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https://twitter.com/fchollet/status/1961858122672472400

https://x.com/fchollet/status/1961929084818346225

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Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Aug 31

I'm delighted by how upset this benign observation made some people, because the same thing happened with the survivorship airplane meme.

If you're unfamiliar, it's this:

The supposed origin of the image is Abraham Wald's observation that the British Royal Air Force (RAF) was reinforcing the wrong parts of planes that returned from raids on the Germans. The military was noticing where the bullet holes were in planes that returned. The fact that those planes made it back suggested that those areas of the plane were the sturdiest, and reinforcement should instead be done on the areas without bullet holes.

This is a wonderful way to illustrate the concept of survivorship bias. It's so useful that it's come to be the canonical example in many classrooms, and the image has been seen by billions. The image went viral online as a way of illustrating survivorship bias. For example, you'll regularly see the image posted in response to someone making a mistake that's due to a failure to understand survivorship bias.

When this image first started going viral, one of the common responses to it was to state that the image was not, in fact, one ever seen by Wald or used by the RAF, and that it was actually just an illustrative mockup based on another mockup by @cameronmoll from 2005. The issue with that statement is that, after a short while of being viral, almost no one knew the origin of the image, and almost no one claimed it was actually an image used by Wald of anyone in the RAF, so it doesn't matter. The image is still an excellent way to understand survivorship bias.

A good question then, is why anyone would care that this clearly illustrative image wasn't actually used by Wald or the RAF. I'm going to wager that, for most people who made that argument, they were just missing the point. But, for some, they might just be regurgitating what they saw other people saying in response to people who wrongly claimed that it was a diagram used by the RAF. People like to do that—they like to repeat what they believe to be smart arguments, even when the context makes their point irrelevant.

The moral heatmap is in this stage of mimesis, where there's still a large mass of holdouts who haven't accepted that the meme just is the meme regardless of the study the diagram comes from. You see these holdouts everywhere, but as memes spread, they become less common. They exist for scientific papers and even for basic words. Some examples follow:

"Alpha" and "Beta": Supposedly pieces of wolf status hierarchies, these words now just mean you're a "Chad" or a "Virgin", a winner or a loser. The research on wolves didn't work out and the concepts don't hold up there, but it doesn't matter one bit, because these words now have a meaning separate from their misconceived origin. If someone says 'X is alpha!' or 'Y is a beta!' you don't win the argument by saying 'Actually, those parts of wolf status hierarchies don't exist in the real world' you just look retarded, because the words now describe something real: losers and winners! (With some added nuance that comes from sentiment attached to alpha/beta.)

The Dunning-Kruger Effect: This is supposedly the psychological bias where people with low knowledge/ability/awareness/etc. are overconfident. In some permutations, of the phenomenon, experts are underconfident, but it's irrelevant. What people understand the phenomenon to be isn't real: it's a statistical illusion resulting from binning a continuous variable with a raised intercept and an imperfect correlation between confidence and knowledge.

But, if you bring this up to debunk someone saying "Dunning-Kruger" to suggest someone is an overconfident buffoon, you just look retarded, because the words now describe something real.

The Banality of Evil: This is the idea that anyone can be made to do great evil, particularly through the influence of just following directions from authority figures. This was supposed to explain the Holocaust. Banality was supposedly confirmed in a series of experiments that took place at Harvard in the 1960s. In the Milgram experiments, students were told to shock someone they couldn't see, even as the shock intensity kept escalating and the person behind the wall screamed out louder and louder. They supposedly took part in this because the test administrator—an authority figure—was urging them along.

But in reality, the experiments were misdescribed and participants resisted more than Milgram said. Subjects also didn't go along with the experiments nearly as often if they believed them to be real. They also just didn't comply, applying weaker shocks when the experimenter was urging stronger ones.

The Banality of Evil is not real, but it doesn't matter. If you say we know it's not real, you are being retarded, because the concept still has utility in the expanded set of cases it's applied to these days, and in being used as a touchpoint to explain 'going along with orders.'

"Left-Brain/Right-Brain": This is the idea that the left and right hemispheres of the brain divide logical thinking from creative thinking, and that certain personalities have a given dominant hemisphere. The idea is untrue, but if you call this out when someone says something like 'That's very left-brained of you!', then you are being retarded, because left/right brain has entered the popular lexicon and it now refers to personality regardless of if its origins describe some real neural locallization.

