Month: February 2022

I’m kinda burned out on Ukraine, time for a topic that is completely different. I want to describe a common mistake in reasoning, which I will call the “ignoring the middle” fallacy (not to be confused with the false dilemma). All too often, people focus on the endpoints when making decisions and ignore all the… Continue reading The Ignoring the Middle Fallacy (the importance of accumulated earnings/returns)

It looks like the first part of my prediction was wrong yesterday: Russia invaded Ukraine. This is why I don’t wager money on binary political outcomes, like on prediction markets, because I don’t have much of an edge (and the evidence suggests that neither does anyone else, which I will expand on in a forthcoming… Continue reading Russia-Ukraine Update: Wrong but Optimistic

Freddie is getting some pushback in the comments on his latest article I’ll Be Against the Next “Good War” Too, regarding the Russia-Ukraine situation. As some have noted in the comments, there is little to no indication of the US actually going to war against Russia or sending troops to defend Ukraine. Parallels to Vietnam,… Continue reading Not worried about the Russia-Ukraine situation

An increasingly connected and financialized world in which all assets are highly and increasingly correlated with each other and are easily influenced by news cycles, means that psyops will become increasingly common, sophisticated, and effective. But also, combined with a higher stakes political climate. For example, I argued a few weeks ago that the the… Continue reading PsyOp Warfare

Bitcoin continues to crash, down 10% in a week to $38,000, following the stock market lower on Russia-Ukraine uncertainty. This proves again that Bitcoin is useless as a hedge against anything. Bitcoin is very highly correlated with the stock market to the downside and less so to the upside. Also, Bitcoin is down 30% year-over-year… Continue reading The Daily View: 2/20/2022

I saw this article going viral Reality Honks Back . This passage stood out: The Virtual class can’t move the trucks. Smears alone can’t move trucks. All the towing companies in Ottawa have refused to move the trucks. Because, surprisingly, it turns out tow truck drivers also drive trucks for a living. There aren’t enough… Continue reading The Canadian Truckers Situation, and The Limits to Freedom

I’m sure many are familiar with the “you will own nothing and be happy,” meme attributed to the World Economic Forum. It prophesizes what has been deemed a dystopian, post-Covid future in which people own nothing: But it’s not quite as simple as ownership vs. feudalism. Based on what I have observed, it’s sort of… Continue reading Of Nothingness and Abundance

Saw this going viral Between The World And Men: Truckers, Rogan, Peterson and the revolt of masculinity You can see similar “tough people” fault-lines in the other recent Covid contretemps involving Joe Rogan. The millions of men (71 percent male, and evenly split between high school and college grads) who listen to Rogan’s legendary podcast… Continue reading YouTube and podcasts will not save us

I don’t think the war on obesity is winnable, unlike efforts to prevent smoking. As much as the inner libertarian in me may protest, one can make an argument that government efforts to reduce smoking, such as those cringy anti-smoking ads [funded by tobacco litigation] and easily-ignored surgeon general warnings, have worked: This is a… Continue reading Giving up the war on obesity

The arrests of Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein, the husband and wife duo who were allegedly involved in the Bitfinex hack and attempt at laundering the proceeds, is all over the news. [Technically, they are not being charged for hacking Bitfinex, only for money laundering and defrauding the U.S. government, which leads to the question… Continue reading Thoughts on the Bitfinex Hack Story