Psychometrics, vaccines, meat, Kowloon, luggage destruction

This is a real paper that actually exists

Assessing the Psychometric Properties of the Dynomight™ MBTI: A Comparative Analysis with the Original Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Journal of Psychology and Behavior Studies, 4(1), 27-37. Zrari, A., & Sakale, S. (2024).

A cohort of n=77 participants consented to engage in the study, meeting the inclusion criteria of being currently enrolled at the Tulua institution and expressing willingness to participate in both the initial assessment and the follow-up session. To assess the longitudinal consistency of the Dynomight™ MBTI, a second administration of the test was scheduled six weeks after the initial session. Empirical findings, as delineated in Table 1, manifested significant positive correlations across all dichotomies, indicative of a substantial concordance between the two assessments. The correlation coefficient for the Introversion-Extroversion axis was notably high (r = .938, p < .01), suggesting a pronounced alignment in the measurement of this dimension. Comparable strong correlations were observed for the Sensing-Intuition (r = .879, p < .01), Feeling-Thinking (r = .862, p < .01), and Judging-Perceiving (r = .847, p < .01) axes, underscoring the Dynomight™ MBTI’s proficiency in mirroring the evaluative scope of the original MBTI across the core personality dimensions.

“Dynomight™” is repeated in text 77 times.

Yeast vaccines

More is Different has a post on yeast-based vaccines, describing both why yeast-based vaccines are cool (if not self-evident) and how IRB rules can violate free speech and bodily autonomy make self-experimentation difficult:

Buck submitted an Institutional Review Board (IRB) proposal to gain permission to bring home the yeast and then use them to brew beer for his own consumption. To his surprise, an institutional bioethics committee withdrew the proposal from the submission portal before it could even be considered by the IRB. The committee argued that self-experimentation is strictly forbidden. Buck says he can find no written policies to that effect. The committee also argued that Buck could not eat the yeast strain unless it was first registered with the FDA as an Investigational New Drug. Rather than continuing to fight the bioethics committee, Buck went to his home kitchen instead.

I applaud this, but I’m a little confused about what legal theory Buck is using. The National Cancer Institute is in Maryland, and Maryland has a state law that says that all human subjects research must have IRB approval. All, with no exceptions. Perhaps Buck does not live in Maryland, or believes this law is unenforceable and/or unconstitutional.

(Many institutions have policies that say that all human subjects research conducted by employees must have IRB approval, even if those employees do it at home in their free time. But as far as I can tell, the National Cancer Institute only requires this for research done as part of official duties.)

Not a Meat Eater FAQ

Erich Grunewald makes the case. I admire this post for its willingness to acknowledge tensions and to make real concessions.

Are you sure you’re not just falling for anthropomorphic bias? How do you know your compassion for animals isn’t a misfiring of caregiving instincts we have for infants? I agree that anthropomorphism is a real phenomenon that can distort our intuitions on these questions. Sentience probably exists on a spectrum, as a result of its having evolved gradually over millions of years. Since humans appear to possess the highest degree of sentience, it makes sense that our closest evolutionary relatives would be more sentient than distant ones.

Cross-sectional illustrations of Kowloon Walled City

Kowloon Walled City “was an extremely densely populated and somewhat lawless enclave within the boundaries of Kowloon City of former British Hong Kong.” Here are some cross-sectional illustrations:

As a libertarian-curious person, I wish these kinds of experiments turned out less epic-cyberpunk and more boringly utopian. Also, the amount of frolicking in these illustrations strikes me as statistically anomolous.

Destroy luggage, save lives

YES:

One place I’d like to see this implemented is airplane evacuation. If the safety announcements included “In the event of an emergency evacuation, any carry-on luggage you bring will be confiscated and destroyed. You will also be fined.” we would have more JAL 516 (379 occupants, zero deaths) and less Aeroflot 1492 or Emirates 521.

Escapes

This thread lists some excellent escape attempts.

