Curious, Thorough, and Open

I should spend more time in Critical Thinking class on cultivating an intellectually honest mindset, specifically the virtues of curiosity and thoroughness, not just open-mindedness. (chapter 2 - Mindset - of Reason Better by David Manley)

Counting Cancels

Based on the testimony of a relevant expert (FIRE's Greg Lukianoff) who documented a noticeable uptick in campus-related incidents related to free speech starting roughly 5 years ago, arguments that "cancel culture doesn't exist" are probably less plausible than I thought.

Bayes As Odds

 An intuitive way to understand Bayesian updating is via odds instead of probabilities or percentages. (chapter 8 - Updating - of Reason Better by David Manley)

Polarized By Ambiguity

Group polarization may be less puzzling than I often treat it, since it's usually a natural result of topics in which we mostly only have ambiguous evidence.

Map Ain't Territory Reminder

Scientific models like causal DAGs are probably much cruder instruments for understanding real-life complex phenomena than I have been hoping recently.

Science is 'Kaleidoscopic'

Science is collaborative in a variety of ways: many individuals working on the same or related problems, and those individuals employing several distinct methodologies to attack those problem clusters.

Scaffolding

One way to address my worry that philosophy classes inadvertently teach students that reasoning skills are useless is to better scaffold courses, beginning with puzzles that are clearly solvable using reasoning.

Keeping Students in College

I've learned a lot about things that help retain college students this past year as a first-year advisor.

Paucity of Evidence for Causal Closure

The widely-held assumption of causal closure of the physical world may not have much evidence supporting it.

Natural Law's Broader Project

One way of understanding natural law is that its project is less about defining ‘law’ than about considering the legal system’s role within social, practical reasoning.

Fake-Data Simulation

Fake-data simulation is an extension of abductive reasoning, specifically exploring the implications of various competing hypotheses.

Indexicals & the Origins of Language

 A crucial step between one-dimensional communication that animals and computers can do and the "speech triangle" of human language may be utilizing indexicals, literally pointing to focus joint attention.

Contingent Racial Capitalism

 One way Marxists and critical race scholars may talk past each other is in conflating whether capitalism and racism are necessarily linked and whether they are merely actually, historically linked.

Deference and Meritocracy

I may need to figure out the tension in my thoughts on deference to experts and criticisms of meritocracy.

Guess Culturist

 I grew up in a Guess Culture, and am biased against members of Ask Culture.

How Hard Is Morality?

Being moral is not hard in the same way calculus or rock climbing is. It's maybe hard in the way dieting is, or, more apt, inconvenient in the way walking 10 miles instead of driving is.

Good Faith

At the start of disagreements it's important to establish good faith before almost anything else.

Anti-Staff Bias

 As a faculty member, I have inherited an anti-staff bias.

Focus on Disconfirmation

The confirmation/disconfirmation bias asymmetry is such that our criticisms of opposing arguments are more epistemically valuable than our own arguments for our positions.

Discrimination & Discretion

Discrimination should be strongest within aspects of the criminal justice system in which cops, lawyers, & judges have the most leeway to push hard or let it slide.

Statistical Garnish

"Statistical garnish" is prevalent in opinion articles & debates: using a small set of fancy-seeming stats to support your case, contra a genuine attempt to understand the scientific/statistical literature on an issue (like SSC often does).

Forward & Backward "Why" Questions

There are at least two distinct types of 'why' questions: specific ones about (forward) causal inference, and abductive ones about generating new hypotheses (reverse).

Origins of Epistemology of Disagreement

A lot of thought on the epistemology of disagreement comes before and outside philosophy (hat tip: James Bailey on COVID-19 experts)

Teleology & Counterfactuals

There may be a connection between teleological explanations and counterfactual explanations, at least in biology & psychology.

"Not Violence" vs. Nonviolence

A history of "not violence" (as opposed to nonviolence) within the civil rights movement emphasizes the right to self defense against state violence.

My Language of Politics

I'm pretty dedicated to the progressive narrative of oppression. (Arnold Kling's Three Languages of Politics, via Russ Roberts on Amit Varma's podcast)

Cancel Culture Obsession

 I don't like how much I'm interested in cancel culture.

How Is My Curriculum Philosophy?

 I haven't done nearly enough to diversify my curricula ("How Is This Paper Philosophy?").

Biology & Reductionism

The claim that biology reduces to chemistry (like chemistry reduces to physics) is more disputed than I thought.

