tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77897400218659639252024-03-05T14:14:30.391-06:00Blake's BlogA Collection of Thoughts about ThingsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger152125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-79743658457210710002021-05-29T14:17:00.005-05:002021-05-29T14:17:37.235-05:00Links 2021/05/29<p>Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain - <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain">https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmically-generate-every-possible-melody-release-them-to-public-domain<br /></a><br />Passports started as a "temporary" war measure - <a href="https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/">https://fee.org/articles/passports-were-a-temporary-war-measure/</a><br /><br />"There is one thing that the extreme pro- and anti-abortion people can agree upon: that the issue is intellectually trivial, the correct answer blindingly obvious. They just disagree about which position is blindingly obvious and which stupidly evil. I disagree, though. I think the issue of abortion is difficult. In fact, if you think the issue is easy, then I would say you’re irrational" - <a href="http://fakenous.net/?p=392">http://fakenous.net/?p=392</a><br /><br />Models that predict a decline in human population due to declining birth rates fail to account for whether fertility is heritable. If it is, then what we'll really see if a temporary drop, where the ability to choose your family size starts replacing people who don't want more children with those who do. - <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799</a><br /><br />Over time, kids are getting better at delayed gratification. - <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289620300295">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289620300295</a><br /><br />In every social science, the scientists are, on average, left-wing. But economists are the ones who are least left-wing. - <a href="https://t.co/Bf9e2pFMOx">https://t.co/Bf9e2pFMOx</a><br /><br />According to John Ehrlichman who worked for Nixon: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." - <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/">https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/</a><br /><br />Right-wing political correctness - <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/right-has-its-own-version-political-correctness-its-just-stifling">https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/right-has-its-own-version-political-correctness-its-just-stifling</a><br /><br />Young people have about the same level of debt and home ownership as 2 decades ago - <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/millennial-debt-is-actually-quite-low/">https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/millennial-debt-is-actually-quite-low/</a><br /><br />Instead of being separate conditions, many mental health problems appear to share an underlying cause - <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532660-500-a-radical-idea-suggests-mental-health-conditions-have-a-single-cause/">https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532660-500-a-radical-idea-suggests-mental-health-conditions-have-a-single-cause/</a><br /><br />"white officers use force 60 percent more than black officers, and use gun force twice as often... while white and black officers use gun force at similar rates in white and racially mixed neighborhoods, white officers are five times as likely to use gun force in predominantly black neighborhoods." - <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26774">https://www.nber.org/papers/w26774</a><br /><br />The NRA used to be "at the forefront of legislative efforts to enact gun control", plus other weird facts about the history of gun control - <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/</a><br /><br />"Republican district attorneys lead to a 18-21% increase in new prison admissions in the two years following their election... there are no significant effects on local crime or arrest rates" - <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/the-effect-of-district-attourneys-on-criminal-justice-outcomes.html">https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/the-effect-of-district-attourneys-on-criminal-justice-outcomes.html</a><br /><br />The ways Texas and California Republicans took different paths on immigration in the past, and how it seemed to change who voted for them - <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/proposition-187-turned-california-blue">https://www.cato.org/blog/proposition-187-turned-california-blue</a><br /><br />Missing moods - <a href="https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.html">https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.html<br /></a><br />The majority of Republicans say that college has an overall negative impact on the U.S. - <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/08/19/the-growing-partisan-divide-in-views-of-higher-education-2/">https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/08/19/the-growing-partisan-divide-in-views-of-higher-education-2/</a><br /><br />"Liberals, relative to conservatives, express greater moral concern toward friends relative to family, and the world relative to the nation." - <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12227-0</a></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-18852918178470089832020-01-01T13:18:00.004-06:002020-01-02T22:58:30.381-06:00Best songs of the 2010s according to science: 1-25<p>
Everyone knows the best thing about the end of a year is reading and making lists. The end of a decade is even better! I sat down to make my top 10 songs, then accidentally made 100, and then forced myself to cut this to 25. I didn't allow listing more than 1 song by a single artist (otherwise some artists like Tera Melos and Buke and Gase would be listed too much). This ended up taking a lot of time therefore you are morally obligated to read it. I'm so sorry.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>25. Dark Dark Dark - Daydreaming</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UvTZwhOHYVA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
I heard just a small clip of this folk song in the background of a TV show and spent a while trying to dig up what it was. The little repeating instrumental piano part seems like it shouldn't work on paper but it's so great and unique and never gets old.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>24. Flying Lotus with Kendrick Lamar - Never Catch Me</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2lXD0vv-ds8" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
They need to make a whole album together in this style.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>23. Ian William Craig - A Single Hope</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=38204839/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=250595562/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://ianwilliamcraig.bandcamp.com/album/centres">Centres by Ian William Craig</a></iframe>
<p>
Very distorted and harsh sounds mysteriously adding up to something extremely calm and beautiful. Headphones required.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>22. Norwegian Arms - Kiva Ikva</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2944492316/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=454628493/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://norwegianarms.bandcamp.com/album/wolf-like-a-stray-dog-2">Wolf Like a Stray Dog by Norwegian Arms</a></iframe>
<p>
Mandolin-driven Animal-Collective-inspired freak-folk that I imagine SpongeBob would listen to.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>21. Black Midi - BmBmBm</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rc3LSW_XTwI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
Best new genre (auction rock) and worst front-flip. A brand new band that I have a feeling will make some of my favorite music of the 2020s. They feel like the spiritual successor to The Mars Volta.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>20. Julia Holter - Turn the Light On</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=989980970/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=2809079270/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://juliaholter.bandcamp.com/album/aviary">Aviary by Julia Holter</a></iframe>
<p>
I've listened to this song so many times and still don't feel like I understand it. What is the main "part"? What is the structure of it? What are even the instruments being played? It feels futuristic and alien and not acoustic, yet when I try to listen to each sound it appears they are all classical instruments like strings, horns, and piano? It feels very abstract and beautiful and different on each listen.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>19. Dawn of Midi - Dysomnia</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1843766507/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://dawnofmidi.bandcamp.com/album/dysnomia">Dysnomia by Dawn of Midi</a></iframe>
<p>
It's a little bit cheating that I'm putting the album instead of a track off the album, but really the whole album is a single song and it'd be impossible to pick just one track. It's very unique and hard to categorize, but they are mostly considered a jazz band acoustically playing techno. I don't really like jazz or techno, yet I haven't been able to stop listening to this. The way the instruments spiral around each other and slowly unfold into different shapes is really trance-inducing.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>18. Tool - Fear Inoculum</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q7DfQMPmJRI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
I was happy for Tool to finally make a new album but had low expectations because I figured surely their glory days are over. And at first I just felt like this was "alright". But it <i>really</i> grows on you.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>17. Kendrick Lamar - u</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QiTAqBKqJks" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
The song I've found myself going back to the most from the best hip-hop album of the decade. The transition around half-way through the song is the thing that stands out to me the most.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>16. Olafur Arnalds - Near Light</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UHVh_L_kv1Q" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
A neo-classical pianist, who made this album "Living Room Songs" in his living room, writing and recording 1 song per day for 8 days. This one in particular mixes in electronic elements; he said "my mother and sister came by for a visit so I made them play some synths."
</p>
<hr />
<h1>15. Folo - White Bear and The Birds</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2559177555/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=1165230280/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://foloband.bandcamp.com/album/the-secret-message">The Secret Message by Folo</a></iframe>
<p>
Israeli folk-tronica that I think any Radiohead fan would really like. As far as I know, they just made this album and then disappeared without it really being noticed, which isn't fair.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>14. Dirty Projectors - Unto Caesar</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4184569952/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=1521424705/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://dirtyprojectors.bandcamp.com/album/swing-lo-magellan">Swing Lo Magellan by Dirty Projectors</a></iframe>
<p>
When should we bust into harmony?
