Homosexuality is a mental illness
To be precise, exclusive homosexuality is. But let's backtrack a bit. Scott Alexander has a new piece out that begins with this disclaimer: CONTENT NOTE: This essay contains sentences that…
Does school make students kill themselves?
I know, I know. It's fashionable to hate on formal education in the rationalist community. Here's an obligatory Twitter poll: And there's even some push-back in the funny article Why…
Drug users vs. drug abusers
Drugs are bad mmk? Well, are they? The go-to argument involves looking at drug abusers. It's hard to say something positive about drug abuse in general. Everybody has a story…
A theory of Ashkenazi genius: intelligence and mental illness
I want to put together a theory to explain a putative phenomenon: Ashkenazi Jews have more geniuses relative to non-Jewish Europeans (gentiles) than one would expect based on their average…
African IQs and mental retardation
This one comes up a lot when we discuss the dire realities of the average intelligence levels seen in Sub-Saharan African countries: If the mean IQs are 70, wouldn't that…
Older fathers bad, paternal age effects vindicated?
Since the 1930s, people are getting older and older before having children, as the importance of careers and education to people seems to increase without stop. As older people are…
The Mensa fallacy
Back in 2015 at ISIR, a researcher gave a presentation about mental illness and intelligence, reporting it was elevated at high intelligence levels, along with all kinds of other issues.…
Psychotics are bad, anti-psychotics are good
Remember this guy? His name is Noah Esbensen. Actually, he is not a big deal outside of Denmark, but he made a brief stir in the media by going into…
Unnatural hair color really is a danger zone marker (new study out)
Probably many of you have seen this meme about aposematic hair color: For those not into memes: the idea is that poisonous animals advertise their dangerousness by bright colors to…
The genetics of mental illness
In popular discourse and the media, the debate is between those who recognize significant genetic causation in mental illnesses versus the status quo blank slate people who leave all such…