Why does any kind of cynicism appeal to people? Because it seems like a mark of maturity, of sophistication, like you’ve seen everything and know better. Or because putting something down feels like pushing yourself up.

Maybe you just can't protect people from certain specialized types of folly with any sane amount of regulation, and the correct response is to give up on the high social costs of inadequately protecting people from themselves under certain circumstances.

Have I ever remarked on how completely ridiculous it is to ask high school students to decide what they want to do with the rest of their lives and give them nearly no support in doing so? Support like, say, spending a day apiece watching twenty different jobs and then another week at their top three choices, with salary charts and projections and probabilities of graduating that subject given their test scores? The more so considering this is a central allocation question for the entire economy?

If you want to maximize your expected utility, you try to save the world and the future of intergalactic civilization instead of donating your money to the society for curing rare diseases and cute puppies.

There is light in the world, and it is us!

If cryonics were a scam it would have far better marketing and be far more popular.

Physiologically adult humans are not meant to spend an additional 10 years in a school system; their brains map that onto "I have been assigned low tribal status". And so, of course, they plot rebellion - accuse the existing tribal overlords of corruption plot, perhaps to split off their own little tribe in the savanna, not realizing that this is impossible in the Modern World.