</p>
<hr />
<h1>13. PJ Harvey - England</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ik9vqRDqyu0" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
A rock goddess from the early 90s that can then make odd folk stuff in the 2010s and have it be her best music and maybe the best album of the decade.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>12. Drop Electric - Empire Trashed</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1776831873/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=2944407872/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://dropelectric.bandcamp.com/album/drop-electric-sampler-platter">Drop Electric Sampler Platter by Drop Electric</a></iframe>
<p>
I remember hearing this for the first time, knowing absolutely nothing about them, and being taken aback several times by how the song evolves.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>11. Kanye West - Lost In The World</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ofaRvNOV4SI" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
I don't need to say who Kanye West is.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>10. Sylvan Esso - Hey Mami</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1893196742/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=3917838666/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://sylvanesso.bandcamp.com/album/hey-mami-play-it-right">Hey Mami / Play It Right by Sylvan Esso</a></iframe>
<p>
Started by making an a capella song that works as is, then with electronics added in a surprising and exactly-right way.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>9. Animal Collective - FloriDada</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cuoIvNFUY7I" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
Most instantly and consistently catchy song of the decade.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>8. Cloudkicker - Oh, God.</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1047533291/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=3370311678/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://cloudkicker.bandcamp.com/album/beacons">Beacons by Cloudkicker</a></iframe>
<p>
Just one guy making music on his home computer as a hobby and making all of it available for free. Even though it's of a genre I mostly don't like (metal), I obsessed over all his music this decade, and when I make music I find myself frequently imitating his approach to things.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>7. Buke and Gase - Your Face Left Before You</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=484094084/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=1349532671/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://bukeandgase.bandcamp.com/album/riposte">Riposte by Buke and Gase</a></iframe>
<p>
2 people strumming instruments they invented/built while drumming with their feet. Even though a lot of thought and experimentation has clearly gone into it, the songs feel extremely spontaneous and just more alive than other music. Nobody really knows how to classify it; I've seen it called anything from math rock to country pop.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>6. Kishi Bashi - Philosophize In It! Chemicalize With It!</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0ZutRhiFmHM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
Feels like a song from some cult I want to join and live happily ever after.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>5. Tera Melos - Purple and Stripes</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2712720927/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=3033473907/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://teramelos.bandcamp.com/album/zoo-weather">Zoo Weather by Tera Melos</a></iframe>
<p>
If I kept making this list from scratch I'd pick a different Tera Melos song to be toward the top each time; throughout their last 3 albums they've been my consistent favorite artist of this decade. This song is like taking clips from unknown insanely catchy 90s punk pop songs, throwing them in a blender, then picking out some of the broken shards and piecing them together into a jigsaw puzzle.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>4. Alt-J - Hunger Of The Pine</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dCCXq9QB-dQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
Only good because it samples Hannah Montana, obviously.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>3. Son Lux and Lorde - Easy (Switch Screens)</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=4010493326/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=2828127251/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://sonlux.bandcamp.com/album/alternate-worlds">Alternate Worlds by Son Lux & Lorde</a></iframe>
<p>
The original song by Son Lux was already really good and unique. Then they started changing it up live, and also Lorde started covering it on her tour, and then they combined all that together to make it truly perfect.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>2. Swans - Apostate</h1>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 42px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1454615215/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/track=3339936608/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="http://swans.bandcamp.com/album/the-seer">The Seer by SWANS</a></iframe>
<p>
This is what the end of the world sounds like. If you are patient and also listen to it LOUD, it's a very rewarding and intense experience.
</p>
<hr />
<h1>1. Sigur Ros - Ekki Mukk</h1>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/INWZy3-Vw80" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>
Listen on headphones. By the end your breathing will be slowed to half its normal speed, and you'll have no idea whether the song lasted 1 minute or 1 hour.
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-57833317059196262532019-10-29T22:04:00.002-05:002019-10-29T22:04:34.242-05:00Links 2019/10/29<p>
Kansas City spans two states, both of which have constantly competed for businesses to relocate to their side of the city with tax incentives. Obviously this was a negative-sum game, and the governors of both states have worked out a deal to end it (<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/08/14/the-end-of-kansas-missouris-border-war-should-mark-a-new-chapter-for-both-states-economies/">link</a>). Everyone appears to correctly recognize this as a good thing to stop, but isn't this what's happening across <i>all</i> cities and states offering tax incentives to specific businesses!? Should we not pass a federal law to end this at a higher level?
</p>
<p>
The PATRIOT Act created special warrants that were supposed to give federal agents more power to stop terrorism. It turns out, this new power has been used <i>a lot</i>, but almost entirely on the war on drugs instead of terrorism. <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/10/patriot-act-warrants-used-more-drugs-terrorism/">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
And yet... per capita US drug deaths have doubled every decade for the last 4 decades! That's a far bigger increase than I realized. <a href="https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1187148972630118401?s=03">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
A long-term look at California's Paid Family Leave Act suggests that it "tended to reduce the number of children born". That seems very surprising to me, and I don't know whether to consider this a case where evidence should overturn common sense or it's safer to brush this aside as noise in the data? <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26416">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
ICE accidentally deported an American citizen with mental disabilities to Mexico with only $3. It took 125 days of living on the streets of foreign countries before he was able to get back. Yet another reminder that you can lose all your rights as soon as you are <i>suspected</i> of being an illegal immigrant. <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/us-citizen-wrongfully-deported-mexico-settles-his-case-against-federal-government">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
A guy who was born in Greece, then moved to America as a kid, was deported by ICE to <i>Iraq</i> because he was ethnically Iraqi. He had never lived there, did not speak Arabic, had diabetes, and of course... died, apparently from a from lack of insulin. <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/iraqi-man-dies-deportation-trump-administration-1643512">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
"65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians ... down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated ... now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009." <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/">Link</a>. There has also been an especially rapid drop in religiosity the last few years in parts of the Arab world, without almost half of young adults in Tunisia now identifying as not religious (<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/new-survey-reveals-drop-religiousity-across-arab-world-especially-north-africa">link</a>). I expect these trends to continue, <i>but</i>... if religiosity remains somewhat heritable and correlated with larger family size, then in the long-run, maybe those less naturally inclined to be religious will fade from the gene pool and religion will make a major comeback?
</p>
<p>
People often mention Trump's deregulation efforts without ever getting into any details. The Brookings Institution keeps a running list <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/interactives/tracking-deregulation-in-the-trump-era/">here</a>. As noted <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-white-house-touts-trumps-deregulation-its-actually-been-a-bust/2019/10/28/c9fcbdc8-f9c3-11e9-ac8c-8eced29ca6ef_story.html">here</a>, the deregulations are largely environmental, such as less restrictions on pollution and removing the rule requiring humane treatment of animals in order to be officially "certified organic". On the other hand, regulations of the labor market have increased in many ways, e.g. "employers have been asked to document every possible project a prospective immigrant employee might work on over the next three years".
</p>
<p>
Per "average fine particulate matter" measurements, American air pollution decreased by 24.2% from 2009 to 2016, then reversed course and increased by 5.5% between 2016 and 2018. "The increase was associated with 9,700 additional premature deaths in 2018." <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26381">Link</a>.
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-32850773530917654952019-07-30T22:28:00.000-05:002019-07-30T22:28:42.076-05:00Links 2019/07/03<p>
"<a href="https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-landfill-and-recycling-is-probably-totally-wrong-3a6cf57049ce">What you think about landfill and recycling is probably totally wrong</a>": "Almost all of the litter that escapes into nature, especially the sea, comes from fishing ships or poorer riverine countries with bad rubbish collection practices... Rich countries like the UK or US have rubbish collection rates approaching 100%". Throwing stuff away is probably fine most of the time. We're just taking stuff out of the ground, making use of it, then putting it back in the ground.
</p>
<p>
"An investor-led building boom has almost doubled the size of the Sydney apartment rental market in two years, forcing landlords to drop rents more than $100 a week in some areas to secure tenants" (<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/apartment-oversupply-puts-squeeze-on-rents-20190705-p524cp.html">link</a>). It almost makes you wonder if restrictions on increasing housing supply, happening in cities all over, are bad and increasing our cost of living!
</p>
<p>
"<a href="https://nationalpost.com/opinion/im-begging-you-stop-donating-canned-goods-to-food-banks">I’m begging you: Stop donating canned goods to food banks</a>". Canned food drives are maybe the best example of ineffective altruism. Among other things: "that $1 you spent on tuna could have purchased $4 worth of tuna if put in the hands of non-profit employee".
</p>
<p>
A government policy passed today will affect younger people more, because they will live longer. So wouldn't it be more fair to make votes count more the younger you are? <a href="https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b7BrGrswgANP3eRzd/age-weighted-voting">The case for age-weighted voting</a>.