"Reptile Brain": Carl Sagan popularized this one. This one comes from a now-discredited model of the evolution of the human brain, from the brain reptiles have—basal ganglia—to one other mammals have, allowing emotion—with the addition of the limbic system—to the one we humans have, allowing higher thought—with the addition of the neocortex.

After Sagan's popularization, people started to use being reptile brained as an insult. You can allege someone's actions are due to their reptile brain, making them a primitive. Though this concept and a lot of its support is now discredited, it led to good theorizing and discoveries, and if you respond to someone saying you're reptile-brained for being dumb, then you are being retarded, because the term now has a separate meaning from the theory it originated from.

"Marshmallow experiments": This refers to a very influential experiment where kids were told they could have a marshmallow now or have two if they waited. The kids who waited were supposedly vastly more successful in life. This is an interesting way of conveying that people who exercise more self-control are likely to be more successful later on. The experiment didn't itself hold up, but people now use the term "Marshmallow experiment" to refer to things where having self-control matters. For example, 'life is a series of marshmallow experiments'. Replying to this by saying that the experiment didn't hold up is retarded, because it's now a shorthand for delayed gratification.

"Lemmings": These cut little animals supposedly jump off of a cliff and kill themselves. But in real life, they don't do that. That was just a myth made by Disney. Nowadays, the name of the animal is often used to refer to people engaging in self-injurious or suicidal behaviors. You can point out that lemmings don't actually kill themselves, but you'll just look retarded, because a 'lemming' now refers to something besides the animal.

"A Frog Doesn't Notice It's Being Boiled": Kind of says it all. They do notice, but it doesn't matter, because when people use this phrase, they're almost never referring to actual frogs being boiled, they're referring to situations where people are haplessly unaware of dangerous changes around them. If you correct people by saying that frogs do notice being boiled, then you looked retarded, because again, that is not what people are really referring to, it is a turn of phrase.

"Eskimo Have 100 Words for Snow": This funny phrase was meant to humorously illustrate cultural relativism, but people started taking it literally. Now it's mostly not used as a fact about Eskimo culture, but as a stand-in for 'cultures vary' and sometimes 'people think too much about what they're overexposed to', and if you point out that the Eskimo don't have all those distinct words for snow when someone uses it like that, you're being retarded.

"You have the memory of a goldfish!": People believe goldfish have short, three-second memories. This isn't true, but it's entered the popular lexicon. If you say someone has the memory of a goldfish, you don't look smart by replying that 'actually, goldfish remember many things in the long term', you just look retarded, because people generally are not referring to actual goldfish memory span, they're saying you have a short memory.

"She's a Type-A personality": Some people have claimed that there are two main personality types: A, and B. Type A personalities are ambitious, competitive, and thrive under pressure, while Type B personalities are relaxed, patient, and adaptable. These don't really exist, but if you correct someone saying that a given person is "Type A" to refer to their ambitious personality, then you are being retarded, because their statement isn't based off of the theory, it's a broad description of a person's perceived personality as being a certain way.

Tons of these concepts have proliferated and entered the public consciousness. New ones enter it all the time, and I think we should generally welcome them if the concept has a real referent worth being able to talk about more clearly, which is what the concepts provide us with. The person who just can't accept this, who has to point out that these things aren't real, just doesn't get that memes evolve. They're the same sort of person who also points out things like:

- People misuse the word "literally"
- People misuse the word "ironic"
- People misuse the word "decimate"
- People misuse the word "peruse"
- People misuse the word "spazz"
- People misuse the word "approximate"
- People misuse the word "nauseous"
- People misuse the word "factoid
- People misuse the word "bigot"
- People misuse the word "nonplussed"
- People misuse the term "begs the question"
- Economists are misusing the word "identification"
- People misuse the term "enormity"
- People REALLY misuse the term "moot point"
- Etc.

But language evolves, and the misuses of literally decimating spazzes help us to understand one another better. They can also help people to signal affiliations, make their use in jokes, etc.

