Julia Galef

Author of THE SCOUT MINDSET and host of the Rationally Speaking podcast

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@benskuhn @danluu Nice -- congratulations to both Wave and @danluu!

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@Chris_Auld This is the kind of thing I was thinking of, yeah.

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

Statistics / social science folks:

When authors of an observational study claim they "controlled for" various confounding factors, how much should I trust that they actually successfully did?

Never? Only sometimes? (If so, when? Do you have heuristics you use?)

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@abiogeneration Yeah! I think I actually do this, but hadn't consciously articulated it as a rule

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@mike_peel Sure, I'm just often suspicious that there are hidden factors they couldn't control for.

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@MVLibertas @Quillette @revivingreason Aw, thanks!

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Five Lessons from @juliagalef 's ‘The Scout Mindset." (Julia was a guest on the most recent episode of my BBC podcast series "Think with Pinker" https://t.co/hzLh55KbAR) https://t.co/RZTMKKkR7a

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

The evidence strongly suggests that pre-K is just day care.

https://t.co/LtXfUcpoFd

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@CoughsOnWombats Agreed. I try to account for that, but it's hard to know for sure

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

Yes, the media & scientific establishment often misrepresent things

But "...therefore we can't trust ANYTHING they say" is the wrong conclusion

So what's the right conclusion?

It's tricky, but @slatestarcodex has a characteristically great take: https://t.co/8LCkKiPTET

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@gmiller @coldxman I'm definitely more sympathetic to his view than that. But regardless, what I wanted to praise was the *policy* of thinking about the specifics of individual cases, not the outcome of that policy here

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

People tend to have a simple rule (e.g. "cancel culture = bad," or "race in hiring = bad") and get reflexively angry at anything that pattern-matches to that

So I really appreciate the rare people who reflect on the specifics of each case to decide if it's actually bad 👇

[Coleman Hughes @coldxman]

1/ I'm not angry about Biden basing his supreme court decision on race & gender. And I've put my finger on why.

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@beckyquick83 @mattyglesias Huh, interesting, thank you!

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@alexandrosM @AdamCatalyst @stuartbuck1 @slatestarcodex I haven't watched that video, but I know that she was recently saying ivermectin "prevents deaths by 80%"

I assumed that stat must include the (now known to be) fraudulent studies. But are you saying she still thinks the effectiveness is 80% even without those studies?

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@DRMacIver (It actually isn’t the *best* characterization of my ideology; I just thought it was hilarious that this was the very first pic I found!)

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@DRMacIver The actual most recent pic in my library:

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@alexandrosM @slatestarcodex I don't understand that comment (maybe I'm missing some context)?

I was just asking if her estimate of ivermectin's effectiveness (and how confident she is in that estimate) has changed after excluding the studies we now know are fraudulent

I'm not talking about publishing

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@alexandrosM @slatestarcodex I haven't listened to that podcast, but it seems weird that someone's analysis would not change much when you remove the fraudulent studies, since those were the ones showing a huge effect

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@alexandrosM @slatestarcodex As an aside: does Tess Lawrie agree that some of the ivermectin studies are fraudulent and should be ignored?

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@alexandrosM @slatestarcodex I'm surprised, I thought you would agree with #3

That the experts who ought to be good at evaluating evidence don't think ivermectin works -- don't you agree with that?
(you just think those "experts" are mistaken / misleading us)

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@curiouswavefn What are the differences of degree in, though? Is it about the predictive power of genes on educational attainment? @kph3k estimated that to be about 17%... you're suggesting critics disagree because they think it's significantly lower than 17%?

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

I had an interesting disagreement yesterday that seemed to come down to what counts as "genetic determinism" (click through for thread)

I'm still confused though... (cont.)

[Julia Galef @juliagalef]

@ras_nielsen @Graham_Coop @molly_przew @kph3k i.e., are you saying that only *neurological* explanations (for the relationship between genes and EA ) constitute genetic determinism?

Maybe that's the piece of your model I was missing