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e.g. they said that obesity in the West Bank was "as high as 50% in men in 2003," and as their source they linked to a study saying that "The prevalence of obesity was 36.8 and 18.1% in rural women and men, respectively, compared with 49.1 and 30.6% in urban women and men"
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Yep, sorry, these seem like totally plausible close-and-shut arguments but I at least can't judge that without actually looking into it much more, and the local reasoning inside of SMTM's post seemed like the kind of thing that could lead to correct and important conclusions.
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I guess I currently don't see a huge case for SMTM's downside. I dislike people who do bad reasoning or make confident wrong conclusions, but I feel like they are just speaking for themselves and not like ruining more than their own reputation if they are embarassingly wrong.
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I think “Why does this strategy work and what does it say about the community?“ is a *huge* downside. twitter.com/humanisque/sta This has been a thing for many months now, with nothing but crickets from SMTM and “supporters“. That is a really plausible bad community health sign!
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Replying to @orellanin and @parafactual
I feel like everyone on my feed and the prediction markets know slime time mold mold is basically doing science-themed engagement bait at this point. Why does this strategy work and what does it say about the community?
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I don't want to accuse anybody of supporting them who doesn't hence the scare quotes. It's most likely a not-enough-time-to-vet-everybody-thing, which is okay. But from the outside perspective this also looks like it could be just due to bad community dynamics.
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This leads to the whole PR vs. reputation debate again, but I think the argument “lots of people we never hear about see this and are justifiably unsure if they want to join/still be part of a community like this.“ is a good one. You want to know you're in good hands & there…
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…aren't just grifters lurking everywhere (that are *really* easy to spot but nothing is being done about it for months. Because of… nobody has time? Maybe some are friends with the grifters? Who knows!) But “receive lots of money“ and “no real pushback“ seems to be what's…
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…happening, and that is more a bad sign of community health than a good one. (Which I would interpret from the outside as a sign to not be part of rationality/EA.) This discussion here is the first one in that direction other than Natalia's posts. So I'm glad to see it!
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I haven't seen much of any SMTM "supporters" since Natalia's posts came out. Maybe you are seeing something else? I generally care quite a bit about having a reputation for honesty, but I just don't see how anyone is really endorsing SMTM.
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Again, our worry is, why does that strategy work at all? Why can someone be incredibly sloppy, misrepresent sources, refuse to address or even acknowledge any criticism, and still get half a million dollars from EAs to “usher in a 21st century scientific revolution”?
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The fact that their supporters haven’t addressed the criticism either is *part of what is concerning,* as Jonathan hinted at.
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Pending SMTM response, I found this very persuasive and may be considered to have changed my mind from "it could be lithium" to "it's very probably not lithium". (It is not my impression that the microcontaminant hypothesis in general has been slain, however.) twitter.com/MatthewJBar/st…
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