Month: April 2023

From 2009, Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses the Shangri-La Diet, a type of diet that involves the added consumption of oil: Once upon a time, Seth Roberts (a professor of psychology at Berkeley, on the editorial board of Nutrition) noticed that he’d started losing weight while on vacation in Europe. For no apparent reason, he’d stopped wanting… Continue reading Having academic credentials is no assurance of quality

As Meta stock surged today on yet another quarter of strong earnings, it’s time to reflect on how so many people this wrong. Funny how people keep blaming the buybacks or layoffs. Those helped, but what is overlooked is just how insanely profitable and dominant Meta’s core advertising business is, both Facebook and Instagram. What… Continue reading Meta stock surges again: how so many got it wrong

This week’s media purge would make even Stalin proud. Tucker gone. Don Lemon gone. And of a lesser note, Nate Silver gone from ABC News. Good ol’ ADL, never passing on the opportunity for self-promotion: Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, praised Fox News’ decision, saying it is “about time” and that “for… Continue reading The Media Purge

I don’t get this common/popular notion where just because you lose a lucrative job or opportunity that suddenly you become poor. What happens to all that accumulated money? Does it just go away? I think we want to believe that it does because it gives us comfort knowing that some sort of balance has been… Continue reading Ignoring the Middle Fallacy: overlooking long-term trends

I can’t believe it happened, but Elon kept his promise and removed all the legacy verified accounts that failed to pay $8. It’s not uncommon for management to make big promises but then delay or renege on it (this happens all the time in business), but Elon actually followed through on such a drastic change… Continue reading Elon Removes Legacy Twitter Checkmarks…a Mistake?

From Richard Hanania: Fat Shaming and Free Will: How to think about the concept of “choice”. It’s inconsistent how people who are otherwise empirically-minded in so far as IQ, the futility of pre-k (and other costly education intervention), or crime stats are concerned, but cannot bring themselves to accepting the data that most dieters fail… Continue reading Richard Hanania: Weight Loss, Free Will, and Choice

1st item: Bitcoin continues to crash like I said it would yesterday, getting ready to break $28k on its way back below $20k soon despite the Nasdaq holding strong at 13,000. This week my BTC method has been among the most profitable ever. I will show the spreadsheet soon of the backtested results to demonstrate… Continue reading The Daily View: Bitcoin crash cont., McDonald’s stock surge, Elon lawsuit, the SATs

Kaboom! Bitcoin crashes below $30k like I said it would. From the post last week, “[Bitcoin is recovering a bit, at $30k, but it’s gonna drop as always.]”. Sure enough, now at 29k: Of course, it has a long way to go until $15k, but it will get there soon enough. There is no possible… Continue reading kaboom…Bitcoin crash, $20k coming up?

I saw this going viral over the weekend: A Tiny Number of Shoplifters Commit Thousands of New York City Thefts. A relatively small number of repeat offenders collectively steal the most: Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively, they were arrested… Continue reading Shoplifting is out of control in NYC

This is a good article, Stuff I still don’t get about AI, agree: And if we stick with the climate change analogy for a second, how worried should we be about polarisation? How likely is it that caring about AI risk gets thought of as a left-wing thing, or becomes associated with some other political… Continue reading AI risk as rebranded climate change