Category: Uncategorized

My IQ piece: exams do not measure knowledge and abilities v. well; exams are extremely good at measuring the ability to take exams. But avoid the denying the antecedent fallacy: being good at exams doesn't mean you aren't good at being Fat Tony. Best test: are you rich at 35? https://t.co/wRWDVt2oAu — Nassim Nicholas Taleb… Continue reading Nassim Taleb keeps being wrong about IQ

Saw this The Lumpenbourgeoisie: The price we pay for elite overproduction. His argument is that elite overproduction means that college grads with useless/unmarketable degrees are increasingly finding themselves unemployed, hence possibly precipitating the long-awaited collapse of the student loan/higher-ed bubble. He writes: But that reality is, on the one hand, more complicated than it appears,… Continue reading Elite overproduction does not threaten college advantage

Digital content creators, whether it’s YouTube, Podcasts, Substack, or Twitter, are making record money with ads, product placement, consulting, and subscriptions, and this trend has accelerated after Covid, as individuals and companies find themselves with an abundance of free time, profits, and disposable income. From a 2021 Fortune article, “…last year, YouTube’s ad revenue grew… Continue reading The booming digital content creator economy

I saw this Freddie deBoer article My Brief Brief Against Utilitarianism This is a pretty bad article, which is unfortunate because most of his articles are good. It’s like he didn’t even bother to try to entertain the pro-utilitarianism view beyond either stawmans or dismissing it outright. His argument is effectively a reductio to absurdum,… Continue reading Bad Argument Against Utilitarianism

Regarding the Trump situation, my prediction is he will not be arrested, for several reasons: 1. It will set a precedent that neither side wants to embark on. It’s sometimes believed that Clinton’s impeachment was in retaliation for Nixon’s impeachment. And Trump being impeached was in retaliation for that. So this leaves the left open… Continue reading Why Trump Will Not Be Arrested

Biden and Trump have among the lowest approval ratings of recent presidents, or at least as far back as records exist for this sort of thing. Biden’s approval ratings are around 40%, which is comparable to Trump at a similar stage of the latter’s presidency: So, that’s two consecutive presidents who have persistently sub-40% approval… Continue reading The Decline of Leadership in America

I was going to write a post yesterday about the FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, but it does not look as bad as the media hype made it seem yesterday. From the NYTs: F.B.I. Searches Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Residence in Florida (Obligatory archive.ph link) The search, according to multiple people familiar with the investigation, appeared… Continue reading FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate

In the post GameStop stock rally proves media wrong, again, 2021, I wrote “The GameStop gains are going to hold and it will keep going up.” Today it’s only down 50% from its 2021 highs , which is less than Bitcoin (down 66%). It’s up 11% today, and also the gains have held contrary to… Continue reading Another huge day for GameStop

Inflation is often framed by the media, pundits, and politicians as a sort of tax. Compared to nominal returns, your ‘real’ returns are how much money you have after taking into account this deduction or debit due to inflation. I think however, this framing is to some degree wrong or incomplete. It’s not really a… Continue reading Is Inflation like a tax? It depends.

– Fogel, who is in his 60s, had around 17g (0.6oz) of cannabis in his luggage when he was caught on 15 August 2021 at Sheremetyevo airport, he told lawyers. 0 attention to this story tho. https://t.co/wDDK6dAOGP — Cernovich (@Cernovich) August 5, 2022 Because no one in the US has ever been sentenced for decades… Continue reading Russia’s Drug Laws are Comparable to the US