilable with the blank slate, and because of that stupid people are drawn to conservatism. Here I document why his theory fails:

1. The right~left difference in IQ is minimal.

2. The right started losing before it got dumber.

3. Conservative blank slatism is as irrational as progressive blank slatism.

“Intellectually engage with the opposition!”

Shit test + image thing. Read whatever piques your interest and don’t bother with trying to get people who disagree with you to agree with you.

On a side note, I really like Slavoj Zizek.

Low fertility obscurantism

From a previous post:

Onto the causes of the (fertility) decline: I don’t think it’s that much of a mystery. In Europe, most women say the want to have 2-2.5 kids; for China and America the figures are 1.7 and 2.5 respectively. Even if people have as many children as they claim to want, fertility rates will not be particularly high. Then, consider that:

• ~10% of the population has biological fertility troubles.

• Some people would rather optimize for variables besides family formation, so completed fertility should always be a bit below ideal fertility, even if stated preferences are accurate.

• People find it increasingly difficult to find sexual partners in America.

• Unwanted births are becoming increasingly rare due to contraceptives like abortion, education, condoms, and pills.

• Western societies are experiencing social decay in the form of obesity, decreased trust, racial diversity, and increased inter-gender tensions.

• People are frequently exposed to aspirational lifestyles (luxury apartment, fake 500k job) and sexual partners (18 yo Swedish girl, kpop stars) on social media which make them less tolerant of their current circumstances.

Success mythologisation

The incompetent thinks that he fails because of his circumstances. The slave thinks he fails because of who he is. Reject these mindsets and embrace “status rationalism”, the idea that both “circumstances” (part of the self) and “self” (forged by circumstances) contribute to success.

Post-scarcity

Earlier on twitter I categorised different social issues into 5 categories: the race, class, sex, loser, and values problem. The class problem was named the easiest to solve: just maximize GDP per capita and implement UBI. I renounce this.

UBI maximalism entails an implicit belief in “post-scarcity” (a myth), which is refuted by the fact the human appetite cannot be sated and the existence of limited resources. If I had $10M dollars, I would replace most of my belongings (e.g. non-plastic everything, custom clothes) and save/invest for a house. If I had $1B dollars, I would build a massive castle in New England with an underground bunker and start solo-producing anime. If I had $100B dollars, I would build an even more massive castle and make even more anime. The cycle of boredom → desire → striving → achievement → boredom is all too real.

Say if the singularity actually happens and we get the $10M UBI, then prices for positional and luxury goods would rise in response. 8 figure income doesn’t sound anywhere near as sexy when Gucci sneakers, university tuition, tickets to deadmau5 concerts, rare Pokemon cards, and gold are 100x as expensive. I would also expect prices for meat, plane flights, oil, and leather to rise as well, despite not being positional or luxury goods. Housing in desirable areas would get much more expensive because pricing is the only form of legal behavioural segregation that exists, people who want to avoid the underclass will have to work for a living or pay most of their UBI on rent.

Inner voice fetishism

Perception: the inner voice gives you free will and guides your thoughts.

Reality: you do not will the voice, the voice wills itself, and you don’t exist. People who claim to have an inner voice are more likely to be mentally unstable.

Disagreeableness fetishism

Arguing is for weak people, debates are for show, and criticism is useless.

Open borders

“Jarvis, pull up the chart of GDP per capita regressed onto national IQ”.

“Gatekeeping is good”

Gatekeeping attracts mediocre people who really really care about which people on the internet get into their hobby and want status to be based on intelligence and invested time.

Midwit theory

The genius is a recurring type, the fool is as well, but the midwit is not. Empirically, intelligence tends to have monotonic relationships with other variables (including political views), the only exception to this I have seen is sexual behaviour, where people with extremely high and low levels of intelligence have less sex.

As far as I can tell, people seem to only use the word as an insult, because you can’t actually insult a smart person by telling them they are stupid. In other words:

Gene-level selection theories

My understanding of evolutionary genetics is admittedly poor, but gene-level selection seems totally nonsensical and I have no idea why people believe it. I’m not even sure if I endorse the paradigm of there being multiple levels of selection (e.g. gene, phenotype, group), but it seems obvious to me that selection acts on all three: phenotypes interact with the environment and alter reproductive success and the genes that cause those successful phenotypes are selected for as well.

Some groups survive and others fail. If there are predictable factors that cause some groups to survive and fail, then the factors that survive will be selected for. While the relative balance of individual vs group selection can be debated, it seems irrational to cling to one model or the other. I also reject any attempts to mathematically model selection; there have been attempts made by others to argue in favour of individual or group selection with statistics and I haven’t bothered reading any of them for that reason.

Yarvin’s CEO model

Yarvin argues that we should have a government governed by a CEO who is accountable to a board of directors. If the board are more powerful than the CEO, then we have an oligarchy or representative democracy, depending on how said board is elected. If the CEO is more powerful than the board, then the board doesn’t matter.