</p>
<p>
Tax preparers are capturing 13-22% of the value of the EITC (<a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/2016/04/14/tax-companies-exploit-working-poor/">link</a>). So if the government did pre-filled tax returns, people would get much more out of the EITC without us having to spend an extra penny on it (<a href="https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/1156304395975503872">link</a>).
</p>
<p>
Comparing states that accepted the ACA Medicaid expansions to those that did not finds a "reduction in disease-related deaths" which "grows over time" in states that did the Medicaid expansion (<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w26081">link</a>).
</p>
<p>
Replacement of manned toll booths with electronic ones greatly reduce vehicle emissions in the area. And a study of one example of making that transition in a populated area found that it "reduced prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2 kilometers of a toll plaza by 10.8 percent and 11.8 percent, respectively, relative to mothers 2-10 km from a toll plaza" (<a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.3.1.65">link</a>).
</p>
<p>
Related: schools downwind of a highway have "decreases in test scores, more behavioral incidents, and more absences" than ones upwind. To help control for other variables, this is comparing students who move campuses from one side of the highway to the other (<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w25489">link</a>).
</p>
<p>
Related again: when Volkswagen cheated on emission tests, they were selling cars "which secretly polluted up to 150 times as much as gasoline cars". That's a lot! So a study tracked where these vehicles were used as a natural experiment on the effects of sudden and randomly dispersed increases in air pollution from cars. And it found "a 10 percent cheating-induced increase in car exhaust increases rates of low birth weight and acute asthma attacks among children by 1.9 and 8.0 percent" (<a href="https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/working-papers/2019/2019-04">link</a>).
</p>
<p>
A Dallas-born teenage citizen was mistakenly arrested under suspicion of being an illegal immigrant and kept in one of our special detention centers for asylum-seekers. He was not given basic rights like a phone call, because those rights do not apply to people who are not believed to be citizens. In the 23 days it took before the error was recognized and he was released, he apparently lost 26 pounds (<a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/2019/07/24/no-shower-23-days-us-citizen-held-deportation-shares-like-immigrant">link</a>). In contrast, read <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/prisoners.html">this</a> excerpt on how well we treated Nazi prisoners. Were we wrong to not treat them worse? Or is being a brown person seeking asylum a worse crime than Nazism?
</p>
<p>
Trump is now telling non-white women in Congress, who were born in America, to go back to the countries they came from (<a href="https://www.themoneyillusion.com/another-day-another-racist-rant">link</a>). In a follow-on rally, his supporters chanted "send her back" about a Somali-born American citizen (<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/07/29/send-her-back-chants-trump-rally-open-wounds-greenville-nc/1828979001/">link</a>). I wonder what David Duke saw in him.
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-69229076471030894652019-05-29T22:07:00.000-05:002019-05-29T22:07:10.942-05:00Links 2019/05/29<p>
The state agency that regulates and licenses plumbing in Texas is being abolished. According to one state representative, "our plumbing shortage is solved because we can all become plumbers." <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/27/texas-plumbing-board-and-laws-abolished-after-legislative-strife/">Link</a>. Yee-haw!
</p>
<p>
Sweden has a tradition called "Lordagsgodis" (Saturday candy), where you shouldn't eat candy on any other day of the week, but on Saturday you eat as much as you want. "When participating in the 'Lordagsgodis' tradition, the average Swedish family of four eats about 1.2 kilos (2.65 lbs.) of candy!" <a href="https://candypeople.us/blog/scandinavian-candy-tradition-lordagsgodis-saturday-candy-explained/">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://theconversation.com/does-college-turn-people-into-liberals-90905">Does College Turn People Into Liberals</a>? In a study following 7,000+ students across 120+ colleges through their first couple of years, "48 percent viewed liberals more favorably in their second year of college than when they arrived on campus. However, among the same students, 50 percent also viewed conservatives more favorably. In other words, college attendance is associated, on average, with gains in appreciating political viewpoints across the spectrum, not just favoring liberals."
</p>
<p>
<a href="https://www.onestepforanimals.org/about.html">One Step For Animals</a> is an animal welfare organization that, instead of advocating vegetarianism, is focused just on getting people to stop eating chicken. "If we can convince someone to stop eating birds, they would go from being responsible for the factory farming and slaughtering of more than two dozen land animals per year to fewer than one." "It takes more than 200 chickens to provide the same number of meals as one cow."
</p>
<p>
Everyone learns about the Stanford Prison Experiment, but the whole thing was basically bad science and a sham. People <i>know</i> this and <i>still</i> teach it because, in the words of one professor, it teaches a lesson "bigger than the science". THIS REALLY GETS ON MY NERVES! <a href="https://medium.com/s/trustissues/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
"Paying American students cash incentives causes them to do better on the PISA, an international standardized test of math skills. But similar incentives had no effect on Chinese students, implying that Americans are slacking while Chinese students are trying hard." <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-12-12/nurture-counts-as-much-as-nature-in-success">Link</a>. IMO, it's often the case that what people are "good" or "bad" at is more matter of how motivated they feel to do it.
</p>
<p>
In a study trying to determine why people deny science: "Subjects were asked to justify their rejection of the scientific consensus. In 33% of cases... subjects simply restated their position, essentially giving no justification." <a href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-people-deny-science/">Link</a>. ...
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-88960554729276411872019-05-22T21:49:00.000-05:002019-05-22T21:49:01.681-05:00Links 2019/05/22<p>
<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died">The Day The Dinosaurs Died</a>: The asteroid's impact "formed a fiery plume, which reached <i>halfway to the moon</i>". Hollywood has really dropped the ball on cool/scary asteroid explosions.
</p>
<p>
"Our belief in the benefits of low salt consumption are largely based on mis-information and myth-information." <a href="https://medium.com/@drjasonfung/the-salt-scam-1973d73dccd">Link.</a>
</p>
<p>
"Saudi crown prince defends China's right to put Uighur Muslims in concentration camps." ??? This has been up to 1 <i>million</i> people. <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/22/saudi-crown-prince-defends-chinas-right-put-uighur-muslims-concentration/">Link.</a>
</p>
<p>
"August birthday (read: enter school younger) associated with 30% increase in ADHD diagnoses relative to September birthday. But only in states with September school cutoff." Hmmm... <a href="https://twitter.com/ProfEmilyOster/status/1068237708387065857">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
California used to allow medical and non-medical exemptions for school-mandated vaccines. Then, to try to increase vaccination, they repealed non-medical exemptions. But this only led to a 1% decline in total exemptions, seemingly because many of the people who were getting non-medical exemptions switched to medical ones instead. What a coincidence! It makes you doubt how effectively we can change people's behavior in general... <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w25847">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
"A Women's March planned in Eureka has been postponed by the organizers over fears that participants were not diverse enough." <a href="https://krcrtv.com/north-coast-news/eureka-local-news/organizers-cancel-womens-march-jan-19-due-to-overwhelmingly-white-participants">Link</a>.
</p>
<p>
<a href="https://www.econlib.org/you-have-no-right-to-your-culture/">You Have No Right to Your Culture</a>: "Do you have more cultural ground in common with your grandparents - or with foreigners of your own generation?"
</p>
<p>
After reading the full Mueller report, Justin Amash, a GOP congressman, now says that "Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller's report", "Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct" (obstruction of justice), and "few members of Congress have read the report". <a href="https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1129831615952236546">Link</a>. I have no doubt that nothing will come of this.
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-91191669440319761082019-03-30T12:09:00.000-05:002019-03-30T12:09:29.373-05:00Common sense regulations to save children's lives<p>
In the U.S., according to the CDC, gun accidents are the #1 cause of injury deaths for children ages 1-4, mostly caused by guns kept in the home. For ages 1-14, it is the #2 cause of unintentional injury-death, behind only car accidents (<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_injury_deaths_highlighting_unintentional_injury_2016-508.pdf">link</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/water-safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html">link</a>). Yet many people insist on keeping guns in their homes. And many oppose simple regulations that could reduce these deaths, such as child locks. Do they just not care about the deaths of so many children?
</p>
<p>
Sorry, I read that wrong. That was the data for drowning and pools, not guns.
</p>
<p>
I'm guessing that, of the people who strongly support gun control laws and have fond memories of swimming at their or friends' homes growing up, most dislike the idea of "pool control" laws. If so, why do you feel that way? Do you think, maybe, people who have enjoyed gun ownership have the same negative reaction to gun control, for the exact same reasons?
</p>
<p>
<i>Should</i> there be more regulations on swimming pools?
