This article for some reason went hugely viral a few weeks ago: America’s ‘Retail Apocalypse’ Is Really Just Beginning – Bloomberg The virality, I suspect, is due to some sort of nostalgic fondness for retail stores, even though Amazon offers a superior retail experience in every regard. Rather than a retail apocalypse, in agreement with… Continue reading The Overblown ‘Retail Apocalypse’

Spurred by a recent Scott post, Why Did New Atheism Fail So Miserably, there has been a lot of discussion about what some perceive to be the decline of ‘new atheism’. The new atheism movement arose mainly, I think, in response to George W. Bush and what some on the left perceived as the imposition… Continue reading The Decline of ‘New Atheism’

This went viral a few weeks ago: Ray Dalio on the two economies in America (the top 40% and the bottom 60%) It’s sorta like this (http://greyenlightenment.com/the-revenge-of-the-nerds-economy/) but replace top 40% of wealth with top 40% IQ (but I think it’s more like top 10% of IQ, because a top 40% IQ is only 105… Continue reading The Bell Curve is becoming reality, part 2

Over the years, despite being on the ‘right’ and a proponent of HBD and HBD-based policy myself, I’ve contested the belief commonly held by many on the alt-right and even some on the rationalist-left that America is ‘dumbing down’: Evidence America is not (yet) dumbing-down America’s Intellectual Renaissance Cambrian explosion’ of intellectualism Is America Really… Continue reading Dumbing-down & policy

A question is, how do you know this. The answer is, how can you not when it’s laid bare. MIT math courses are hard. This stuff, by comparison, is not. Related: A systems-based approach to rationalism “Simple Systems” It’s easier to predict things where a lot of capital is at stake, but social predictions are… Continue reading How to Predict, part infinity

Here is an example of one of the more common arguments that we’re in a tech bubble and or that the reign of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are unsustainable: The largest market cap companies in a given decade, overwhelmingly tend to be under-performers in the following decade. It’s a trend that has repeated decade… Continue reading Not Worried About Tech Valuations, the saga continues

Column: Donald Trump’s biggest flaw: He’s not that bright He taps out tweets that flagrantly contradict what he tweeted when Barack Obama was president, making himself look ridiculous. When he holds forth on policy issues, it’s excruciatingly apparent he has no idea what he’s talking about. So apparent that he cannot list a single example…… Continue reading Link Round-up Edition

This is going viral on /r/jordanpeterson, getting over 760 votes: Although Dr. Peterson condemns extremism on both sides, it’s obvious to anyone who listens to his lectures and speeches he’s not the centrist some think he is. The middle column suggests no value system, but Peterson has a right-of-center Christian traditionalist value system. The far-left… Continue reading No, the far-left and the far-right are not the same

Kinda old but still interesting Is grit the true secret of success? What does it take to do really well in life? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’ and anyone who believes it is, is deluding his or her self. It’s no different than feel-good nonsense espoused by Gladwell books, particularly his 2008 book, Outliers.… Continue reading Is grit the true secret of success? no

During the 2016 election, the media perpetuated the following narratives about Trump: that he’s not an intellectual, and that intellectuals hate him. The first (at least going by the public image he projects) is true, but the second, somewhat surprisingly, isn’t. Many intellectuals like Trump because he makes no pretense of being an intellectual. In… Continue reading Why Intellectuals Like Trump (or at least don’t hate him)