Jonathan Haidt, overrated?
Tyler Cowen calls Jon Haidt's work consistently very good. I'm surprised. I am a big fan of Jon Haidt's research project, but I'm much less of a fan of the execution. T?
Hail Johnny Roccia!
Johnny Roccia’s amazing compliment giving proficiency is not just laudable in itself, but very likely reflects more fundamental, highly admirable and enviable qualities.
While I am yet to meet him in person (and boy do I look forward to that event), I am quite confident in my impression that Johnny is an extremely cheerful, nay, jovial character. I truly think this is one of the most desirable traits one can have, both in terms of ext- and int-ernalities. This bodes extremely well for his marriage, among other things, and I strongly congratulate all parties involved in it 🙂
Johnny is a great appreciater of good things. He is a great identifier and put-one’s-finger-on-er of the good in things 🙂 I also gather that he is extremely good at taking pleasure in things simple and complex, somber and naughty.
Might he be like a smart Andy Dwyer?
He is brilliant, of course, but I feel like this goes without saying 🙂 I am very lucky to have him among my inner Facebook circles. His posts and comments are a pleasure to read.
Not least because, as I have told him before, he is clearly one of the funniest people on my Facebook.
Looking for concise statements of revered people’s original contributions
Hermione Granger and the Methods of Rationality
Should Hermione have been the main character in HPMOR? Making her the child prodigy would have been closer to the original character. A Harry Potter aficionado tells me she can't help but think this while reading HPMOR.
Art induces personality changes, perhaps by legitimising bouts of fickleness
Maja Djikic and Keith Oatley say:
Recent studies have shown that reading literary fiction can prompt personality changes that include improvements in abilities in empathy and theory-of-mind. We review these studies and propose a psychological conception of artistic literature as having 3 aspects that contribute to such changes. These are that literary fiction is simulation of selves with others in the social world; that taking part in this type of simulation can produce fluctuations that are precursors to personality changes; and that the changes occur in readers’ own ways, being based not on persuasion but on indirect communication.
(…)
Fluctuations in personality comparable to those that occurred in reading artistic literature have been found when people listened to music (Djikic, 2011) and looked at pieces of visual art (Djikic, Oatley, & Peterson, 2012).
Maja Djikic, Keith Oatley and Matthew Carland say:
We tested whether the genre of a literary text (essay as compared with short story) or its artistic merit would be primarily responsible for the variability in the self-perceived personality traits that individuals experience when they read. One hundred participants were randomly assigned to read either one of eight essays or one of eight short stories, matched for length, reading difficulty, and interest. The Big-Five personality traits were measured before and after reading. Genre did not affect variability in personality. Rather, participants who judged the text they read to be more artistic reported a greater variability in their personality trait profile after reading, independently of whether the text was an essay or a short story.
…we need to be able to change our nature and norms, to adapt to changing conditions. Yet we also want such changes to feel authentic, and not consciously or overtly done just to accommodate neighbors.
(…)
We become like metal that is forged by heat; we usually have a solid reliable shape, but we let ourselves be reshaped by the rare heat of great impressiveness.
Open Borders blogging commitment
If I have not written 2 new Open Borders posts by the end of February 2015, I will pay Vipul Naik USD 500.
[source:Â https://www.facebook.com/sebastian.nickel.7587/posts/10154982122345026]
Quick review of “Zero to One” on Goodreads
I think it’s worth reading of you’re interested in starting and funding businesses, especially since it’s such a quick read. I found PT’s thoughts on and defense of monopolies particularly interesting.
But I was disappointed by the strength of his argumentation. I expected this book to read like the work of a sharp, keen thinker, but his reasoning throughout the book is actually very sloppy and relies very heavily on cherry picked examples.