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-71918663978745646352019-02-18T09:53:00.000-06:002019-02-18T09:53:35.319-06:00Does anyone really care about abortion?Pro-lifers claim that abortion is murder. But I don't think they, for the most part, truly believe that. <br />
<br />
To be clear, I'm questioning people's subconscious motivations, not accusing people of consciously lying. Politics, on all sides of all issues, is surely full of people who don't have a clear understanding of why they believe what the believe. So even though this particular post is about pro-lifers, I'm not claiming this basic type of problem is unique to them. I personally struggle with what to believe about the ethics of abortion, and there are <a href="https://80000hours.org/2012/01/practical-ethics-given-moral-uncertainty/">good</a> <a href="https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/04/where_are_the_p.html">arguments</a> for being pro-life.<br />
<br />
<h3>6 pro-life mysteries</h3>
<br />
<h4>Mystery 1</h4>
<br />
Consider this thought experiment from Patrick Tomlinson. You're escaping a fire in a fertility clinic. In one room, you see a 5 year old child crying for help. In another room, you see a frozen container labeled "1000 Viable Human Embryos". You only have time to save either the child or the embryos. Which should you save?<br />
<br />
I suspect most pro-lifers believe you should save the child. But that would mean they do not truly feel that an embryo's life is nearly as valuable as other human lives. What is the amount of embryos that would be worth saving instead of a child? What if the frozen container said 5555 instead of 1000? <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/maternalinfanthealth/pregnancy-mortality-surveillance-system.htm">According to the CDC</a>, 1 in 5,555 pregnancies kill the mother in the U.S.. If you value 1 born human's life greater than 5555 embryos, then the expected value on life of an average abortion in the U.S. is positive, because the risk of killing the mother outweighs the moral worth of the embryo.<br />
<br />
<h4>Mystery 2</h4>
<br />
Consider what the <a href="https://marchforlife.org/no-pro-life-american/">president of the March for Life said</a>: "No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion". If you believe abortion is murder and therefore should be illegal, why would you feel that a murderer should face no punishment? And what does it even mean that something should be illegal, if there should be no punishment for doing it? Do you think this is because most pro-lifers don't want murder to be punished, or do you think it's because they don't <i>really </i>believe abortion is murder?<br />
<br />
<h4>Mystery 3</h4>
<br />
<a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/148880/Plenty-Common-Ground-Found-Abortion-Debate.aspx">In polls</a>, 68% of pro-lifers say that abortion should be legal when the mother's health is endangered (arguably, pregnancy and giving birth just <i>is</i> a danger to your health). And 59% of pro-lifers say that abortion should be legal when the pregnancy is caused by rape or incest. Why would you believe those things if you believe it is murdering a baby? Does anyone think it's ok to kill a baby <i>after </i>birth if the above scenarios are true?<br />
<br />
<h4>Mystery 4</h4>
<br />
Part of U.S. foreign aid goes to family-planning NGOs. The MCP is a rule that prohibits a family-planning NGO from receiving U.S. money if they so much as provide information about abortion to those who receive their services. Whenever a Democrat is President, that rule is removed. And whenever a Republican gets elected, it is put back into place, and pro-lifers cheer. However, when the rule is removed, abortions <i>decrease</i>, and when it is re-instated, abortions <i>increase</i> (<a href="https://econofact.org/unintended-consequences-of-an-international-abortion-policy">link</a>). Why? Because it effectively reduces funding for family-planning <i>in general</i>, which leads to less access to <i>other</i> family-planning services like contraception, which then increases unwanted pregnancies, which obviously increases the number of pregnancies that the parents want to abort. So why do pro-lifers support the MCP rule? Do you think, when considering this evidence, most would change their mind, and become upset with Republican presidents for it? Or, perhaps, is reducing abortion not <i>really </i>the motivating goal?<br />
<br />
<h4>Mystery 5</h4>
<br />
The ACA mandated that health insurance cover contraception. As mentioned above, increasing access to contraception is an effective way to reduce unwanted pregnancies, and therefore reduce abortion. If you cared deeply about reducing abortion, this would be one of your favorite government policies. However, this was overturned by the Supreme Court in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.">Burwell v. Hobby Lobby</a>. Is that case reviled by pro-lifers, second only to Roe v. Wade? If someone truly believed abortion was murder, they should. But AFAIK, the average pro-lifer <i>cheered </i>this abortion-increasing Supreme Court decision. And the people who brought this to the Supreme Court in the first place were pro-lifers!<br />
<br />
<h4>Mystery 6</h4>
<br />
The most pro-life group in the U.S. is evangelicals, who officially only accept the Bible as the sole authority on God. But
as far as I can tell, the Bible is not pro-life. Here are the 2 parts of the Bible which come the closest to directly addressing the morality and legality of abortion:<br />
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=+Exodus+21%3A22-25&version=NRSV">Exodus 21:22-25</a>
declares that the punishment for killing someone else's fetus in a fight is only to pay a fine. You may
object that the punishment is so light because it's probably only referring
to <i>accidental </i>killing of the fetus. But notice that it doesn't
suggest going light on punishments for any other accidental harms that are caused
by the same fight. And other passages, like <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+21%3A28-32&version=NRSV">Exodus 21:28-32</a>,
are quite willing to prescribe the death penalty for negligent
homicide. This pretty strongly indicates that fetus' lives were not
considered nearly as valuable as other human lives.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+5%3A11-22&version=NRSV">Numbers 5:11-22</a> says that when a woman cheats on her husband and gets pregnant, a priest should give her poisoned water to abort the baby.</li>
</ol>
If evangelicals are not getting their pro-life beliefs from the Bible, where are they getting it from? Abortion was legal in the U.S. in the earlier (more religious!) years. Criminalizing abortion didn't really start until the 1800s, and the
leading pro-life advocates were doctors (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Rise_of_anti-abortion_legislation">link</a>).
Even up until the time of Roe v. Wade, abortion wasn't a big issue
among evangelicals; it was considered a Catholic issue. As time has passed,
this has flipped, where now evangelicals are the ones that are
predominately pro-life (<a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/evangelicals-not-catholics-are-now-the-rtl-base.html">link</a>). Why?<br />
<br />
<h3>Possible explanations</h3>
<br />
The above mysteries lead me to believe that something else, other than a belief that abortion is murder, is what motivates most pro-lifers to be pro-life.<br />
<br />
Some pro-choicers like to say that the pro-life movement is really just about misogyny. But I don't know how that can be reconciled with the fact that there's <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/235646/men-women-generally-hold-similar-abortion-attitudes.aspx">basically no gender gap on this</a>.<br />
<br />
The following 2 alternatives seem like a better fit.<br />
<br />
<h4>Ring-bearers vs. freewheelers</h4>
<br />
I heard about this on the <a href="http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-187-jason-weeden-on-do-people-vote-based-on-self-interest.html">Rationally Speaking episode with Jason Weeden</a>.<br />
<br />
Basically, suppose you broadly categorized people into two groups with regard to attitudes about sexuality: ring-bearers and freewheelers. Freewheelers are people who have more sexual partners throughout their life, have fewer kids, wait longer to have kids, etc. Ring-bearers are the opposite. This is highly predictive of one's view of abortion, perhaps even more so than political affiliation (<a href="http://www.pleeps.org/2015/01/14/give-the-man-what-he-wants/">link</a>). It also predicts a person's opinion on the ethics of similar topics like birth control.<br />
<br />
Weeden proposes that people mostly vote <a href="http://www.pleeps.org/2015/01/12/sexual-politics-and-self-interest/">out of self-interest, and abortion is no exception</a>. Freewheelers want a society that enables of their preferred lifestyle, such as having the option of an abortion in the case of an accidental pregnancy. But ring-bearers want a society with less freewheelers, and so they want laws that are less conducive to that lifestyle.<br />
<br />
This would explain some of the pro-life mysteries, especially the question of why pro-lifers tend to oppose increasing access to contraception. If their motivation is to decrease abortions, that doesn't make sense. If their motivation is to have a society less conducive to freewheelers, then it <i>does </i>make sense. It also would explain why the average pro-lifer thinks abortion is OK if the mother is at risk or if it was the result of a rape. In those situations, the abortion is no longer about freewheelers.<br />
<br />
So, this solves a big piece of the puzzle, but gaps still remain. For example, I can't imagine that this motivation would lead to abortion being as major of an issue as it is for some people. Why would so many pro-lifers be single-issue voters just because they want freewheeling to be less convenient? <br />
<br />
<h4>A rallying flag for political tribalism</h4>
<br />
Suppose you are a politically tribal Republican. You are loyal to your tribe, and you hate the other tribe. You don't care for a careful assessment of issues and facts on a case-by-case basis; you'd really prefer to not even listen to the arguments from the other side. It'd be nice to have an issue where the other side is clearly extremely evil, so that you can feel justified in supporting your team <i>no matter what</i>. For example, imagine a hypothetical scenario where your party's presidential nominee is a corrupt ignorant celebrity conspiracy theorist. You may feel uncomfortable throwing your full support to your team. But you can simply say "the other side supports murdering babies" and feel good with your tribe again! You don't need to think through the implications of that; the point is actually <i>not</i> to have to worry about thinking too much. You just want to feel good rooting for your home team and booing the away team.<br />
<br />
