Grey Enlightenment

Scott discusses rationalism. If anyone is an expert on rationalism, it would be him, but I disagree with some parts. It’s easy to find people who are especially bad on all these axes. For example, Alex Jones – the conspiracy theory guy who says school shootings are fake – is “irrational”. I strongly believe this.… Continue reading Whose rationality

It’s still hard to believe that Trump was permanently suspended from twitter. Trump , afik, is the first and only public/government official  to have ever been banned from the site. It is easy to forgot just how important Trump’s Twitter account was, especially in 2020 during the pandemic, the BLM protests, and the U.S. presidential… Continue reading Trump’s Twitter Suspension, A Retrospective

Over the past few years or so, or at least as back as I have been paying attention, there have been a plethora of viral articles about the supposed ‘loneliness epidemic ‘ in America, or how Americans are lonelier than ever and how this is a major problem. Since Covid, there have been more of… Continue reading Skepticism about loneliness epidemic

Over the past few weeks have gotten some comments , which I would like to address as a single blog post in detail. Aren’t you worried about the Nasdaq president’s idea of racial/sexual quotas on all company boards trading there? Thomas Dell tried all this woke stuff around 2004 and destroyed his company in about… Continue reading Answering Questions

All over Google, there are stories of ‘millions of job openings going unfilled,’ often attributed to unemployment benefits and other purported disincentives for work. My thoughts on the issue: 1 A job opening does not imply that said company is in urgent need of labor, but rather it is more like an audition process in… Continue reading Why the jobs are going unfilled

There as been considerable debate about the so-called ‘growth mindset’ versus the ‘fixed mindset’. Scott has written many posts comparing and contrasting the two. From the article Why Grit Is More Important Than IQ When You’re Trying To Become Successful: While comparing career accomplishments, you were shocked to learn that the kid from school with… Continue reading Why Talent Beats Grit (‘growth mindset’ versus the ‘fixed mindset’)

Over the past few weeks I have observed considerable hype and fear about the possibility of the federal minimum wage being raised to $15, from $7.25/hour it stands currently. The likes of Peter Schiff and others keep repeating stale taking points about how a $15 minimum wage will hurt youth employment and hasten automation. Somehow,… Continue reading The Overblown Minimum Wage Debate

Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges. This did not come as a surprise. Jury intimidation likely played a role and made any sort of impartiality impossible, as the jurors had reason to fear for their lives despite anonymity if they ruled in favor of Chauvin. What is more of a surprise, and… Continue reading Sentencing guidelines are weird

When I made a post a few weeks about Taleb being called out on his BS, I was not cherry picking, but rather this habitual on the part of Taleb. So a few days ago, Coinbase announced its IPO, valuing the cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2012, at around $60-80 billion. Taleb retweeted approvingly a tweet… Continue reading Taleb, more BS

In cosmology, the steady-state universe describes a model for which the universe is neither expanding nor contracting, but, as the name suggests, remains the same size (in terms of its geometric boundary). However, this has long been ruled out by radio telescope data, which show the universe is expanding and possibly even accelerating. But in… Continue reading The future: much like the present