Month: June 2022

I saw this going viral The Rich Are Not Who We Think They Are. And Happiness Is Not What We Think It Is, Either. First, rich people own. Among members of the top 0.1 percent, the researchers found, about three times as many make the majority of their income from owning a business as from… Continue reading Low tech vs. high-tech wealth, and the relationship between wealth and power

Childhood lead exposure is often blamed for black academic underachievement. It’s a popular explanation because it bypasses the much more partisan issue of race, and both sides are probably in agreement that childhood lead exposure is determinantal to development. How well does this lead hypothesis stand up to scrutiny? Poorly. The black-white SAT math gap… Continue reading Don’t blame lead for black-white achievement gap

Why Bitcoin is Not That Stupid Overall it’s a pretty bad argument. As I have said many times, there is a definite inverse correlation between the size of one’s personal brand/following versus accuracy/usefulness of said individual’s advice or skill. People who have 0-100 followers on Twitter, annons on 4chan, etc. are much more likely to… Continue reading No good reason to buy bitcoin

Taleb claims there was deflation in 2020: INFLATION (again)When discussing the inflation of 2022 (like parrots), make sure you incorporate the deflation of 2020. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 7, 2022 Of course, this is refuted by looking at the actual data, which shows inflation in 2020, about 1.2%. Any alleged deflation in 2020… Continue reading Tooleb tweets, part 3

The tweet below seems to exemplify or encapsulate the situation today regarding the so-called ‘vacuum of leadership’ as discussed in How the Vacuum of Leadership in Washington led to Rage Online: Weak nations require strong leaders; strong nations require weak leaders, or, better, no leader. (New pamphlet) — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 5, 2022… Continue reading The Vacuum of Leadership, part 2

“Has scientific progress stalled?” “Where are the new Einsteins?” “Has society stopped making new geniuses?” A week does not go by without someone asking some variant of the above questions, or lamenting how there are no ‘great geniuses’ like in the past, or how today’s geniuses don’t measure up to past geniuses. No, society has… Continue reading Has science stalled out? Sorta

I saw this article going viral Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? Probably because the government handed them a blank check in 1993. This is a perfect example of how easy it is to deceive with data. The author, Andrew, attributes the surge in college tuition costs to the Omnibus… Continue reading Lyin’ with stats: college tuition edition

The posts These are not the villains you’re looking for and The Expendables: The Millions of Americans that Society Has No Use For got butchered in the final editing process and parts were illegible or repeated. The posts have been re-edited, hopefully with fewer errors. From The Expendables: The Millions of Americans that Society Has… Continue reading Post Updates: IQ and Job Professions