This is similar to what Scott Alexander calls <a href="https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/the-ideology-is-not-the-movement/">a rallying flag</a> in tribalism. What's different compared to how he talked about it is that this rallying flag is formed <i>after </i>the tribe is formed, rather than before.<br />
<br />
The advantage of this theory of what motivates pro-lifers, over the ring-bearer theory, is that it explains why many people seem to care <i>so much </i>about being pro-life, even though the pro-life mysteries suggest they don't actually care much<i> </i>about abortion itself. It also explains why evangelicals in particular are so pro-life, compared to other religious groups, and despite the Bible not giving much to support being pro-life: it's just because evangelicals happen to be more Republican.<br />
<br />
<h3>So...</h3>
<br />
Do I think these two things are the <i>only</i> motivations for pro-lifers? No. I just think they are both significant subconscious motivations to varying degrees for many pro-lifers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-89361820079875919462019-02-06T22:19:00.000-06:002019-02-06T22:19:56.007-06:00Links 2019/02/06<a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure-skin-cancer-science">Is Sunscreen the New Margarine</a>?<br />
<br />
Evidence is growing that the cause of Alzheimer's is: <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2191814-we-may-finally-know-what-causes-alzheimers-and-how-to-stop-it/">gum disease</a>.<br />
<br />
When black and white televisions were common, people mostly reported that their dreams were in black and white. But before and after that, most people say their dreams are in color. Perhaps "dreams are neither colored nor black and white"? <a href="http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/DreamB&W.pdf">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
The happiest countries tend to also have the highest rates of mental illness among young people. ??? <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/01/10/worlds-happiest-countries-an-increasing-number-young-people-dont-feel-well-all/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Female employees earn lower wages if their supervisor is also a woman". ??? <a href="https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1071809765062397954">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Fatal police shootings of unarmed people... have dropped substantially compared to 2015." <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1079472450201518080">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Crime Along the Mexican Border Is Lower Than in the Rest of the Country... If the entire United States had crime rates as low as those along the border in 2017, then the number of homicides would have been 33.8 percent lower, property crimes would have been 2.1 percent lower, and violent crimes would have dropped 8 percent." <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/crime-along-mexican-border-lower-rest-country">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
In a poll, 52% of Republicans said they would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump proposed it. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/10/in-a-new-poll-half-of-republicans-say-they-would-support-postponing-the-2020-election-if-trump-proposed-it">Link</a>. ... ...<br />
<br />
Robin Hanson said this in response to a paper about how being attractive leads to better publishing outcomes for economists, and now I can't not think about discrimination in this way: "I predict that learning about this kind of discrimination will induce almost zero outrage... we don't directly care much about unfair discrimination. We instead sometimes use issue to ally ourselves with particular groups who have suffered discrimination. Probably when that helps us ally against other groups we dislike. It's all coalition politics." <a href="https://twitter.com/robinhanson/status/1089507615791550464">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-84352822355233515552019-01-06T15:18:00.001-06:002019-01-06T15:18:16.091-06:00Links 2019/01/06When people say income inequality is increasing, that is only within nations. <i>Globally</i>, income inequality is <i>decreasing</i>. <a href="https://humanprogress.org/article.php?p=1505">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Trump's environmental policy is mainly about owning the libs, and that's better news for the environment than you might think". <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trumps-environmental-policy-fuel-standards-own-the-libs-wheeler-2018-8">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
A book I haven't been able to stop thinking about is "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stubborn-Attachments-Prosperous-Responsible-Individuals/dp/1732265135">Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals</a>" by Tyler Cowen. It makes a pretty convincing case that, politically, the goal of maximizing long-run economic growth is more important than anything else. A quick review is <a href="https://quillette.com/2018/11/21/stubborn-attachments-a-review/">here</a>. Even though this seems correct when looking at the past up until now, I wonder if it's not correct <i>going forward</i>, because of something like <a href="https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/650726376073367552?lang=en">Yudkowsky's Law of Mad Science</a>: "Every 18 months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point."<br />
<br />
"black students randomly assigned to a black teacher in grades K-3 are ...(7%) more likely to graduate from high school and ...(13%) more likely to enroll in college than their peers in the same school who are not assigned a black teacher" <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w25254">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
We are already doing a bailout for U.S. farmers, who are facing <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/27/18114566/trump-trade-war-china-farm-bankruptcy">rising bankruptcies</a> due to loss of global customers from our fearless leader's <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/969525362580484098">good-and-easy-to-win trade war</a>. The problems faced by American farmers due to anti-trade policies are about to get worse. The TPP, a trade agreement among many countries that Trump pulled the U.S. out of, is about to go into effect. When it does, farmers from the countries in that deal will have lower tariffs when selling to other countries in the agreement, compared to American farmers. <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/us-farmers-helpless-as-tpp-boosts-aust">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
When Trump issued "Executive Order 13780: Protecting the Nation From
Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States", the Justice Department
wrote a supporting document detailing how much crime is committed in
America by foreigners. Their data appeared to be... not right. And after
being challenged on it, they now finally admit it, but refuse to
retract or correct it because "the [law] does not obligate" it! <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-dept-admits-error-but-wont-correct-report-linking-terrorism-to-immigration/2019/01/03/cd29997a-0f69-11e9-831f-3aa2c2be4cbd_story.html">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/392">H.R. 392</a>, a bill introduced by a Republican, would "(1) eliminate the per-country numerical limitation for employment-based immigrants, and (2) increase the per-country numerical limitation for family-based immigrants from 7% to 15% of the total number of family-sponsored visas," using a merit-based system instead. This would be a very good thing! It was even referred to as "the most popular bill in congress", claiming "we're on the precipice of having a veto-proof majority in support" (<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2017/10/29/the-most-popular-bill-in-congress-solves-a-major-immigration-problem">link</a>). But that was 2017, and the bill hasn't gone anywhere (yet?). I don't know what the current status is.<br />
<br />
"Americans would be up in arms if the government were allowed to seize their property any time it pleased. Or at least, that’s what one might believe. In reality, Americans have suffered the outrageous practice of civil-asset forfeiture with relative complacency... under civil-asset forfeiture, government employees can take innocent people’s property and keep it for themselves... Opposition to civil forfeiture has come from groups as politically diverse as the conservative Heritage Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union... (Attorney General Jeff) Sessions promptly reversed the previous administration’s restrictions on civil forfeiture, declaring 'I love that program. We had so much fun doing that.'" <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-21/government-needs-a-good-reason-for-civil-asset-forfeiture">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-71950518547273225312019-01-01T22:21:00.003-06:002019-01-01T22:21:48.964-06:00Links 2019/01/01"Mothers who juggle jobs outside the home spend just as much time tending their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s." <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/upshot/the-relentlessness-of-modern-parenting.html">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
An old essay from Bush 1 on why he decided not to invade Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. History has proven him right. <a href="https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/169-history/36409.html">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Twelve leading economists on the research that shaped our world in 2018" <a href="https://qz.com/1508659/twelve-leading-economists-on-the-research-that-shaped-our-world-in-2018/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Was 2018 "the year of the YIMBY"? "Could this be the blueprint for a housing wave — a strategy that unites social justice warriors, type-A transit maximalists, and Howard Roark–ian libertarians?". <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/single-family-housing-zoning-nimby-yimby-minneapolis/577750/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Trump recently signed a bipartisan criminal justice bill that everyone should be happy with. Here is a case for further criminal justice reform: <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-28/prison-reform-law-doesn-t-go-far-enough">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Illegal immigrants commit less crime than native-born citizens. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/19/two-charts-demolish-the-notion-that-immigrants-here-illegally-commit-more-crime/?utm_term=.99f9d4ee2c78">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
