Category: Uncategorized

Charles Murray and Steve Sailer discuss how to make the SATs ‘tiger mom proof’: More precisely, it rewarded systematic test prep, period, and it turns out that the people who work the hardest on test prep are Asian students and the white children of the affluent who want to get into elite schools. Want to… Continue reading There are no good solutions to the SATs and coaching

Last week I wrote post reconciling the existence of skilled traders with the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). By far the most skilled trader is someone going by “Fausterion18”, who in his most recent Reddit post (archive.is) “make $1.8M in a single trade and $18 million for the year”. But for the past two years he… Continue reading Efficient Markets and Skill, Part 2: Reading the Future by Decoding Systems

Shut up About Race and IQ: Why HBD is just white nationalism, by Richard Hanania. This is another Richard Hanania article in which the headline and sub-headline are somewhat misleading. It’s more like, “Don’t talk about HBD if you use it to justify ingroup preferences.” It’s not that he wants people to stop talking about… Continue reading Don’t Talk About HBD?

I saw this going viral Trading trust, by Seth Godin. True, Americans have lost trust in its institutions, as can be confirmed by polls and sentiment online, but this does not establish the causality: is it due to Americans being more pessimistic, or have the institutions gotten worse? Likely both. I posit it was a… Continue reading The Post-2022 Liberal Defection, continued

Some examples of big returns on Reddit’s WallStreetBets just in the past day (many more): https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1asd1fc https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1asar0w https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1asi4j0 The usual rebuttal is dismissive of skill, such as along the lines of, “If enough people flip a coin, some will get all heads,” or “People who lose money are less inclined to post.” But how many… Continue reading Does Successful Traders on Reddit’s ‘Wall Street Bets’ Refute the Efficient Market Hypothesis?

The apparent post-’70s rise of obesity in America can be explained the decline of smoking. The decline of smoking inversely matches the rise of obesity almost perfectly: I can attest in the ’90s and early 2000s it was common to see pedestrians smoking. Cigarette butts littered the sidewalks and accumulated in small mounds or dams… Continue reading Bring Back Smoking to End Obesity

‘Luxury Beliefs’ That Only the Privileged Can Afford, by Rob Henderson. The concept of luxury beliefs seems like a rebranding or rehashing of the Champaign socialist or Limousine liberal trope/archetype. The origin of the latter dates to the early ’70s: In the 1970s, the term was applied to wealthy liberal supporters of open-housing and forced… Continue reading Luxury Beliefs – a flawed and unoriginal concept

Trace has gotten into a spat with Freddie deBoer over educational enrichment and IQ. Freddie soundly rejects the blank slate, whereas Trace, finding some agreement with Freddie, still sees value of enrichment. I am going to give this one to Freddie, and I think Trace is off the mark here. It started with an article… Continue reading Trace – Freddie Enrichment and IQ Debate: Why Trace is Wrong

From FT: ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything, by Cory Doctorow. But in case you want to be more precise, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers… Continue reading Cory Doctorow and ‘Enshittification’: Stuck in Stage Three

It’s less of an interview and more like a speech or monologue Ep. 73 The Vladimir Putin Interview pic.twitter.com/67YuZRkfLL — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 8, 2024 Tucker’s job is to stare with rapt attention as the guest filibusters or rambles, whilst not showing the slightest hint of disinterest or boredom, such as by averting his… Continue reading Tucker-Putin Interview