Grey Enlightenment

From Nate Silver: Go to a state school. This guy was taken seriously as a election pundit, and after capitalizing on that fleeting fame until his prediction models stopped working, basically been a long decline as a contrarian gadfly ever since. his week, for instance, Google — despite probably being the most progressive or Silicon… Continue reading Nate Silver: Go to a state school

As Bitcoin faceplants, at around $57,000 or so as of publishing this post for a decline of over 25% after peaking in March on what is likely a trajectory to $20,000 or lower, I am reminded of a useful heuristic: “Anything that is hyped or promised as a shortcut to wealth for the masses will… Continue reading Bitcoin’s crash is a reminder of the importance of high barriers to entry

Rob K. Henderson discusses his writing process, interestingly, downplaying the role of talent: Yes, you need some bare minimum level of ability to be a good writer, but not as much as you might think. It also implies that the writer can only do things he or she is “good at.” Most people aren’t working… Continue reading The importance of talent and the difficulty of ‘good writing’

Item #1: Meta stock falls 10% on weak guidance and concerns over AI spending despite an otherwise strong quarter, shown below: Of course, I lost a lot on this, which amounted to around 5% of the total portfolio. Thanks to diversification this was not as bad as the 20% decline incurred by FBL, an ETF… Continue reading The Daily View 4/28/2024: Meta Crash, Stock Surge, Bitcoin Falls, Biden Approval Falls

From Erik Hoel, I’m a neuroscientist. Our presidential candidates have shrinking prefrontal cortexes. Age-related cognitive decline–or at least some slowing of intellectual ability–is likely real to some variable extent, as Dr. Hoel shows. For tenured professors, there is marked decline of output with age. Public intellectuals produce their most important findings by their 40s, and… Continue reading Age-Related Cognitive Decline is Real

From CNN: Biden just signed a potential TikTok ban into law. Here’s what happens next. Pundits are erroneously calling this a TikTok ban, when it’s anything but. It’s more like a roadmap of options that could, in theory, potentially lead to a ban down the road if TikTok management is somehow unable to avail itself… Continue reading TikTok Ban: Take 2 (Why it won’t happen)

Time for another update on the Bitcoin method, in which I describe a ‘night effect’ for Bitcoin, similar to one that has existed for stocks for decades. A highly-cited paper from 2008 describes a night effect for stocks: We use transaction-level data and decompose the US equity premium into day (open to close) and night… Continue reading A Strong ‘Night Effect’ for Bitcoin: All of bitcoin’s gains come from overnight

I saw this going viral, from The Economist: Generation Z is unprecedentedly rich: Millennials were poorer at this stage in their lives. So were baby-boomers. Gen-z benefited from five key economic tailwinds or trends over the past 15 or so years, although this also applies to many millennials too: 1. Inflated white-collar salaries and substantial… Continue reading Why Generation Z is Unprecedentedly Rich

This week feels like Déjà vu of last week. Item #1: From the NYTs: Muted Reactions to Israeli Strikes on Iran Hint at De-Escalation, “Israel had vowed retaliation for Iran’s attack last weekend, but the strikes reported overnight were limited, and Iran downplayed them.” This agrees with what I wrote last week here and here,… Continue reading The Daily View 4/21/2024: Iran vs. Israel, DJT Stock Comeback

Peter Thiel said that AI will be “worse for the math people than the word people.” My intuition would be it’s going to be quite the opposite, where it seems much worse for the math people than the word people. What people have told me is that they think within three to five years, the… Continue reading AI will not make writers obsolete