People frequently claim that school shootings have become more/very common, but "there are about 55 million schoolchildren in the United States, and about 10 of them are killed annually by gunfire at school, a rate that hasn’t increased since the 1990s. That number includes all shooting incidents, not just mass shootings at schools, which average about one a year, in a country with about 130,000 K-12 schools." <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-did-america-end-up-raising-generation-paranoia/2018/11/13/5d294ec8-e78b-11e8-b8dc-66cca409c180_story.html">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
The Niskanen Center's policy vision paper advocates a "free-market welfare state... economic freedom and robust social spending are complements rather than antagonists. Consider the economic freedom rankings produced by the 'pro-market' Heritage Foundation and Fraser Institute... larger social transfers tend to correlate positively with other measures of free markets and good governance. The freest economies generally feature big welfare states." <a href="https://niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Niskanen-vision-paper-final-PDF.pdf">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-33416283743862948672018-11-26T14:46:00.000-06:002018-11-26T14:48:17.640-06:00Links 2018/11/26The first gene-edited children <i>may </i>have been born this past month in China. <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612458/exclusive-chinese-scientists-are-creating-crispr-babies/">Link</a>. Good!<br />
<br />
The average person who purchases at least one lottery ticket spends $600 per year on them. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/23/per-capita-lottery-spending-has-doubled-since">Link</a>. Bad!<br />
<br />
Suicide is declining basically everywhere except America. The stats and probable reasons for these trends are <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/11/24/why-suicide-is-falling-around-the-world-and-how-to-bring-it-down-more">here</a>. In Asia, a group that has historically had high rates of suicide is young women, and one of the main reasons seems to be "overbearing in-laws"...<br />
<br />
"As the libertarian economist Bryan Caplan has wryly observed, in the United States today we really have no classical liberal party but instead have a choice between two national-socialist parties: one a little more nationalist, the other a little more socialist." <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/hillary-clinton-immigration-welfare-chauvinism-democratic-politics/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
People oppose congestion pricing as a means to reduce traffic... until it is implemented and they see how well it works. <a href="https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/11/28/congestion-pricing-was-unpopular-in-stockholm-until-people-saw-it-in-action/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
A bipartisan climate bill has been put forward in the House of Representatives that "would apply a $15-per-metric-ton carbon fee to the U.S. oil, gas, and coal industries, but rebate all of the revenue as a dividend to households to shield them from increased fossil fuel costs". <a href="https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/bipartisan-climate-fee-backers-to-plant-flag-during-lame-duck">Link</a>. Surely it won't pass, but I can dream.<br />
<br />
Out of major countries hit by the Great Recession, the countries who have recovered the best, in terms of real GDP per capita, are Germany, followed by the U.S. and Japan. <a href="https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1066448481890426881">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"residents of the four states that share a border with Mexico are least likely to be worried" about the migrant caravan. <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjySarlin/status/1064565497474240512">Link</a>. This sort of thing holds up in general, where people with the least exposure to immigrants are the most anti-immigrant.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-12132315660284176472018-11-19T11:16:00.002-06:002018-11-19T11:16:40.610-06:00Links 2018/11/19Straight-ticket voting in Texas ends in 2020. Good. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2018/11/16/straight-ticket-voting-ed-emmett-harris-county-texas/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
An antifa protester attacked a fellow protester, who was misidentified as a Nazi for... having an American flag. <a href="https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/21/antifa-portland-evan-welch-violence">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"We find robust evidence that exposure to teacher collective bargaining laws worsens the future labor market outcomes of men: in the first 10 years after passage of a duty-to-bargain law, male earnings decline by $2,134 (or 3.93%) per year and hours worked decrease by 0.42 hours per week." <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w24782">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
When civil asset forfeitures can be used to raise money... "black and Hispanic arrests for drugs, DUI, and prostitution arrests are all increasing with deficits in states where seizure revenues are legally retained while white arrests are broadly insensitive to deficits." <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/09/to-serve-and-collect.html">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Americans have more faith in the Supreme Court than in the more partisan branches of government. But is that (both) changing? <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-the-supreme-court-facing-a-legitimacy-crisis/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
One of the themes of the Trump administration is deregulation, but maybe the only difference is the growth of regulations has slowed? Also, the number of regulations grew more under Bush than under Obama. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-04/trump-s-record-on-regulations-is-routine-not-radical">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-74583620394013014742018-11-11T21:26:00.002-06:002018-11-11T21:26:43.732-06:00Links 2018/11/11"A Vermont gubernatorial candidate has proposed a nationally televised show in which a booing or cheering crowd would decide the fate of state prisoners." <a href="https://www.sevendaysvt.com/OffMessage/archives/2018/10/30/vermont-candidate-promises-weekly-governors-pardon-tv-show">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Polls show Americas as much more pro-diversity than Europeans. <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/12/in-views-of-diversity-many-europeans-are-less-positive-than-americans/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
A libertarian economist's <a href="https://www.econlib.org/the-case-for-european-health-care/">case for European health care</a>. "American progressives do not favor anything even close to the European system"<br />
<br />
In the recent elections, the majority of voters <i>born in Texas </i>chose Beto over Cruz. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/09/texans-preferred-orourke-cruz-least-texans-born-texas-did/?utm_term=.1bf78143ad70">Link</a>. This is certainly the opposite of how I would have guessed.<br />
<br />
Despite a booming economy, we are now heading toward a $1 trillion deficit, due to tax cuts and increased spending by the Republican Congress/President. <a href="https://www.axios.com/deficit-grows-222-billion-tax-laws-debt-us-trump-de9f61f5-5d8e-437b-ad36-bd7640349059.html">Link</a>. Same thing happened the last time the GOP had all the power. At what point do Republicans have to stop pretending to care about the deficit?<br />
<br />
Trump is talking about ending the 14th amendment with an executive order. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/30/politics/donald-trump-ending-birthright-citizenship/index.html">Link</a>. Surely all conservatives who claim strict adherence to the constitution, in the context of gun control, are similarly outraged by this? Or perhaps xenophobia trumps the constitution, <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/19/as-new-tariffs-take-hold-more-see-negative-than-positive-impact-for-the-u-s/?utm_source=AdaptiveMailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=17-07-19+FT+Tariffs&org=982&lvl=100&ite=2890&lea=643075&ctr=0&par=1&trk&fbclid=IwAR1gRHIOJSHHHqsIQR206FbDlRAFg72vb4G3HRPa4HkCXbt0oDaTwoGS6aY">as it does with opposition to tax increases</a>?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-11732977409965250482018-11-09T22:46:00.001-06:002018-11-09T22:46:49.543-06:00Links 2018/11/09Dogs process human faces with a dedicated part of their brain, separate from the part that processes the faces of other dogs. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30349971?dopt=Abstract">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Over the next decade, humanity will begin its 'transhuman' era: Biology can then be hacked, depending on lifestyle, interests and health needs." <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-08-20-gartner-identifies-five-emerging-technology-trends-that-will-blur-the-lines-between-human-and-machine">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
ICE kept a U.S. citizen "imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation... an appeals court ruled that Watson... is not eligible for (compensation)... the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer." And... "There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court". <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/01/540903038/u-s-citizen-held-by-immigration-for-3-years-denied-compensation-by-appeals-court">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Bernie Sander's "Stop BEZOS" bill "seems to be much more about grandstanding and pointing fingers than about actual solutions to help vulnerable American workers". It adds a tax on employers whose workers receive government benefits, which would actually give these employers an incentive to <i>cut the wages of those workers</i>. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-11/bernie-sanders-picks-the-wrong-kind-of-fight-with-amazon">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
A Trump-backed political ad was so dishonest/racist that Fox News decided not to air it. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-05/nbc-pulls-trump-backed-anti-migrant-ad-after-prime-time-airing">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Trump's aides have struggled to get him to use government approved phones, and he continues to use an insecure phone that the Chinese government taps to listen to some of this conversations. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/us/politics/trump-phone-security.html">Link</a>. I assume all the people who thought Hillary's email server was a big deal must be very upset about this...<br />
<br />
Related: <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/10/23/18004478/hack-gap-explained">The Hack Gap</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-8101438034194204112018-11-03T15:49:00.001-05:002018-11-03T15:49:40.446-05:00Links 2018/11/03"You can earn $100 an hour to pet puppies". <a href="https://thepointsguy.com/news/you-can-earn-100-an-hour-to-pet-puppies/">Link</a>. In Fort Worth!<br />
