The Krugster is at it again with another prediction of recession that is certain to be wrong: Krugman Sees Possible U.S. Recession With Little Fed Wiggle Room: Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said the U.S. economy may be heading into a recession at a time when the Federal Reserve doesn’t have the firepower to properly combat… Continue reading Paul Krugman Should Not Be Taken Seriously

Scott’s review of Peter Thiel’s book Zero To One In the past I would have been more inclined to dismiss/discount the role of luck, but luck plays a huge role in Peter Thiel’s success, possibly much more than we realize or wish to accept. There are plenty of tech entrepreneurs who are as smart–if not… Continue reading Peter Thiel’s Success: Luck or Skill?

Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell has a history of embellishing and omitting the truth in his writings, as I have discussed numerous times here. The same is also true for his podcast, ironically titled Revisionist History. In response to the excellent Noah Smith Bloomberg article America Lets Too Much Young Talent Go to Waste (which I… Continue reading Gadwell’s Revisionist History

In the late 90’s and up until around 2009, online political journalism and the propagation of news and information was a top-down down process. Internet political journalism was dominated by a handful of news sites such as CNN, Drudge, Fox, Huffington Post, etc., as well as bloggers and pundits such as Ann Coulter and Michelle… Continue reading Evolution of Online Political Journalism: Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up

Pinker reflects on his book Enlightenment Now, addressing criticism and controversy. He writes: Nor has Enlightenment thinking ever carried the day. It has enjoyed spells of influence which have increased in length since 1945, but always has been opposed by Romantic, nationalist, militarist, and other Counter-Enlightenment ideologies. The authoritarian populism of the 2010s falls smack… Continue reading The Enlightenment has Won

It’s open season on so-called ‘soy boys’, a neologism for effeminate, weak (‘limp-wristed’) liberal males. This archetype is the target of derision and ridicule by many on the ‘right’. An example of the quintessential soy boy is the Obamacare ‘pajama boy,’ whose perceived effeminacy generated more ridicule than Obamacare signups, and there is even a… Continue reading Why Soys and Virgins Rule

This article went hugely viral: Let Children Get Bored Again: Boredom teaches us that life isn’t a parade of amusements. More important, it spawns creativity and self-sufficiency. The viralness of the article is part of a greater backlash and criticism of modernity by both the high-IQ left and the high-IQ right, which makes it a… Continue reading The Benefits of Boredom

Came across this meta analysis The Jewish Advantage: Jews are Intelligent and High-Achieving, that suggests Jewish high achievement is due to 9-15 point IQ advantage over gentiles. Regarding the first question, Lynn has supplied a wealth of data suggesting that the average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is between 109 and 115 depending on the type… Continue reading The Jewish Advantage

Online, there is no shortage of lengthy, well-written, insightful articles about philosophy, literature, and politics, even though these subjects don’t in any way lend themselves to moentization, yet articles about actionable stuff (such as finance or crypto-currency), in which an obvious financial incentive exists for quality, are typically of poor quality, full of ads, vague… Continue reading The Capitalism Quality Paradox

With the S&P 500 up another 1.5% today and Facebook reporting yet another quarter of blow-out earning (Facebook stock is going to $250 soon and I remain ‘long, and I recommend people buy), why is America, its economy, and its companies so dominant, but also why is America stable, too? You have all these headlines… Continue reading Explaining America’s Economic and Global Dominance