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There is a common narrative that disregarding legacy admissions in favor of a purely meritocratic system will cost the Ivy League and other top schools money. In the post Dropping the SAT Will Likely Cost Harvard Money I argue that this may not necessarily be true. I have updated that post to include MIT and… Continue reading Ending legacy favoritism will not hurt the Ivy League financially

It’s taken as a truism by the media and pundits that social media creates envy, but I think this is debatable. I cannot recall anyone I follow on social media posting about early retirement with millions or landing a lucrative tech job or anything that could be considered envy-provoking. Have these pundits actually ever used… Continue reading Still skeptical about the link between social media and envy

Taleb’s opinion of Elon buying out Twitter is predictably woke: From suckers who firmly believe @ElonMusk is a defender of the flow of information, he has blocked me for this in March 2020, just before Covid hit the fan. I have nothing agst blocking or restricting accounts; but I am not buying Twitter to facilitate… Continue reading Taleb tweets, continued

An Elon tweet posted just an hour ago got 500k likes. To put this in in perspective, his most popular tweet ever got 1mm likes in 24 hours. Just nuts. This is a black swan in the sense few saw Elon becoming as influential even in 2018-2020 as he is today (to give myself a… Continue reading Elon Musk Twitter buyout almost finalized : thoughts

The social media outrage in response to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s seemingly innocuous observation that not all workers are equally skilled, revealed that America’s fraught understanding of class is one of deliberate omission or cognitive dissonance, in which we have to simultaneously acknowledge that economic and class disparities are real but at the… Continue reading IQ is not that important…except for all the things in which it is

Time to review some more correct predictions: 1. Tesla stock surged on earnings. Right again. The consensus 1-2 years ago is that Tesla would crash, was a fad, a massive bubble, dependent on subsidies, etc. I guess it was no so irrational, after all, that Tesla stock did so well in 2019-2021.Tesla is rapidly growing… Continue reading The Daily View: Tesla, Home Prices, and more

Came across this book review Why Biology Is Not Destiny, which falsely claims that any physical signifiers of IQ has been debunked or discredited. Harden is right that such assertions are controversial, but they’re nothing new. The idea of a biological hierarchy of intelligence arose alongside the first theories of human evolution. It never goes… Continue reading IQ science has not been debunked

Noam Chomsky managed to piss off just everyone over the weekend by arguing that “Ukraine must make concessions to Russia’s demands”. This went against the prevailing left-left narrative of Ukraine being the helpless victim. Many mainstream conservatives, who also support the war, also pushed back. It doesn’t really matter what Chomsky’s opinion is. He has… Continue reading The ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ Bites Back

I have been thinking about the issue of mass incarceration. A common complaint by the left but also civil libertarian types is that America incarcerates too many people. Indeed, the incarceration rate in America has surged, starting at around the early to mid 80s with the war on drugs. An estimated 5% of all Americans… Continue reading Some thoughts on mass incarceration: why cost is not the issue

As predicted earlier this year, Elon Musk’s brand continues to surge, having made an offer to buy Twitter for $43 billion. He is more widely followed than probably anyone, save for maybe a handful of political and religious leaders. Elon was already a big deal in 2018, but his brand has really exploded post Covid.… Continue reading Musk, Twitter, and the Era of Billionaires and its implications