(wk. 1)
Exactly what class of goods (and services?) have relatively low list prices, despite low supply and very high demand? Obviously there’s some connection with conspicuous consumption (think of hypebeasts), but what exactly is the connection?
Why do so-called bullshit jobs tend to be comparatively high paying, middle-of-corporate-hierarchy positions?
Why do themes of henosis and theosis seem especially common in anime and manga? Is there some connection to Mahayana Buddhism or Neo-Confucian thought?
Is it better to live at the beginning or end of a civilization?
Does the fact that peoples appetite for risk reduces as they age affect asset pricing?
wk. 2
How would Marx(ians) explain Baumol’s cost disease?
Why is karaoke most popular in East Asia?
Why do people want to be ascetics?
Why do consequentialist moral movements seem comparatively rare throughout history?
Do moral realists or moral anti-realists take morality more seriously?
wk. 3
Why do relationships break up while friendships slowly drift apart?
Do any authors or artists have a higher arc of reputation than Tasso and Ariosto (at least in the Anglosphere)? If not, what does this say about the status of their common form, subject matter, language, and time period?
Is Hugo Grotius underrated as an influence on western philosophy?
Why is so much internet writing advice of some form (compared to IRL conversations)?
Why do solo artists seem more likely than bands to keep releasing great music for a really long time? Does the discrepancy disappear if you control for bands shorter musical lifespans?
wk. 4
Why do humans experience akrasia to a greater extent than animals do?
Are transcendental arguments just special (deductive) cases of anthropic arguments?
Why are sleep paralysis hallucinations usually malevolent?
Does (a non-multimodal version of) GPT-4 being able to draw shitty unicorns challenge Kant’s view of space as a necessary a priori representation?
Why are used book stores more densely stocked than new bookstores?
Are fans of Strauss more likely to be straussian in their own writing? If so, what’s the causal story there?
Is consequentialism a pressure towards legibility in some self-undermining way?
What makes people be unable to converge their opinionts (link to AI risk persuasion study). Is it relying on intuitions rather than predictive models? (link to Matt clancy tweet thread of 14/10/2024)
Why the Chinese obsession with numbered lists of great figure? The n X of y. Numbers
Why are young people more idealistic? Because parents and schools hide the bad bits from them? Ofc they will have inaccurate beliefs, but why shouldn’t they be random or skew too pessimistic? I guess they do on some issues (climate change). They’re idealistic in thinking a better world is possible if it weren’t for X. They lack the imagination or experience to see how things would go wrong if you do the obvious good sounding thing.
Check all with claude
What happens to people who are moralists young, e.g. EAs rather than being ambitious materialists. What happens with their mid life/old age crisis? Do they just skip it? Have the inverse crisis?
Is there a connection between Aumann and martingale? Martingale and Aumann
The Q of why aestheticism came first to tea, wine, and tobacco, and only later to beer and coffee is really interesting. is it even true?
If what you ought to do in moral dilemmas is indeterminate/there is no fact of the matter, how can you have reasons to avoid getting into them? And how can you make sure the reasons to avoid them don’t force you into total pacifism?
Does Japanese music sound like it has really distinct syllables because japanese doesn’t have stressed or unstressed syllables?
What unifies or generates the individual slogans/positions of Socratic intellectualism?
Take the best n writers and n thinkers, either in general, or on a particular topic. Is it more common for the Xth writer to be a <Xth best thinker or vice versa? (Not quite the right framing but w/e).
How did people back in the day react to the death of their children.
There are often very young prodigies in music, maths, etc. These seem to line up with where there are savants. Poetic savants and prodigies seem less common. Prodigies and Savants
Why are reviews/answers on MAL and quora so much worse than other sites? On MAL because they are young, yes, but why are they trying to be so writerly? And on quora because they want karma, but why are they such narcissists?
What music is like Remember sports first album?? Not precise enough idk. But you can ask for recs. I dont think it’s just bubblegrunge
Who was doing interviews like Conversations with Tyler before CWT?
There were good interviews ofc (Paris review) but they’re very different.
Has anyone ever been funnier in their non-native language? People have written (presumably) more beautifully or deeply, such as Conrad. Is it more language-tied? What about poetry then? Maybe the resources of humour aren’t latent in the language, you need fluent expression, not detection and recombination like you need to be a good poet. Humor is surprising, poetry need not be (though it often is ofc)
Why aren’t you using an RSS feed?(should wait to implement one myself maybe)
“If you want something done, give it to a busy person.” Is this true? If so, why?
https://dynomight.net/arguments-3/
Other anki Q’s?