Self-Serving Bias

A pun-titled essay (self-SERVICE gas → 'self-serving bias') built on Oregon's ban on self-service gas stations and Tabarrok's observation that every state has equally-absurd-to-outsiders licensing (barbershops, manicurists). Scott extends it to medicine (melatonin banned in Europe; no separate 'medical school' there; OTC drugs in Puerto Rico) and draws the deeper point: relative to any status quo, removing a regulation feels like inviting catastrophe and adding one feels like red tape — our intuitions about absurdity are artificial and don't even survive state borders. The worry: when something loses (or gains) its 'protective coating of absurdity,' its fate falls to our culture's terrible explicit rationality; the only alternative is Chesterton's Fence (the same heuristic the Oregonians use). Prescribes the Outside View ('get on the chronophone with Oregon').

Quality 73 · Strong. A strong, durable essay with a genuinely useful insight (absurdity intuitions are parochial and status-quo-relative; use the Outside View on your own regulations) and the sharp Chesterton's-Fence-vs-explicit-rationality tension. Top of Strong; a touch discursive, so held below the Excellent line.

Claude’s paradigm shift 60 · Notable shift. The 'absurdity intuitions are arbitrary/parochial, so apply the Outside View to the status quo' framing is fresh and memorable. Notable.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A within-discourse epistemics essay; no material-world effect. Within-blog influence.