Against the Mathematicians

I first read it in the fall of 2011, and when Act 6 started, I was one of the first people to start complaining that something felt off about it.  People told me to give it time, and I did, and then I felt vindicated when other people finally decided “yeah, Act 6 has really gone to shit” … even though people were deciding that years and thousands of pages after I did, at very different points in the story.  And even when I first joined the conversation, there were people who thought I was uncritically eating up low-quality content after a point, that it had stopped being good somewhere in 2011 as the schedule slowed down, or in late 2010 when everything started being about trolls.

People got off the train at drastically different points, but the fact that you eventually would get off the train started to seem like an inherent property of the work itself: it is very widely agreed of Homestuck that it “stops being good at some point,” even though there is little agreement on where that point is.  (As if to prove the rule, many/most of the relatively few people who were still on board in the last days were put off by the ending itself.)

I’m saying this after reading a post talking about how Homestuck (as in, the continued output of the media franchise now that the comic is over) has gone downhill, as illustrated by stuff that happened today, in 2017.  It sure sounds bad, as one would expect it to be, given how much time it’s had to decline!  (By 2030, “Homestuck” will be listed in some future president’s equivalent of the Axis of Evil.)

and sometimes i go to the simpsons archive for a really great episode and it’s incredible how many Bs and C+s and D-s there are in the contemporary reviews from usenet fans

and it’s exactly the same, in seasons 3 and 4 the internet was complaining that it wasn’t enough like seasons 1 or 2, in seasons 5 and 6 people thought the show peaked in seasons 3 and 4, and so on

I wouldn’t frame it in terms of “mental health” - I think it’s on an axis skew to anxiety/depression/etc - but yeah, I find it pretty scary. I’m reading “The Hungry Brain” now which argues that obesity is because modern food is a superstimulus (well, it’s more complicated than that, I’ll review it eventually). In other areas, though, I’m surprised at how well we’re doing. Tumblr is probably a superstimulus for community or something, but not really in a bad way. It just means we’re getting more community. Netflix and erotica and so on seem to be making a lot of people very happy with unclear side effects (I know some people think porn has weird mental health issues, but my barrier for evidence here is high because Puritans gonna Puritan).

I expect at some point someone will come up with something horrible and then we’ll have to really confront this. If nothing else, the Amish will inherit the earth and we can start over from there.

television is a superstimulus for community

it wiped out all the communities that used to exist, which means that the Internet is now basically the only option for a proper community space

I feel like this reflects kind of a weird view about the purpose of insurance.

Why do I have, say, flood insurance on my house? Let’s say there’s a 1% chance that my house gets destroyed in a flood, and my house is worth a million dollars. In a world without insurance, I have to save all the money I possibly can in order to be prepared for this potential cost, and even if I do I still probably won’t have saved enough and I’ll end up bankrupt or something. With insurance, I can just pay the $10,000 and not worry about it again.

The insurance is necessary because of our uncertainty: no one can predict exactly when and where floods will happen. It’s not about making everyone share the risks of floods. It would be ridiculous to suggest that it’s only fair that someone in Iowa pay the same for flood insurance as someone in Florida. The person in Florida should internalize the costs of the extra risks they’re taking.

And like, if we somehow got better at predicting floods, that would be great, right? Sure, it would make some people’s insurance more expensive. But it would make others’ cheaper. And it would allow everyone to better account for the cost of floods when thinking about the tradeoffs of different houses.

Substitute cancer or heart disease for floods. What makes that situation different?

I guess one thing people would say is that where you live is your choice, while your health outcomes aren’t. But I don’t think that’s super clear. You can do lots of things (exercise, diet, sleep) to influence your health outcomes. And there are lots of reasons people might be constrained in their choice of where to live–job opportunities, family members who need caregiving, whatever.

I think that what Cathy O'Neil really wants is socialized medicine. She thinks it’s unfair that people with worse health have to pay more for healthcare, and the government should just pay for everyone’s health care out of progressive taxes or whatever. And sure, it is unfair.

the story bob gordon tells is: modern life insurance became widespread in america in the early 20th century. since life insurance companies are interested in making sure their policyholders stay alive, 

[B]y the early twentieth century most large [insurance] companies provided information on personal health and hygiene. Several companies distributed millions of pamphlets on topics such as avoidance of tuberculosis, care of children, purity of milk, “flies and filth,” and a host of other potential hazards. Some companies even provided free medical examinations and visits by nurses.