Facebook is in the news again because of controversy regarding whistleblower accusations that Facebook management suppressed information regarding the mental health effects of using Facebook. My prediction-like similar media controversy in 2018 in which I was correct that Facebook would recover and the stock would go higher–is that the whole thing will blow over. Nothing… Continue reading Skepticism about the link between envy and social media

I saw this article going viral How does the economy work? A new Fed paper suggests nobody really knows It’s not that hard to understand: an economy is a set of inputs: government spending, personal consumption, innovation/technology, private investment, etc. and then based on these inputs the economy either grows or shrinks, and then this… Continue reading Economics is not that hard to understand or predict

Why Is It So Hard to Be Rational? Often, I asked myself, How would Greg think? I adopted his habit of tracking what I knew and how well I knew it, so that I could separate my well-founded opinions from my provisional views. Bad investors, Greg told me, often had flat, loosely drawn maps of… Continue reading Money Does Not Buy Popularity, Power, or Influence

The mechanisms that in the past would have reshuffled the social hierarchy–boom and bust cycles, recession, war, social upheaval, bear markets, etc.–have all but ceased, the result being an unending boom, a prolonged peace (BLM and antifa skirmishes not withstanding), and a ruling and professional class that is not only wealthier than ever, but more… Continue reading On the Permanent Ascendance of Elites

Saw this How To Fix America In One Easy Step The root reason behind the likely pending fall of American Empire is the emergence of a super-class of Left-leaning liberals (I would call them Leftist) whose basic psychology is fundamentally different from their fellow countrymen and from everyone else in the world. They are Western,… Continue reading The question of collapse, part 2: Diversity, China, Unrest

Came upon these two interesting posts about super-forecasting and the stock market, which I have lumped together because they pretty much cover the same subject matter. Superforecasting for Dummies Reality-Plus A Few Unpleasant Truths (That Can Make You a Lot of Money) From the Reality-Plus: Here’s the dirty little secret that most wealth management companies… Continue reading Superforecasting and A Few Unpleasant Truths

It’s easy to lose perspective at how good things are now despite all the negativity in the news and the chronic dysfunction of the political class. Conditions for the professional class are better than ever compared to probably any time in US history for wealth creation, both in terms of high wages and the ability… Continue reading Pushing back against the ‘WTF happened in 1971’ thesis

Bitcoin Falls Below $45,000 as Global Market Rout Infects Crypto The great crypto scam continues to unravel. Bitcoin is down another 10%, on top of a 13% crash a couple weeks ago. The selling is being blamed on China. Whatever the reason is, it was expected. [On a related note, the whole China Evergrande Group… Continue reading Bitcoin: The Cookie Keeps Crumbling

This week saw two billionaire-led initiatives compressed into just a single week: the September 14th Apple Keynote event, lead by billionaire Apple CEO Tim Cook; and second, the Space-X Inspiration 4 launch, led by billionaire Elon Musk, which yesterday successfully landed. These were huge events garnering tens of millions of views online, and making headlines… Continue reading The era of billionaires has begun

It is commonly assumed that the social sciences such as finance or economics, in contrast to the ‘hard sciences’, are unpredictable, or that the social sciences are ‘chaotic’ and hence not amenable to the sort of rigid, top-down thinking and model building of the hard sciences. Physics has models of high predictive value, but behavioral… Continue reading How Systems Beat Crowds