I propose that the people who feel compelled for whatever reason to object to memes and words that've evolved beyond the use they're trying to bring them back to are suffering from dysmimesis. Mimesis refers to the representation of the real world in art and literature—what the moral heatmap now does—and dysmimesis refers to the act of objecting to mimetic drift, or the dispositional urge to protest or 'correct' the evolved use of a meme, word, symbol, or practice as it spreads—i.e., resistance to mimetic/semantic drift and a wish to restore an earlier, 'proper' form.

P.S. I've used the word "retarded" a lot throughout this. It formally refers to people having adaptive behavior deficits, but almost everyone just uses it as a synonym for stupid. If you don't get that, then, well, you're a dysmimetic retard.

More reading on Banality, Marshmallow Experiments: cremieux.xyz/p/the-vast-emp…

Oh, and, yes, I am aware that the rationalist community is a frequent origin for terms like "marshmallow experiments" as they're now used. That's one of the things I like about rats!

'Do you feel smart when you object to the evolution of language and art?'

Read 6 tweets

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Aug 30

https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1961656373009437046

Complimentary approaches can make this thread's point clear.

So here's an exploration of county-level results🧵

Firstly: We can explain most of the variance in homicides by just using county race shares, and not even getting particularly detailed with them.

https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1961656373009437046

That data came from CDC WONDER.

What if we control for which party governed the states during the time period that data is from?

That adds basically nothing. The benefit of this control is nonsignificant.

We can use the tidycensus R package to pull 2018-22 ACS data, which is almost the same year range for the rest of the data.

With that, we can add county sex ratios and median ages.

That adds basically nothing. No significant benefit.

Read 10 tweets

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Aug 30

Two Democratic governors and tons more Democratic elected officials have been talking about how Red States have more crime and killing.

This is misleading🧵

Let's look at homicides. Using data from the CDC's WONDER I've plotted homicide rates by race and state:

If you look down at the bottom of the graph you'll notice the summaries for

- Red States (Republican governors for most years 2018-23)
- Blue States
- The country as a whole

I didn't plot Hispanics because that would've crowded the graph and looked even messier

Let's use this

If we compute homicide rates by state using totals, they don't come out very different from if we compute rates based on each documented race's share of the state and the homicide victims.

Doing that, Red States have a higher murder rate, until you start matching.

Read 16 tweets

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Aug 29

Crime is way down in D.C.

Is it because the National Guard is arresting tons of people, or something else?

While there have been a lot of arrests, crime is down too much for that to be all.

Let me tell you about one of my favorite crime papers. It's about police presence🧵

In 2010, the British government issued a report. The report held that there was far too much unnecessary spending going on in policing.

As a result, London's Metropolitan Police saw a 29% budget cut.

To save money, the city shut down 70% of its police stations.

The mayor's office worked to shut down police stations without reducing the number of frontline officers they employed.

They tried to make sure the remaining stations would be equally distributed around the city, so that police could plausibly still cover everything.

Read 19 tweets

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Aug 28

https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1960795470542070218

Scandinavian countries have extensive population registers that allow them to study complex phenomena with ease.

One example of this is the trans mortality rate.

It's popularly argued that this rate is extreme— >40%! —but this is not true and is exaggerated by confounding🧵

https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1960795470542070218

When we control for the number of prior contacts with psychiatric specialists, we are effectively proxying for one's history and severity of mental illness.

By doing this, researchers found that being referred for gender reasons went from predicting a doubling in risk to...

predicting zero excess mortality.

All of the extra risk of dying could be attributed to the fact that individuals who were referred for gender-related reasons had worse mental health otherwise:

Persons who had similar levels of psychiatric comorbidity died at similar rates.

Read 11 tweets

Crémieux

@cremieuxrecueil

Aug 28

People so strongly want to believe groups like Italians were considered non-White when they arrived in the U.S. that they will conflate being treated poorly with being treated like they're another race.

Every time I've mentioned this, I've gotten that same asinine response.

The people who make this argument seem to desperately want people to think that groups can become White and that the conflicts of the past were all racial.

But no.

The Irish, for example, were disliked more for being corrupt Catholics and public drunks than for being non-White.

This is from my latest article. Notably, I wrote that blurb and then people immediately commented with the wordplay angle that mistreatment is equivalent to being considered another race.

cremieux.xyz/p/european-imm…

Read 5 tweets

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