Month: February 2023

This study has been going viral: The plateauing of cognitive ability among top earners. People were giving their theories as to why it was true. It went viral in part because it appeals to our idealization fairness, that superior cognitive ability must come at some cost, such as superior earning potential. Or it gives hope… Continue reading “That study does not mean what you think it does”

I dunno why Balaji Srinivasan is held up as such a genius or expert when almost everything he says is wrong. The reply is astute and funny. As I have argued, the threat of AI job loss is way overblown. A doctor does a lot more than diagnose, and not every diagnosis can be made… Continue reading AI will not be replacing doctors anytime soon

It’s been a while since I checked Biden’s approval ratings. It’s still below 45%. Not looking good: It looks bad, but on the other hand, Obama still won in 2012 by a large margin despite having a sub 50% approval rating for much of 2012: Bitcoin getting ready to crash, too, sub 17k coming up:… Continue reading The Daily View 2/9/2023: Biden, Bitcoin due to crash, AI Risk and IQ

I think cancelation arises from a misunderstanding or a miscommunication. The person who is canceled simply does not know where the line is drawn, only that there is a line which unbeknownst to him he overstepped. It’s a sort of information asymmetry. How was someone like David Shor supposed to know that the study he… Continue reading Cancel culture assumes perfect information

I think too many social commentators overestimate the role or weight of parental wealth/intervention at explaining exceptional individual success; except for the crust of the crust or maybe extreme outliers like Tiger Woods, it does not matter as much as conventional wisdom would seem to suggest. As I argue in the post The Limitations of… Continue reading The incoherence of looking at the world through the lens of privilege

An errant Chinese high-altitude balloon wandered into US airspace and was shot down a couple days ago. The internet, especially Twitter, is collectively losing its mind over this. The right-wing punditry, predicably, is calling this a precursor to war. Somehow Biden is enabling China in regard to this balloon, yet just four months ago, in… Continue reading “Balloongate” is not the start of another Cold War

I saw this going viral pic.twitter.com/iYSoDtVgg8 — Ruth Baader-Meinhof (@VenturCommunist) February 2, 2023 This is exactly what I predicted would happen a year ago, right after the conflict broke out. All the esteemed experts were predicting either a full-on world war, nuclear war, escalation (other countries getting involved but short of a world war), or… Continue reading Right again about Russia-Ukraine

I saw this article from QZ.com: Big Pharma spent an additional $9.8 billion on marketing in the past 20 years. It worked In 1997, drug companies spent roughly $17.1 billion on marketing for prescription drugs and any health conditions that may be associated with them. (A relatively paltry $600 million was spent to market condition… Continue reading Memo to media: stop citing numbers without indexing them

META up 20% today, on top of huge gains over the past month, as I said would happen. It’s going back to $350 soon. TSLA up 30% over the past month, going back to $300. TUR is still falling, also as I said would happen. As usual, the financial media wrong again. All those predictions… Continue reading META stock surges 20% on huge earnings + buybacks: right again

My second explanation for the obesity epidemic, especially in the US, is the ‘rational consumer’ hypothesis. The idea is people are voluntarily making a choice to overeat, fully aware of the consequences and weighing the pros and cons, similar to people who continue to smoke despite the warning labels. There are no shortage of articles… Continue reading The ‘rational consumer’ explanation for obesity