"Is Wine Fake?" In Asterisk Magazine

Published: Nov. 23, 2022, 1:06 a.m.

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I wrote an article on whether wine is fake. It\'s not here, it\'s at asteriskmag.com, the new rationalist / effective altruist magazine. Congratulations to my friend Clara for making it happen. Stories include:

  • Modeling The End Of Monkeypox: I\\u2019m especially excited about this one. The top forecaster (of 7,000) in the 2021 Good Judgment competition explains his predictions for monkeypox. If you\\u2019ve ever rolled your eyes at a column by some overconfident pundit, this is maybe the most opposite-of-that thing ever published.

  • Book Review - What We Owe The Future: You\\u2019ve read mine, this is Kelsey Piper\\u2019s. Kelsey is always great, and this is a good window into the battle over the word \\u201clong-termism\\u201d.

  • Making Sense Of Moral Change: Interview with historian Christopher Brown on the end of the slave trade. \\u201cThere is a false dichotomy between sincere activism and self-interested activism. Abolitionists were quite sincerely horrified by slavery and motivated to end it, but their fight for abolition was not entirely altruistic.\\u201d

  • How To Prevent The Next Pandemic: MIT professor Kevin Esvelt talks about applying the security mindset to bioterrorism. \\u201cAt least 38,000 people can assemble an influenza virus from scratch. If people identify a new [pandemic] virus . . . then you just gave 30,000 people access to an agent that is of nuclear-equivalent lethality.\\u201d

  • Rebuilding After The Replication Crisis: This is Stuart Ritchie, hopefully you all know him by now. \\u201cFundamentally, how much more can we trust a study published in 2022 compared to one from 2012?\\u201d

  • Why Isn\\u2019t The Whole World Rich? Professor Dietrich Vollrath\\u2019s introduction to growth economics. What caused the South Korean miracle, and why can\\u2019t other countries copy it?

  • Is Wine Fake? By me! How come some people say blinded experts can tell the country, subregion, and year of any wine just by tasting it, but other people say blinded experts get fooled by white wines dyed red?

  • China\\u2019s Silicon Future: Why does China have so much trouble building advanced microchips? How will the CHIPS act affect its broader economic rise? By Karson Elmgren.

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