There have been some recent developments in genome-wide association study (GWAS) pertaining to IQ and academic achievement: Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment: Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for educational attainment that extends our earlier discovery sample1, 2 of 101,069 individuals to 293,723 individuals, and… Continue reading Genes for IQ finally found…what’s next
Category: Uncategorized
Ingroup/Outgroup Dynamics
Ingroup/outgroup dynamics are a topic of much interest to both the ‘alt right’ and rationalists. From Wikipedia: In sociology and social psychology, an ingroup is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an outgroup is a social group with which an individual does not identify. For example,… Continue reading Ingroup/Outgroup Dynamics
Bay Area Rent Is Surging
Despite tame CPI-based inflation, rent, particularly in the Bay Area, has really exploded since 2011: The Bay Area real estate market is white hot, defying all predictions of its collapse. According to Zillow, San Jose, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Berkeley rent has gained 40-70% since 2011, vs. only modest national gain in wages and… Continue reading Bay Area Rent Is Surging
The Economics Debate: Jobs and Automation
In the ongoing online economics debate over technology, jobs, and automation, the Luddite Fallacy and Lump of Labor fallacies are often invoked. However, the there is a point of common confusion, which is if the goal of technology is to replace labor, then over the long-term labor cannot compete with technology. I believe technology will… Continue reading The Economics Debate: Jobs and Automation
Why Do The Rich Need So Much Money?
(This post was cut from an earlier post and made into a separate blog post, with some additional editing) Another argument you’ll commonly hear is, why do the rich need so much money? Couldn’t it be spent better elsewhere? Even leaving aside rich using their status to solidify their position, consider this: are the policies… Continue reading Why Do The Rich Need So Much Money?
Biology as a Sorting Mechanism
Some try to frame the left/right dichotomy as a battle between ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’, but it’s more like ‘egalitarianism’ (forced equality) vs ‘hierarchy‘, whether such hierarchy is biological, social, and or economic. The far-left may deny individual exceptionalism in favor of a ‘blank slate‘ approach, because they believe the state should be able to ‘perfect’… Continue reading Biology as a Sorting Mechanism
Alt Right, Part.. Whatever
From The Daily Beast: Meet Milo Yiannopoulos, the Appealing Young Face of the Racist Alt-Right Analyzing a subset of the alt-right who call themselves “neoreactionaries,” Vox’s Dylan Matthews explains this important distinction, “Most modern libertarians are individualists, motivated by a desire to prevent the masses from oppressing the individual… “Neoreactionaries are not individualists… neoreaction places… Continue reading Alt Right, Part.. Whatever
I Can Tolerate Anything Except Factual Inaccuracies
This story is going hugely viral: Economist Removed from Plane for Algebra The outpouring of sympathy and firestorm of righteous indignation, similar to that observed after the Ahmed Mohamed clock story, is more evidence we’re in an era of the ‘STEM celebrity‘, of which economics is part of. Had an obese snoring passenger been removed… Continue reading I Can Tolerate Anything Except Factual Inaccuracies
Donald Trump Wrong About Treasury Bonds
Even though Josh Brown of the Reformed Broker leans ‘left’, I agree stiffing treasury bond holders, hurting America’s credit worthiness and causing a multitude of problems in the process, is a bad idea: The whole world runs on the premise that US debt is risk-free in terms of return of principal, backed up by our… Continue reading Donald Trump Wrong About Treasury Bonds
Guest/User-Contributed Content is Clogging Google
In 2011 and 2012, Google introduced sweeping updates to minimize low-quality, thin content on its search results. However, there seems to be a new type of ‘spam’ that is more subtle but also annoying: user-contributed content, also known as content farms. For the sake of simplicity, assume there are three types of sites: Sites run… Continue reading Guest/User-Contributed Content is Clogging Google