Midwit Syndrome

Without obvious signifiers of very-high IQ, it’s hard to differentiate between, say, an IQ of 130 or 160 when it comes to object-level issues. For example, what is the ‘high-IQ position’ on Ukraine vs. Russia? Or Ai risk? Or the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? It does not exist. There are high-IQ people on either extremes of these… Continue reading Midwit Syndrome

The Republican Party is Not Doomed

From Tracing Woodgrains: The Republican Party is Doomed. He begins by making a bold, attention-grabbing assertion “The republican Party is doomed” and subsequently walks back on his original claim. I don’t mean they’ll lose every election moving forward. My case, rather, is this: they know exactly what they want someone to do, but in an… Continue reading The Republican Party is Not Doomed

The Daily View: 12/23/2023 Bitcoin Scorecard, Nike Earnings, Trump, and Seed Oils

Item #1: Bitcoin scorecard. A Bitcoin ETF may be approved, but if so, it’s an inferior version, called a cash redemption model, and not a ‘true’ ETF. This cash redemption model is a compromise between the issuers and the SEC, instead of outright rejection: exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuers iron out details of their filings with… Continue reading The Daily View: 12/23/2023 Bitcoin Scorecard, Nike Earnings, Trump, and Seed Oils

The New ‘Success Sequence’

The ‘success sequence’, conceived in a 2009 Brookings report, describes the roadmap young people ought to follow to optimize their likelihood of success at life. But there are numerous confounders, and I’m skeptical of the data or the conclusions drawn. 1. The underlying variable could be family wealth. Having rich parents or having wealthy in-laws… Continue reading The New ‘Success Sequence’

Five years later, the verdict is in: Big tech beats crypto

In a post from last week I wrote: By being right I mean one or both of the following conditions are met, although they are not necessarily mutually inclusive [2]: Bitcoin is below $25k–and or–it lags the QQQ. My thesis for years has been that ‘big tech’ is the future, not Bitcoin. Accordingly, I am… Continue reading Five years later, the verdict is in: Big tech beats crypto

The Daily View: 12/17/2023: University backlash, Eli Lilly, Morning people, Food, and AI

Item #1: University backlash College presidents have taken heat for not doing more to crackdown on anti-Israel speech, which interestingly in the case of Harvard morphed into a plagiarism scandal involving its president, Claudine Gay. [To settle the matter, she submitted ‘corrections’, which is bullshit given that if this happened to anyone else they would… Continue reading The Daily View: 12/17/2023: University backlash, Eli Lilly, Morning people, Food, and AI

Stocks surge to new highs for 2023: right again

Stock market makes new highs, DJIA crosses 37,000: The vibes are good again https://t.co/2ulV1Wwvq3 — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) December 13, 2023 Looks like I was right yet again to buy the dips and to hold. For 2023, I rolled over my 2022 market and economic predictions, meaning I changed nothing. And sure enough, 2023 has… Continue reading Stocks surge to new highs for 2023: right again

Knowing how to think

Form a passage of Antifragile, 2014, by Nassim Taleb: Regarding the inability to keep secrets, I guess he’s never heard of NDAs. An obvious example are the strategies used by the famous quant hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, which decades later are still a secret despite considerable speculation and debate online. You would think at some… Continue reading Knowing how to think