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Nathan Barnard

@nathan-barnard.bsky.social
250 followers 529 following 85 posts

Helping people is good | Empirical evidence is important | Blog at thegoodblog.substack.com

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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Lots of people who have primarily known me over the last two years I think have a pretty incorrect impression of me in a lot of ways because I've spent the last 2 years being seriously mentally ill for a year and then moderately mentally ill for a year.
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911-blondie.bsky.social @911-blondie.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
It's so good! (and on audible if that's signfgiant for you)
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
have you read Deng Xioping and the transformation of china
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Yeah i think some of the darker findings from anthropolgy are so interesting.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
i would love a hot take
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
found writing really brutal for the last 3 weeks, and now it's so easy
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
I'm reading "By Steppe, Desert and Ocean" at the moment and "Blood and Iron" - both excellent (and the first is free on audible although that may be less relevent you than it is to me
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Jeff Sebo @jeffsebo.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
The audiobook for Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves is 70% off until January 2! Excellent stocking stuffer for anyone who wants to bask in misery about pandemics, climate change, and other catastrophes during the holidays :)
audiobooks.com
70% OFF Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and other Catastrophes
In 2020, COVID-19, the Australia bushfires, and other global threats served as vivid reminders that human and nonhuman fates are increasingly linked. Human use of nonhuman animals contributes to pande...
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Peter Singer @petersinger.info · 04/12/2024
Ingrid Newkirk, the co-founder and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (@officialpeta.bsky.social), talks about the disturbing reality of animal experimentation, highlighting the many animals subjected to tests that cause them to suffer without benefitting humans.
youtu.be
Ingrid Newkirk on Animal Experimentation
YouTube video by Peter Singer
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
does anyone have strong nuclear winter takes
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
(and good practice particuarly when one has a strong emotational reaction)
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
I don't think that this is equvilent - to be very clear - but I think in hindsight the social democracts were wrong not to play dirty in weimar. Again, I think that this action is, in expectaton, one of the worst a modern president will take, and i'm steelmanning because it is good practice.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
My gut reaction is that I strongly agree and think that this is horrific. I slightly wonder if there are good tit for tat game theroy reasons to do this. I think almost certainly not, but that's my steelman of the case for it.
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Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
NEW: Why do we always think crime is rising, even when it isn’t? This week I looked at one of the big data mysteries. Britain is 2/3 less violent than the 1990s; thefts were higher pre-lockdown Why, then, doesn’t it feel like it? 1/8 @thetimes.com 🔗 www.thetimes.com/article/b63d...
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
FWIW I think your shutdown problem work is pretty ambitious (although perhaps should be viewed as a special case because it's applying results in mature field to a large problem in an immatuture one, which perhaps gives us a priori reason to think that one can gain traction on the largest problems)
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
My guess is that this is also feild depdendent, and the younger the peak of the feild is the more ambitious one should be early on. Of course there's also a training compoant and you have more inside knowledge on this than me.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
I think in areas where it's difficult, aiming for results which are unlikely on priors is socially harmful. Social psychology is the obvious area where this is the case.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
I think a subtility here is around how easy false positives are to detect. In formal subjects, where I think it's roughly easist, I think it's worthwhile being very ambitious because it's easy to verfiy.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
If you could know ex ante of course how likely you were to do paradigm shifting work then that would be great, but that's not obvious to me (perhaps outside of pure maths but even then most fields medalists were not IMO medalists.)
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
But like the EV seems worth it? Academia is extremely heavy tailed, and although plausilby for induviudal students this is bad advice with respect to their prudential interests, it could still be socially valueable for most people to take these longshots.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Literally all of mine are children's authors.
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Alex Hill @alexlizhill.com · 29/11/2024
Verified my account, so my handle is now my (new) domain name, alexlizhill.com (which is where you can find my Substack now). It was super easy, see bsky.social/about/blog/4...
alexlizhill.com
alexlizhill.com | Alex Hill | Substack
Former logician. Aspiring health economist. Thinking about philosophy, econ, public health, history, feminism, and lots of other things! Click to read alexlizhill.com, by Alex Hill, a Substack publica...
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
somewhat forshadowing a more serious post on christianity
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
a different tone from the rest of my blog open.substack.com/pub/thegoodb...
open.substack.com
Ranking the Narnia books
It's my blog and I'll write what I want to
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
you would do such a public service if you could write something up that explains how the flavours of monism work i'm so confused
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
I think it's hard to answer this question for alian civiliations because I don't know how common eusolciality is and other weird stuff, but like I think it's surprising that we have wikipeadia which i think is what you were trying to get at
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Epoch AI @epochai.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
We've just launched our AI Benchmarking Hub! This is a new platform for rigorous, independent evaluations of AI model capabilities, featuring interactive visualizations and in-depth analysis. (1/8) epoch.ai/blog/introdu...
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
this is Huemer post in question fakenous.substack.com/p/why-do-pro...
fakenous.substack.com
Why Do Progressives Like Islam?
1.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
A reply to a Michael Huemer post from march thegoodblog.substack.com/p/a-response...
thegoodblog.substack.com
A response to Michael Huemer on why progressives like Islam
I initially wrote this as a note which I couldn't post and it would make me sad if I couldn't post it somehow
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 27/11/2024
It's kinda wild that Messi is inhumanly good and a better player is kinda obviously possible (more two-footed, faster, taller, probably)
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
I had about three weeks 2 years when my OCD was sufficiently bad that I strongly preferred to be asleep than being awake, and I tried to be asleep a lot. I think this is the only sustained period of my life that has been net negative from a self-interested point of view.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
whoa so based
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
in that case, there are probably also physical health things that matter a lot (maybe stuff to prevent back pain in middle age?) although I don't know them because I'm a 23 year old sporty man.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
I'm worreid that these replies were excessively pedantic
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
Maybe also "have a good manager", although I'm less confident in that one, and it's also less actionable and maybe more zero-sum.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
I would guess that "get ADHD medication" and "use CBT+medication to not be mentally ill" both have reasonably large effect sizes for the populations with the largest productivity problems. But also I would read that post - but then I would a very large fraction of the posts you would write.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
My guess is that many will justify their stance with the view that other people are cheating and lazy ect. I think Rich men north of Richmond expresses a similar sentiment in a US context (although very clearly racealised in a way which doesn't map quite cleanly to a UK context.)
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I mean, jokes play a social role.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Why is this obviously bad? Is it an objection to making decisions using rules more generally or an objection to deep neural networks being used to make decisions more specifically? For instance, if logistic regression was used instead of deep neural networks, would that be better?
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Plausible, but I don't think it has the same blackpill energy. There are obviously many jobs that are much more open to the types of people seeing this tweet that advance green tech.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
sorry, I didn't mean this as anti-Irish in particular
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
OCD makes me have systemically false beliefs that become my dominant phenomenological experience, and it is good when these symptoms don't happen.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
Both medication and therapy have been very helpful for me in managing OCD
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
As someone who is often personally somewhat unusual (although not in a fashion-type way), it's also possible that my personal preferences are colouring my response to this.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I also temperamentally really really dislike people being made fun of. Unclear the degree which this is a good position to hold, but I imagine it's coloured my perceptions here.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I think the case for it is that there can be a kind of pretension that this kind of social conservatism can push back on, but I am a liberal and I think in the long run this kind of conservatism has done far far more harm than good.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
I think this is basically bad. This looks to me like a pretty base form of social conservatism that is opposed to difference and creativity outside of an established mould.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
The amount of nate silver hate is bizarre.
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Nathan Barnard @nathan-barnard.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
It doesn't seem accurate to say that Islam has the solution to all problems.
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