Links 2023-04-09
It is never so simple as we might wish it to be.
Intelligence is vitally important and at the same time only partially explanatory for success in life. Rob Henderson explores this importance and its limitations in “Nobody is a Prisoner of Their IQ”.
Continuing with the theme of important but complicated, Virginia Postrel discusses the tradeoffs between effective and “ineffective” altruism. This is a topic I come back to from time to time as I am often a critic of much altruistic efforts. This pushes back a little on my tendency to side with the effective altruists (note: this is a tendence rather than a wholehearted siding). At the same time it gives some concrete support for when I have waivered from the island of EA.
If everything were as simple and straightforward as we wished, solutions like Effective Altruism would make progress easy. Alas, it is never that simple. As a fantastic but tragic case in point Michael Huemer argues “The Drug Laws Don't Work”.
Winners often quit, and quitters often win. That’s not the old saying, but Annie Duke thinks it should be. Grit is essential to success, but it is mistakenly understood as grit implies never quit. When stubborn is used as a virtue, we get good money chasing bad.
Perhaps dovetailing with all of the above in one fashion or another, Gurwinder explains “Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things”. We think or want to think that:
IQ is worthless or IQ is everything.
The only charity we should do is that which the experts have determined to be effective or we ignore the excellent points the EA experts make.
Drugs1 are bad; therefore, we can2 make the world better by making them illegal.
We have to finish what we start.
Each link above might leave you a bit dismayed since each challenges the certainty we all long for. One thing does seem certain. There is always nuance.
Notice how fluid and indeterminant the category of bad drugs actually is and how drug warriors of all types think in simplistic black and white terms in defining the category.
The word “can” here has too meanings—moral and effectual.