Scott calls out Taleb’s claim in Antifragile that “before the thirteenth century no more than five persons in the whole of Europe knew how to perform a division,” linking to a related Stack Exchange discussion from 8 years ago, which soundly debunks Taleb’s claim as “an outright misrepresentation of history.” Antifragile, published in 2012, is… Continue reading Taleb Gets Called Out for Spreading BS Again

With 127 million $1,400 checks having been disbursed, pundits are predictably debating, yet again, about inflation. Will the checks be inflationary? My answer, again, is an empathic ‘no’. Similar to the first and second round of Covid stimulus payments, CPI will not budge much, if any. the US dollar will not fall, and treasury yields… Continue reading The Covid Stimulus Inflation Debate, Continued

Paul Graham essays are usually highly acclaimed. But his latest, “Write Simply,” (http://paulgraham.com/simply.html) got a lot of criticism in the comments compared to the typical column. So what went wrong. There are several problems: Some readers noted in the comments that using only simple, short words and short sentences can come across as jarring by… Continue reading Paul Graham on Writing: What Went Wrong

Expounding on my earlier post http://greyenlightenment.com/on-the-grand-unified-theory-of-social-justice-liberalism/ Likening social justice to a religion, although by now hardly an original observation, is uncanningly accurate. Social justice has many of the same attributes of an organized religion, as it provides its adherents a sense of belonging, purpose, and an outgroup to oppose and to give the religion justification… Continue reading More theories of liberalism

Why is the left so concerned about NEETs? For liberalism to work requires that people submit to the system, such as by attending diversity training at work, by being indoctrinated at school, and by pledging one’s allegiance to the ‘state religion’ that is social justice. NEETs, by dropping out of society, refuse to have any… Continue reading The NEET-demic

I have been thinking the post “Death of a Client” and why it went so viral. The common assumption is that smart people are persuaded by ‘facts and data’ whereas less intelligent people are persuaded by rhetoric, appeals to emotion, sentimentalism, etc. This reductionist categorization/dichotomy fails to agree with reality, in that among the intellectual-web… Continue reading Death of a Client, Analysis

In 2020, business intelligence firm MicroStrategy (ticker: MSTR), for reasons that are not really understood or clear, made a major pivot to acquiring Bitcoin. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, who expects a single Bitcoin to be worth millions, initiated the purchases, with MicroStrategy’s total holdings as of March 2021 standing at 90,859 Bitcoin funded with $1.7… Continue reading MicroStrategy’s Bad Strategy

In theoretical and high-energy physics, a major unsolved problem is to devise a theory or formula to unify gravity with the other fundamental forces–the so-called ‘theory of everything’ that would explain gravity at sub-atomic distances and at the earliest stages of the universe. String theory has been the most promising approach to finding such a… Continue reading On the ‘Grand Unified Theory’ of Social-Justice Liberalism

The media for the past decade has been trying to call the top of everything, whether it is stocks, bonds, the U.S. economy, etc. It was supposed to be that Trump would doom the U.S. economy, which didn’t happen (even with Covid, which was out of Trump’s control, the stock market and U.S. economy boomed… Continue reading GameStop stock rally proves media wrong, again

Seth Godin’s popularity has always been something of an enigma. It’s like he has no talent or any particularly insightful observations yet is successful anyway. His success is evidence that being early , persistent, and having connections, is a substitute for talent or skill. Another example Zeynep Tüfekçi, who is widely read despite all of… Continue reading Seth Godin Does Not Know Economics