Metablog

“Darwin”, of DarwinCatholic, (h/t Gene Expression) writes here about a Business Week piece on the ethics of selective abortion using genetic screening for various disorders.

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This comment thread at unfogged was what sparked my musings about the absence of psychology in blogging, and its further development has given me an idea about why there’s a lack. I think it’s because for really helpful advice to be taken and given, you have to have a good, close relationship with the person or people you’re asking advice from. And because of the chicken-egg problem, a blog focusing on personal advice won’t be able to garner the trust and familiarity needed to take off. Plus, many blogs act as strong demographic selectors on their commenters, and people in similar life situations and of similar intellectual proclivities are going to be able to give better advice to each other than people with less in common. A more narrowly focused, non-ideological blog certainly wouldn’t do that as strongly. And the idea of the Unfogged post, of encouraging commenters, even regular ones, to post with a different pseudonym whenever they want to contribute an anecdote or ask a question that they don’t want associated with their main pseud for some reason, is a good one. People have already occasionally done this at Unfogged (and do it at other blogs, I’m sure,) but the practice was rare enough to not rise to the status of convention, and thus there was a small barrier that held back a considerable number people from asking advice over the months. (”Over the months”—heh, it’s internet time nowadays, baby!)

One reason I hate being smart is that psychotherapy doesn’t really work out all that great for me, for two reasons:

1. I’m so good at rationalizing things that I can convince my therapist.
2. I already have such elaborate theories of what’s wrong with me that I can’t really present myself in a way that the therapist can form their own considered opinion. They hear my theory first and end up agreeing with me.

I could probably get better advice if I weren’t so articulate.

Something I’ve been wondering recently about the internet. Where are the good psychology blogs? No, not this kind of psychology blog—I mean the kind of theraputic psychology with psychoanalysis behavioral therapy and “tell me about your mother”. There’s plenty of pablum out there. And there are plenty of people who occasionally or even regularly blog about sometimes intensely personal issues. But where are the expert or amateur counselor-bloggers? It seems like everything on the internet of this nature is just big, poorly designed ads for some service or workshop or book or 8-cassette-series-with-free-workbook-for-only-49-95. It’s all shit. And yeah, there’s a a few good things, like eMedicine, but it’s not really the same thing as concrete advice, you know? I’m just surprised at the lack of quality that abounds. It either indicates that I really don’t know where to look, or that psychological counselling is a profession that is really low on brainpower. Or maybe that no one really knows what they’re doing?

Robin Hanson, Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and others have started a new blog, called Overcoming Bias. I highly recommend it.

Having participated in a couple of discussions in the past day or two, my experience has really driven home, once again, my belief that most people are really terrible at debating. So I decided to write an article about the biggest problem I saw. (I completely gave up on the discussion at Alas, a Blog. The commenters ginmar and Q Grrl especially were guilty of the faults I describe there. Also, I’m not resentful in particular about these discussions, they just happened to be the most recent ones I’ve had that have led me to think about these issues, and thus, to write this post. Also, I’d like to say that LizardBreath is already a quite good follower of the advice I give in the third section of the article, though of course there’s always room for improvement.)

You should really, really go read it now. It’s also right over there on the sidebar, so if you ever want to link to it, you know where to find it.

I remember reading somewhere (don’t feel like googling) that people who spend time in “enemy” forums, like liberals posting at Red State or whatnot, tend to solidify their prejudices about the other side, and rarely really gain a more naunced and sympathetic understanding of their opponents’ positions. I wonder if the dynamic I describe in the article is at least part of the mechanism behind this.

Having a minimum wage increases unemployment among the low-skilled. It also makes it more expensive for companies to get low-skill tasks done. But without a minimum wage, our poor would become even more impoverished, and the country would be a pretty terrible place to live. A universal basic income (a policy I support) would alleviate the negative aspects of this associated with poverty, but it wouldn’t really help with the inefficiency concerns. With a UBI, companies would still have to pay more (perhaps 50-100% more) to get low-skill tasks done, because the jobs are generally distasteful, and the marginal utility of the salary to the workers would be much lower. If the UBI were a guarantee, where the government makes up the difference between the basic income line and the person’s salary, the situation for employers would be worse — the guarantee line would form an effective minimum wage higher than itself. If the UBI were independent of the person’s other income, the effective minimum wage would probably be considerably less than the UBI level.

Whether the minimum wage is effective, though a UBI, or actual, it would create incentives for companies to automate, which I think is a Good Thing.

As it's a bit private, I'd rather not have this post's contents in this archive section. Don't read this if you aren't interested in reading personal details of my life.

I’ve never liked IM (instant messaging). I’ve never formed a friendship over it. I’ve never advanced existing friendships over it. Now, I’ve found it pretty useful, sure. It helps me keep in touch with coworkers and existing friends.

But I’ve always been so nervous when using IM. Perhaps not as bad as this, but I always worry so much about missing important cues. Does the person really want to talk to me, or are they responding out of politeness? What does it mean when the person doesn’t initiate conversations? How often is often enough, and how often isn’t? I always end up feeling neglected by the people I chat with, or pushy for talking so much, or like I’m holding up all the effort in the conversation. Now, according to some, this makes me paranoid. But am I, really? Well, probably.

Addressed to the owner of Amygdala. In response to this comments thread.

If you want me to speculate about why you don’t have more commenters, Gary, I can. (And if you don’t, well, you can stop reading now.) You write very a lot of very long pieces. Many people don’t like to read blogs that have over a certain number of average words a day, because it takes too much time to keep up with it all. (Many of these people don’t read very fast.) You could consider splitting your blog into different blogs for different purposes. Political posts on one blog, sci fi and comics posts on another. Something like that. That way people won’t have to make the effort to skip posts they’re not interested in, (and believe me when I say that this has a huge effect—most people don’t have good filtering skills, and will stop reading a blog regularly sooner than skip uninteresting posts) because you’ll already have done that. You could consider cutting down on the word count. Editing posts down more, making them more pithy.

In many posts, you’re basically quoting other people. Quotes necessarily involve a switch in voice and style and context, and so reading them is much harder than reading a single voice throughout a post. The more quotes you include, the harder your posts are to read.

Your posts tend to be “expert” type posts. They show that you have a really large amount of knowledge about what you write about. They often require a certain amount of knowledge about those topics to understand and enjoy. People who don’t feel as knowledgable as they think you see yourself will almost never comment on this type of post. (If they think they know as much as you, but think that you think you know more, they won’t comment.) People who don’t want to make the mental effort to parse large numbers of details in order to understand your posts well enough to comment on them (even if they would be able to, and would have something to say) won’t do so. (This is the reason my blog doesn’t get many comments.)

Your writing isn’t very entertaining. A lot of it is just cursory comments on stuff that you’ve read. A lot of the value you provide is in linking to the stuff in the first place, and while that’s quite valuable, it’s not something that draws a big following, or a lot of comments. (In fact, I imagine more blog owners read you than do people who only comment, since you’re a good content filter to use for material for others.) But most of what people like in blogs is commentary—opinion, argumentation, conversation. Your writing lacks color, stylistic variety, metaphor, and narrative flow that engages the reader. (Yes, that is essential to good non-fiction.)

To the extent that people are drawn to blogs because of the owner’s persona, yours stinks. When you refer to your personal life, it’s always in a negative or apologetic way. This repels people. When you provide people insights into your life, they should always be calculated to endear people to you.

Oh, and you require registration for comments.

That probably covers most of it.