<br />
The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP#Real_GDP_for_the_top_50_metropolitan_statistical_areas_(Millions_of_dollars)[2]">GDP of the DFW metroplex</a> is $535 billion, which is about the same as the whole <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Sweden#Data">country of Sweden</a>.<br />
<br />
"in the last three decades of the 20th century... the children from the poorest families added more to their income than children from the richest families. That reality isn’t consistent with the standard pessimistic story that only the richest Americans have benefited from economic growth... The pessimistic story based on comparing snapshots of the economy at two different points in time misses the underlying dynamism of the American economy". <a href="https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-gains-from-economic-growth-c96d93101f9c">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
The GOP is really pushing fear of the "migrant caravan" and its risk of terrorism. But looking at all U.S. terrorist attacks from 1975 onward: "Not a single terrorist in any visa category came from Mexico or Central America". <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/does-migrant-caravan-pose-terrorism-risk">Link</a>. Meanwhile... "two-thirds of the terror attacks in the United States last year were carried out by right-wing extremists". <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/study-shows-two-thirds-us-terrorism-tied-right-wing-extremists">Link</a>. Instead of fearing immigrants you should fear those who fear immigrants.<br />
<br />
It's widely known that younger voters are generally to the left of older voters. But I was surprised to learn that, among black voters, it's reversed! <a href="https://twitter.com/stuartathompson/status/1058114528830021632/photo/1">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Younger Americans are better than older Americans at telling factual news statements from opinions ... regardless of the ideological appeal of the statements" <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/23/younger-americans-are-better-than-older-americans-at-telling-factual-news-statements-from-opinions/">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-51315529288836263402018-10-23T21:03:00.001-05:002018-10-23T21:03:25.743-05:00Links 2018/10/23"Controlling for a number of demographic and relationship characteristics, we find evidence that marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony." <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2501480#.W5FrNixxo9s.twitter">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"80000 hours", which has spent years researching how to do the most good for the world by career choice, now has an official-ish summary of what they've converged on. <a href="https://80000hours.org/articles/high-impact-careers/">Link</a>. I was surprised that "earning to give", i.e. make a lot of money and give it to the best charities, has fallen in their rankings over time. This largely seems to be because they are prioritizing existential risk / improving the future over global poverty as the most important cause now. In questions of improving the future, the scarcest resource is not funding, but the number of good people working on it. With global poverty, the scarcest resource is probably still money. In particular, I found it interesting that one of their top recommendations is "being a China specialist".<br />
<br />
An interesting point in why sexual abuse often seems rare to men and common to women: "Most men are not abusers, yet very large numbers of women have been abused. So if a man is an abuser, there is a good chance he has abused a fair number of women. That means many well-meaning men experience sexual abuse as a relatively rare phenomenon. They haven't done it, and most of their male friends haven't either. At the same time, most women have abuse, rape or #MeToo stories" <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-01/kavanaugh-hearings-reveal-other-social-crises?cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=view">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
And linked off the above link... WHO estimates that <i>1 in 20</i> deaths worldwide in 2016 was alcohol-related... <a href="http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/en/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Since around 1990, poor countries have been catching up with rich countries. "Looking at the 43 countries the World Bank classified as 'low income' in 1990, 65 percent have grown faster than the high-income average... The same is true for 82 percent of the 62 middle-income countries" ... "Neo-liberalism has been incredibly successful, essentially delivering on all of its promises of economic growth, declines in poverty, and peace." <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/10/convergence-big-time.html">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Among refugees that entered the U.S. at ages 18-45, we follow respondents' outcomes over a 20-year period... (they) have much lower levels of education and poorer language skills than natives and outcomes are initially poor with low employment, high welfare use and low earnings. Outcomes improve considerably as refugees age. After 6 years in the country, these refugees work at higher rates than natives... (they) pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the U.S." <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w23498">Link</a>. The American dream y'all.<br />
<br />
Trump's Deputy Attorney General "discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office". <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/us/politics/rod-rosenstein-wear-wire-25th-amendment.html">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-60944776416272856802018-10-22T21:17:00.002-05:002018-10-22T21:33:49.344-05:00Links 2018/10/22The flu killed 80,000 Americans last year. Can you imagine the drastic measures people would demand if, say, terrorism killed that many people? Get a flu shot! <a href="https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/healthcare-triage-the-2017-flu-killed-80000-in-the-us-get-a-flu-shot/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
"Preference for realistic art predicts support for Brexit". <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12489">Link</a>. The correlation holds for myself; I don't get Brexit and I don't get why someone would prefer realistic art. If you want to capture literal reality, just take a picture. Art should be at least somewhat abstract/surreal!<br />
<br />
"Virtually all poverty reduction comes from economic growth and migration". <a href="https://www.econlib.org/escaping-poverty/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
The (weak) individual mandate of the ACA was supposed to be an essential cost control to counteract guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions in the individual health insurance market. The GOP repealed that this year, and then recently New Jersey passed a law reinstating it in their state, providing a good natural experiment to see what effect it has on costs. And <a href="https://www.nj.gov/dobi/pressreleases/180727.html">the data is in from the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance</a>. They claim that insurers initially had planned to hike costs by an average of 12.6%, and after reworking the numbers due to the state bringing the mandate back, the average rate hike dropped to 5.8%. IMO it should be common sense that we can improve health insurance by: 1. reinstating a stronger mandate, 2. phasing out the tax deductions for employer-provided insurance, and 3. move that money into subsidies for the individual market.<br />
<br />
A couple of years ago, a GOP congressional
candidate assaulted a reporter during the election. He even plead
guilty. He still won the election. Now at a rally, the "law-and-order
president" is praising him for that assault. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45913921">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Perhaps you should not read economics editorials in The Wall Street Journal. "(Max Boot) got a meeting with Robert Bartley, editor of The Wall Street Journal editorial page... To Boot's surprise, Bartley offered him a job as economics editorialist. The prospect 'horrified' him... because he 'had never taken a class in the subject and had no interest in it.' Boot later learned that Bartley sought out conservatives unfamiliar with economics for such jobs. 'He did not want to hire an economist because most professional economists disdained supply-side economics'". <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/a-conservative-defector-with-a-clear-vision-of-trumps-rise.html">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-11475288054904974012018-10-14T21:41:00.000-05:002018-10-14T21:49:13.369-05:00Links 2018/10/14"15% of all (human) experience has been experienced by people who are alive right now" and "28% of the entirety of human experience has happened since (the current oldest living person's) birth. <a href="https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SwBEJapZNzWFifLN6/the-funnel-of-human-experience">Link</a>. Although humans have been around for a long time, there weren't very many until recently!<br />
<br />
The CIA considered making a fake gay sex tape of Saddam Hussein to undermine him before the Iraq War. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/26/cia-saddam-hussein-gay-sex-smear-plot">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
80% of Americans are opposed to using gene editing to increase intelligence. Just don't prohibit the other 20%! <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/07/26/public-views-of-gene-editing-for-babies-depend-on-how-it-would-be-used/">Link</a>.<br />
<br />
Scroll to the bottom of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-five-year-old-who-was-detained-at-the-border-and-convinced-to-sign-away-her-rights">this article</a> to see the legal document written up for a 5 year old immigrant to sign away her rights after being separated from her grandmother. I feel safer already.<br />
<br />
"average minimum wage increase of $0.50 reduces the probability that men and women return to prison within 1 year by 2.8%... These reductions in returns to incarcerations are observed for the potentially revenue generating crime categories of property and drug crimes; prison reentry for violent crimes are unchanged, supporting our framing that minimum wages affect crime that serves as a source of income." <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w25116">Link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-14966534919464485412018-10-09T21:54:00.001-05:002018-10-09T21:56:52.832-05:00Links 2018/10/09<ul>
