Month: February 2019

AOC is very much a product of our times, as someone with no experience and no credentials who overnight can capture the public spotlight. It’s not so much that her policies and ideas are nonviable, but rather the social media outrage and partisan divisions that they exacerbate, which compounds the problem. The New Green Deal,… Continue reading Against Social Media

I keep seeing articles that are critical of modernity–be it helicopter parenting, overstimulation in children, ugly architecture, careerism, perfectionism, or excessive self-improvement–going viral, and all published within the last year. The most recent example is The Atlantic article Workism Is Making Americans Miserable, which was shared over 16 times on Reddit, which is astounding. Instead… Continue reading Workism

A bunch of people have linked to the Quillette article We Must Defend Free Thought, by Claire Lehmann, who is the editor-in-chief and founder of Quillette. The article defends Scott, the author of the popular blog Slate Star Codex and related sub-Reddit, who succumbed to peer pressure for appearing too impartial and complicit to certain… Continue reading No such thing as free speech

Warren Buffett’s 2018 shareholder letter went viral. This passage stood out: I agree. Over and over again, the pronouncements of debt crisis have proven to be wrong. Had you sold your stocks n 2010 due to the national debt being too high, you would have missed out on 200% inflation-adjusted gains in the S&P 500… Continue reading What Warren Buffett’s shareholder letter says about America

A couple weeks ago, the Quilette post Public Education’s Dirty Secret went hugely viral. It’s evident America’s education system is not just failing students, but also teachers: As the weeks dragged painfully into months, it became apparent that the students wouldn’t learn anything. It was dumbfounding. It was all I could do to keep them… Continue reading Reforming Public Education: Against Compulsory Schooling

Exchange hacks are good for Bitcoin? How do you reckon? Isn’t it bad when exchanges get hacked? That is what intuition would dictate, but applying level two thinking shows otherwise. Higher level thinking means understanding second-order, non-obvious consequences of actions, and multiple possibilities. It’s bad for those who lose their Bitcoin (the obvious consequence), but… Continue reading Exchange hacks are good for the price of Bitcoin

Ann Coulter is blaming Trump again, not surprisingly: The 3-D chess crowd has heaped obloquy on me for pointing out these facts. He’s doing his best! He’s fighting! No one has ever come under such sustained attack as our president! It’s not his fault! It’s Paul Ryan’s fault! It’s Mitch McConnell’s fault! It’s Robert Mueller’s… Continue reading Trump analysis

From Bloomberg View: America Lets Too Much Young Talent Go to Waste: Failing to identify and help poor and minority students isn’t just unfair. It also hurts growth. These are just anecdotes, but the data tell a similar story. In 2005, Florida’s Broward County began administering a test to all second graders to identify gifted… Continue reading The dumbing-down of Gifted Education

Having good opinions. What Scott Adams, Scott Alexander, Ross Douthat, David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, and even Joe Rogan have in common is they generally have ‘good’ opinions, as opposed to ‘bad’ ones. The difference between a bad opinion and a good one, is with the latter you may leave thinking, “I disagree, but the argument… Continue reading On Having Good Opinions (deconstructing Joe Rogan’s success)

The ‘right’ is ambivalent about Trump signing H.J.Res. 31, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2019. Among the establishment-right, no one can make heads or tails out of this, and are waiting to see what happens. We knew it was not going to be good, and this confirms our already low expectations. The bill contains an amnesty… Continue reading Trump wall disappointment