I don’t necessarily think the model is bad, just that it’s a reskinning of previous political systems and doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Modern art is not art

I actually like modern art. Not the toilets on the walls or splotches of paint, but stuff like anime, neochibi, pixel art, electronic music, and (some) abstract art that would never have existed if we focused on autistically reproducing everything as it exists.

“Demographics are a done deal”

If you care about race, yes. Civlisation and living standards, no.

Mutational load theory

The theory is that decreased infant mortality is causing mutations that would have been otherwise eliminated to pervade in the gene pool and are causing us to deteriorate over time. I have posted an extended rebuttal here, which can be summarised as such:

1. The theory is not practically testable.

2. If the mutations that cause infant mortality are generalized, then they’ll be eliminated through other means like miscarriage or decreased reproductive success. If the mutations are specific, then they will not affect traits beyond infant mortality.

3. There’s no evidence of genetic decline in recent generations, be it in appearance, intelligence, handedness, or personality.

“Individualism is eroding communities”

Actually, those communities are boring and revealed preferences show people don’t want them.

Self-improvement as a goal

Why are you trying to improve yourself instead of…

(Clarification: I’m implying that people often have a few obvious issues with their lives and “self-improvement” can often distract them from actually dealing with said issues).

Countersignalling going to college

I haven’t worked out the math yet, but I’m almost certain that if you’re >90 IQ trying to get a college degree is for the best. It might be boring or about signalling but that shouldn’t dissuade you from doing what is in your best interest.

AI safetyism

Dude just trust me we are going to be fine.

“Health” as a goal

I have struggled with athletes foot for some time that led to cracking and pain when I walked. With some cream and powder I managed to seal the cracks and walk with no pain. Did I care? Not really.

If you’re <40 years old, chances are eating whatever doesn’t make you feel awful is perfectly fine, one could in fact argue that the ability to tolerate junk is a characteristic of a healthy body.

Meritocracy as a social goal

A man was promoted to product manager before 30 and ended up having the most productive line (only profitable one, if I recall) during the dot com crash. He was not promoted after that, which he attributed to not being as integrated in the company’s social circle. So he decided to make off with the product when the company collapsed and runs it to this day.

Many such cases. Lots people don’t actually care that much about productivity at work and just promote people based on vibes or their relationship with them. One who wishes to be competitive or productive should seek their goal with like-minded individuals or on their own.

(Personally, I couldn’t care less about making friends at work and do it for the sake of doing it or for money. But a lot of people aren’t like that; I’ve noticed this is especially true for people who are in management roles).

“Nietzscheanism”

All of the real Nietzscheans drink at a cafe read visual novels club avoid drugs lindy walk banter with the girlfriend don’t actually read Nietzsche are volcels wrote erotic fanfiction as a prepubescent child vote for Trump smoke love pop listen to crystal castles ask everybody they know if they would feel joy if they learned life repeated endlessly hate Schopenhauer call themselves Zarathustra and love anime.

(Explanation: I love Nietzsche but think a lot of his adopters who cling to him because he’s cool or “high status” are losers).

Platonism

Believing in the platonic world of ideas is no different than believing in a teacup that orbits Mars. My conception of the idea of authenticity is not the same as yours, and cannot be.

Panda express posting

Example: software engineer is frustrated at the difficulty of finding a job. Man tells him he can make $100,000 as the manager of a restaurant.

The reality is that low status jobs are low status for a reason, if you get out of a white collar profession and move into something like that it gets progressively harder to go back into your own field, and the job market for managers isn’t much better than the market for SWEs.

Evolution optimized for racism/altruism…

Rationalism

I feel like I’ve beat this dead horse too many times, but I’ve never been a big fan. Comparing incomparable things, unquestioned assumptions, values over truth, and all that. I think my dislike of academia amplified my dislike of rationality to an irrational extent; anybody who has read my blog can see that I like truth and think logically.

Anti-hedonism

When it really comes down to it, if you want to predict people’s actions accurately you will always assume that they do whatever makes them feel good. You don’t have to like that. You don’t have to agree with it. But it is the truth.

I do however agree that optimizing for pleasure/against pain doesn’t lead to a life that has more pleasure or less pain, it just makes you do different things, usually more overtly (but not inherently) selfish and high time preference things. For example, ideological hedonism is more likely to make you do things that give you fleeting pleasure (e.g. watching television, eating fast food) rather than things that give you reciprocal pleasure (e.g. giving your girlfriend a massage) . I think this stems more from a misconceived or broken hedonism rather than hedonism itself.

Which is why a lot of people reject hedonism — it’s false in a “Petersonian” sense where knowing that hedonism is true doesn’t actually make your life more pleasurable or less painful. It just makes people obtain pleasure and pain from different sources.