Kaj Sotala: You can get very different results when trying to answer the same research question using the same dataset:

> Twenty-nine teams involving 61 analysts used the same data set to address the same research question: whether soccer referees are more likely to give red cards to dark-skin-toned players than to light-skin-toned players. Analytic approaches varied widely across the teams, and the estimated effect sizes ranged from 0.89 to 2.93 (Mdn = 1.31) in odds-ratio units. Twenty teams (69%) found a statistically significant positive effect, and 9 teams (31%) did not observe a significant relationship. Overall, the 29 different analyses used 21 unique combinations of covariates. [...] These findings suggest that significant variation in the results of analyses of complex data may be difficult to avoid, even by experts with honest intentions. Crowdsourcing data analysis, a strategy in which numerous research teams are recruited to simultaneously investigate the same research question, makes transparent how defensible, yet subjective, analytic choices influence research results.
SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research

Kaj Sotala: There's a common narrative about confidence that says that confidence is good, insecurity is bad. It's better to develop your confidence than to be insecure. There's an obvious truth to this.

But what that narrative does not acknowledge, and what both a person struggling with insecurity and their well-meaning friends might miss, is that that insecurity may be in place for a reason.

You might not notice it online, but I've usually been pretty timid and insecure in real life. But this wasn't always the case. There were occasions earlier in my life when I was less insecure, more confident in myself.

I was also pretty horrible at things like reading social nuance and figuring out when and why someone might be offended. So I was given, repeatedly, the feedback that my behavior was bad and inappropriate.

Eventually a part of me internalized that as "I'm very likely to accidentally offend the people around me, so I should be very cautious about what I say, ideally saying nothing at all".

This was, I think, the correct lesson to internalize at that point! It shifted me more into an observer mode, allowing me to just watch social situations and learn more about their dynamics that way. I still don't think that I'm great at reading social nuance, but I'm at least better at it than I used to be.

And there have been times since then when I've decided that I should act with more confidence, and just get rid of the part that generates the insecurity. I've been about to do something, felt a sense of insecurity, and walked over the feeling and done the thing anyway.

Sometimes this has had good results. But often it has also led to things blowing up in my face, with me inadvertently hurting someone and leaving me feeling guilty for months afterwards.

Turns out, that feeling of insecurity wasn't a purely bad thing. It was throwing up important alarms which I chose to ignore, alarms which were sounding because it recognized my behavior as matching previous behavior which had had poor consequences.

Yes, on many occasions that part of me makes me way too cautious. And it would be good to moderate that caution a little. But the same part which generates the feelings of insecurity is the same part which is constantly working to model other people and their experience, their reactions to me. The part that is doing its hardest to make other people feel safe and comfortable around me, to avoid doing things that would make them feel needlessly hurt or upset or unsafe, and to actively let them know that I'm doing this.

Just carving out that part would be a mistake. A moral wrong, even.

The answer is not to get rid of it. The answer is to integrate its cautions better, to keep it with me as a trusted friend and ally - one which feels safe enough about getting its warnings listened to, that it will not scream all the time just to be heard.

Kaj Sotala: > He later in the talk summarized these three approaches/attitudes, particularly as they relate to understanding injustice and oppression, as:

> • Phenomenology is about sympathizing with the enemy.
> • Critical theory is about uncovering the enemy's hiding places.
> • Structuralism/deconstruction is about realizing we are the enemy.

> [...] consequently, people operating in these philosophical modes [...] tend to see those operating in the other philosophical modes as morally compromised or corrupt. Or more specificially complicit with systems of oppression (and this part went by too fast for me to write it all down, so I think I'm missing some of the juicy details):

> • The phenomenological approach can look to critical theorists and structuralists like pathological excuse-making for the privileged and moral passivity.
> • The critical theory approach can look to the phenomenologists and structuralists like a pathological sanctimonious and vengeful identifying with victimhood.
> • The structuralist approach can look to phenomenologists and critical theorists like a pathological scrupulousity and preoccupation with personal guilt/shame/culpability/impurity.

> [...] these faults are ones that each of these respective philosophical approaches can "slide into", and that these three philosophical approaches work together, by their tensions, to keep one another honest. That by their mutual critiques, they course-correct one another.
siderea | [pshrinkery, phil, socjust] Interesting idea from a soc just philosophy-therapy talk

Kaj Sotala: At least one person on my friends list is reporting that this happened to him, too. Don't install the latest Windows 10 update yet.

> Microsoft released its latest Windows 10 October 2018 Update earlier this week, but some users are reporting serious issues. Threads on Reddit, Microsoft’s own support site, and other forums show that some Windows 10 users are upgrading to the October 2018 Update and having their documents, photos, or even entire user profiles wiped out. While some have discovered a temporary fix for the issue, it’s not clear why exactly this is happening.

> Microsoft has not started automatically pushing this latest update out to Windows Update, so only people that visit Windows Update manually and check for updates will get it installed right now. Still, the fact a number of people are reporting these issues is alarming. Microsoft is currently investigating the reports, but given these early issues we’d recommend not installing the Windows 10 October 2018 Update right now. If you do want to take the risk, make sure you’ve got all your documents and data backed up just in case you’re affected by this particular bug.
Windows 10’s latest update is deleting some users’ documents

Kaj Sotala: > Dull talks at conferences can feel interminable. Or could it be that they really do go on for longer?

> I investigated this idea at a meeting where speakers were given 12-minute slots. I sat in on 50 talks for which I recorded the start and end time. I decided whether the talk was boring after 4 minutes, long before it became apparent whether the speaker would run overtime. The 34 interesting talks lasted, on average, a punctual 11 minutes and 42 seconds. The 16 boring ones dragged on for 13 minutes and 12 seconds (thereby wasting a statistically significant 1.5 min; t-test, t = 2.91, P = 0.007). For every 70 seconds that a speaker droned on, the odds that their talk had been boring doubled. For the audience, this is exciting news. Boring talks that seem interminable actually do go on for longer.

> To avoid banality, speakers should introduce their objectives early on and focus on pertinent information. They should avoid trite explanations, repetition, getting bogged down by irrelevant minutiae and passing off common knowledge as fresh insight.
Do boring speakers really talk for longer?