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Lovkush Agarwal's avatar

Interesting and useful! Seems related to idea in ssc/acx post about 'straight lines drive reality'. https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-straight-lines-on-graphs-or-do-straight-lines-on-graphs-drive-reality/

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Philip Dhingra's avatar

Great concept. The "regression to mean" phenomenon that seems everywhere isn't just statistical or selection bias (we notice stark changes, but stark changes are outliers), but instead, they are natural to the multi-dimensional web of incentives in which everything exists.

Anecdotally, I joke about how when I started taking hangover pills, they worked until I started drinking twice as much.

Or: We've done lots of work on life-extension over the last hundred years, but we've compensated for it with life-shorteners, such as skydiving and drug abuse.

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Philip Dhingra's avatar

Great concept. The "regression to mean" phenomenon that seems everywhere isn't just statistical or selection bias (we notice stark changes, but stark changes are outliers), but instead, they are natural to the multi-dimensional web of incentives in which everything exists.

Anecdotally, I joke about how when I started taking hangover pills, they worked until I started drinking twice as much.

Or: We've done lots of work on life-extension over the last hundred years, but we've compensated for it with life-shorteners, such as skydiving and drug abuse.

Expand full comment