Utilitarianism & Progressive Values

Bentham advocated for decriminalizing gay sex. I'm not sure whether to give more credence to utilitarianism for being ahead of the curve on feminism and gay rights, or whether Mill's ties to Bentham provide a social, nonrational explanation.

Meritocracy & the "Great Man" Myth

A commitment to meritocracy stems from the "great man" myth that science only progresses from genius to genius.

Conspiratorial Rationalists

There's a (growing?) pocket of conspiratorial media-distrusters in the rationalist community.

Understand Prior Literature

Scientists should spend more time understanding the prior literature before attempting new research.

Police Defiance Cycle

There may be a vicious cycle between police's dislike of defiance and inner-city citizens' code of defiance.

Keep It Simple: Blame Epistemic Vices

Epistemic vices may be more relevant to the spread of misinformation than politicization and polarization.

Air Conditioning & COVID-19

Potential interaction effects make modeling associations harder.

College & Intellectual Culture

A huge thing college did for me was make me aware intellectual culture exists. 

Are Prisons Obselete?

Angela Davis's case for abolishing prisons is worth taking seriously.

Simplest Critique of The Book of Why

A causal diagram approach may just shift where the questionable assumptions lie.

Slate Star Codex Props

I've gotten many insights from Slate Star Codex. (Scott Alexander deleted his blog to prevent a New York Times reporter from revealing his name.)

Sontag on Camp

I finally have a decent understanding of what 'camp' is.

Abolition Over Reform

I align more closely with #8toabolition than #8cantwait.

Collider Bias

There are more complicated correlations that don't equal causation, such as collider bias. (I learned this reading chapters 4-6 of The Book of Why.)

'Neutral' Laws Favor Cops

The critical race theorist's claim that neutral laws are biased in favor of the powerful applies especially to cops.

Radical Reform

Police reform should be far more radical than my uncritical alief about the subject. (I learned this watching the mass protests surrounding Black Lives Matter throughout the weekend.)

Scalable Adequacy

Elite institutions designed to get "the best of the best" aren't scalable. Instead, there's value in setting up systems that succeed with mediocre participants.

Cardiologists Aren't Immoral

An intuitively overwhelming number of examples is often still a small sample.

Colleges Mostly Aren't Elite

I need to do more to fight the tendency to conflate "colleges" and "elite colleges."

Wisdom from Error

Philosophers aren't wise. People who've learned from a bunch of mistakes are.

Tom Wolfe Trumps Michael Shermer

"[Y]ou can learn more from being gullible [open-minded] than from being guarded [skeptical]."

Excellence & Equality

Excellence and equality--virtue and deontology--are hard to square.

Listen to Experts

Philosophy's individualistic methodology has made me overconfident in my ability to figure out an issue by researching it on my own rather than reaching out and listening to relevant experts outside of philosophy

Recalling Old Thoughts on Trust

My paper and letter-to-the-editor on safe spaces for the West Chester Writing Center class had some crucial insights on establishing trust before productive disagreements that I had somewhat forgotten.

Trust & Disagreements

Establishing trust at the start of a potential disagreement is a bigger insight worth teaching and writing about.

Productive Disagreement Scooped

Someone already wrote the book on my recent intellectual obsession of productive disagreement.

The Assistant & Patrick Wilson

There's a tremendous power imbalance between a famous man (Patrick Wilson) nonchalantly ignoring an unknown woman in an elevator (I learned this when watching The Assistant.)

I Believe in Magic

I like magic a lot more than I typically admit. (I learned this at my friend Caitlin's birthday party, where she hired a magician.)

Discrimination in Contact & Contract

Glenn Loury's focus on discrimination in contact (social discrimination), which is distinct from discrimination in contract (economic discrimination), encourages practically conservative policy suggestions but stems from liberal ideals of helping the disenfranchised. He understood this position as neoconservativism in the 80's.

Epistemic Dependence

I haven't emphasized the importance of epistemic dependence as an intellectual virtue to my critical thinking students.

Dual Concepts

Some concepts ('art,' 'friend,' 'law'?) are dual concept, while others ('stroller,' 'clock') are not.

FANTI

Fans and critics of someone or something often overlap.

Statistics Is About Ignorance

Statistics is not about detecting facts, but about ignorance.

Moral Skepticism

Intuitions about the burden of proof in the moral realism/skepticism debate are even further apart than I thought.

Laundering Uncertainty

A danger of statistics is using it to launder uncertainty.