East Germany balloon escape:

They calculated the weight of the eight passengers and the craft itself to be around 750 kilograms (1,650 lb). Subsequent calculations determined a balloon capable of lifting this weight would need to hold 2,000 cubic metres (71,000 cu ft) of air heated to 100 °C (212 °F). The next calculation was the amount of material needed for the balloon, estimated to be 800 square metres (8,600 sq ft).

Great Papago Escape:

At least some of the escapees expected severe punishment for escaping; they were aware that 50 Allied prisoners of war had been executed after escape by their German captors in Stalag Luft III. However, the Camp Papago Park escapees were only limited to bread and water rations for as many days as they were absent from camp.

George Gamow:

Gamow later said that his first two attempts to defect with his wife were in 1932 and involved trying to kayak: first a planned 250-kilometer paddle over the Black Sea to Turkey, and another attempt from Murmansk to Norway. Poor weather foiled both attempts, but they had not been noticed by the authorities.

Stanislav Kurilov, candidate for most interesting man in the world:

After sunset on December 13, in stormy weather, Kurilov jumped overboard from the stern of the cruise ship, with a snorkeling mask and fins. Luckily, he was neither immediately noticed by the crew, or struck by the ship’s propeller. Because of the strong currents, it took him three nights and two days to reach the land.

Why are art films so good?

A common theory is that modern literature has shrunk into itself. There was a time when literature overlapped with entertainment and was a major cultural force. But nowadays, to be taken seriously as “literature”, a book is (allegedly) required to be so spare/ambiguous/fragmented that it can only appeal to a tiny slice of the population. Everything else is considered low-class “genre fiction”.

You can arguably see the same phenomena in other places. For example, in the golden era of jazz, jazz was pop music, whereas modern jazz is mostly for jazz nerds. Many would claim something similar is happening with modern architecture, in visual art, and various parts of academia.

But does this theory fit with film? To some degree, yes. I personally think American movies peaked in the 1970s, when there was a strong overlap between “art movies” and “popular movies”. Since then, there’s been a bit of a bifurcation: Anora earned 20× less than Deadpool & Wolverine. Often, Anora and D&W would be shown in completely differnt theaters. And James Patterson novels are not a bad approximation of “Deadpool and Wolverine, except it’s a book”.

Still, I have a question: Why are art movies so good? Sure, some of them suffer from a similar disease as modern literature. (Namely having almost no plot and consisting mostly of long still shots in which no one talks and nothing happens.) But all of the recent winners of the Palme d’Or that I’ve seen are both “true art” and also very entertaining.

(For calibration: Shoplifters, Parasite, Titane, Anatomy of a Fall, Anora.)

What’s the deal? Is there something different about films vs. books that led to this different outcome?

Ultra-processed food

Ultraprocessed foods and obesity: Interpreting the evidence

This is a criticism of RCTs that compare diets with ultra-processed food against those without for weight loss. They argue that the results could be explained by traditional nutritional properties like caloric density, soft/hard food texture, sodium, or saturated fat, rather by food reward/palatability or the effects of processing itself. Worth reading, though I’m not sure the degree to which the people who ran those RCTs would disagree. (What would it even mean for some effects to be caused by “processing itself”?)

Packing

Many of us are obsessed with optimal solutions for packing squares into a larger ambient square.

I agree that this reveals something about god’s mindset when creating the universe. But what about packing three-dimensional cubes into a larger ambient cube? I can find some math but not a single visualization or compendium of solutions.

Grug

The Grug Brained Developer (c.f.) is now a book.

USSR photos to look at with your eyes

Photos of the Soviet Union Taken by Thomas T. Hammond, 1950s–1970s

Recommended. Narrative-resisting.

Ask me stuff

The world is lacking in text-based content. Instead of cursing the darkness, I have determined to raise my content/effort ratio. If you would like to aid me in this goal, you can ask me stuff using this form to hypothetically be answered in a future post.

Forbidden topics:

• American politics after the year 2000
• Aspartame
• Plagiarism