<li>"In a randomized, double-blind clinical trial—the gold standard of trials—a combination of ibuprofen (Advil) and acetaminophen (Tylenol) was just as effective at treating patients with acute pain in an extremity as three other pain-killer combinations containing opioids." Considering that "an estimated 91 people die each day" from opioids... this seems really worth following up on. <a href="https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/as-epidemic-rages-er-study-finds-opioids-no-better-than-advil-and-tylenol/">Link</a>.</li>
<li>There is a lot of evidence that making prostitution illegal significantly increases rape. <a href="https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/10/prostitution-reduces-rape.html">Link</a>. When people ask themselves whether it should be legal, I really wish "should there be less rape" would be considered with as a much importance as "how do I personally feel about prostitution"?</li>
<li>The number of detained immigrant children increases, and they are largely being moved from foster homes to a tent city in Texas. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/migrant-children-tent-city-texas.html">Link</a>. Part of the cause for the increase is that detained children are not being picked up by their parents as much, because now ICE essentially uses undocumented children as bait for their undocumented parents. <a href="http://www.courant.com/politics/hc-pol-ice-accused-using-kids-as-lure-20170804-story.html">Link</a>. I feel safer already.</li>
<li>After continual anti-NAFTA talk, Trump finally announced he ended it and signed a new trade deal... which basically NAFTA with a new name. <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-10-01/globalists-will-love-trump-s-new-nafta-deal">Link</a>.</li>
<li>Many state education rankings seem... not good. It is common for them to include spending as part of how states are measured. The more you spend, the higher you are ranked. So these are not a good way to check whether marginal state spending on education is worthwhile!<br/>
"As recently as 2011, Education Week placed Florida fifth in the nation. Then the publication altered its methodology to put more weight on raw expenditures. Despite high test scores, the state dropped to 29th place—not because teaching effectiveness fell, but because the state supposedly spent too little!"<br/>
Also, "According to U.S. News and World Report, Texas, which ranks 33rd, is far surpassed in educational quality by Iowa, which ranks eighth... But when we disaggregate student performance scores by racial categories... the rankings change dramatically... White students do better in Texas than in Iowa. Black students do better in Texas. Hispanic students do better in Texas. Asian students do better in Texas. Given these facts, it is absurd for U.S. News to rank Iowa higher than Texas in terms of educational performance. And this example is no fluke. Many other state comparisons similarly reverse if you account for student heterogeneity."<br/>
<a href="https://reason.com/archives/2018/10/07/everything-you-know-about-stat">Link</a>.</li>
</ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-34298219341190281512018-10-05T22:42:00.001-05:002018-10-05T22:42:50.362-05:00Links 2018/10/05<ul>
<li>A GMO cotton developed my Monsanto has <a href="https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2018/09/gmo-cotton-prompts-dramatic-drop-chinas-pesticide-use/">led to a drastic reduction in the need and use of pesticides</a>. Surely the average environmentalist will be thrilled, right?</li>
<li>Data from campuses and police compared to timing of college football games show a significant increase in rapes on the days of home games. "For away games, the effects are only statistically significant where we can verify that the game was televised." <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w21828.pdf">Link</a>. Perhaps we should increase alcohol taxes?</li>
<li>Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines: "<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/rodrigo-duterte-sin-extrajudicial-killings-180928092641659.html"><span>My only sin is extrajudicial killings</span></a>".</li>
<li>American farmers are losing money due to our trade war with China, so <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wireStory/aid-checks-farmers-worry-bailout-58021717">we're doing a $12 billion bailout</a>. This is best summarized by <a href="https://twitter.com/brianschatz/status/1044924590852632584">Senator Brian Schatz</a>: "We are borrowing money from China to pay our farmers to not sell their crops to China".</li>
<li>Stephen Miller <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/fc413158-c5f1-11e8-82bf-ab93d0a9b321">pushed for a total ban</a> on Chinese students attending American universities, partly because it would "hurt elite universities whose staff and students have been highly critical of Mr Trump". He was not successful.</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-82679966344674457002018-09-27T23:22:00.003-05:002018-09-27T23:22:59.107-05:00Links 2018/09/27<ul>
<li>
"<a href="https://archpaper.com/2018/09/self-driving-homes/">Self-driving homes could be the future of affordable housing</a>". If the <i>technology</i> pans out, we'll still probably screw it up as described by this actually-good-internet-comment: "Poor people will not live in glorious RV parks. They'll be shunted to shitty areas by new NIMBY laws and charged exorbitant fees for services."
</li>
<li>
"<a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/09/19/reductions-in-childhood-mortality-have-prevented-100m-deaths-since-1990">Reductions in childhood mortality have prevented 100m deaths since 1990</a>". #latestagecapitalism
</li>
<li>
Jason Furman, the previous Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, gives a history of the policies we passed to counter the Great Recession and summarizes the evidence we've gathered since then. <a href="https://som.yale.edu/sites/default/files/12%20Fiscal%20Policy%20Prelim%20Disc%20Draft%202018.09.11.pdf">Link</a> to the paper and <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonfurman/status/1039591626203701253">link</a> to the easier-to-read twitter thread. One interesting thing is in his "lessons for the future" at the bottom, he discusses how many recent studies have suggested tax cuts are a much more effective form of stimulus than previously believed. This is good (if true), because they are presumably both technically and politically easier to do at whatever amount makes sense than finding a bunch of temporary spending projects.
</li>
<li>
<a href="www.nber.org/papers/w25000">www.nber.org/papers/w25000</a>: "state-wide minimum teacher salary laws created sharp differences in teacher wages between adjacent counties. These differences had large impacts on schooling attainment, suggesting an important causal role for school quality in mediating upward mobility"
</li>
<li>
Trump, the "law-and-order president", wants his Justice Department to not prosecute Republican congressmen for crimes. This seems like the sort of thing that would be done in secret, and once leaked, would be a huge scandal for a president. But this is... a tweet to the public:<br/>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1036681588573130752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 3, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-60166308595276570922018-02-17T13:31:00.000-06:002018-02-17T14:13:42.980-06:00People should stop paying so much attention to mass shootingsBringing more attention to a problem can lead to a reduction of it. There is a lot of preventable death and suffering, and there is finite attention. If we want to bring attention to problems with the goal of reducing death+suffering, then ideally, attention would be rationed out to each problem in proportion to 1: "how bad that problem is relative to other problems" and 2: "how much it will reduce that problem".<br />
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NOTE: For simplicity's sake, I'm only talking about the U.S.
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Mass shootings are clearly given more attention, relative to other problems, than the harm they cause. They are certainly not one of the leading causes of preventable death, and they are only a tiny share of all gun violence. Is it worse for a number of people to die in one shooting than it is for the same number to die in separate shootings? No, but the former will get way way more attention. You would save far more lives if you were able to decrease the number of deaths caused by cigarettes by 1% than if you ended all mass shootings. The amount of attention the media gives to a problem does not represent how big it is.
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We can expect bringing more societal attention to a problem to cause a reduction in that problem, on average. But there are good reasons to suspect mass killings are an exception to that rule. Many experts believe that the media attention brought to these killings is one of the main incentives for future mass killers. And you can't just blame the media for that: our demand is what drives their coverage.
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To do my small part in reducing mass shootings, I choose not to click on news articles about them, which gives the media less incentive to make such a huge deal about them.
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Relevant links:<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/south-florida-high-school-shooting-gun-control-ideas2018-2">http://www.businessinsider.com/south-florida-high-school-shooting-gun-control-ideas2018-2</a></li>
<li><a href="http://ithp.org/articles/mediacopycatshootings.html">http://ithp.org/articles/mediacopycatshootings.html</a></li>
<li><a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/value-media-attention-mass-killers.html">http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/01/value-media-attention-mass-killers.html</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states">https://www.vox.com/cards/gun-violence-facts/mass-shootings-rare-united-states</a></li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-92209758515508992492018-01-30T19:17:00.000-06:002018-01-30T19:17:41.760-06:00But The Stock Market<p>
2008. I hadn't ever investigated politics/economics much. I had recently graduated college and started my career. Then the Great Recession hit, and there was a presidential election. That freaked me out and suddenly increased my interested in the topic. I decided I should probably put a little effort into figuring out how the economy works and vote accordingly.
</p><p>
I was really unsure how to evaluate the various theories and arguments for explaining the problem + solution on all the different sides. Then I remember coming across <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/10/14/opinion/20081014_OPCHART.html">this</a>, which was a big turning point in how I approached it.
</p>
<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_JkVb-NFCnAUgmv7B5E65Hg_ZcheMUh5FFW3qZ-hqWbbGqpBWzQg8QfWpfjvSy_tjzJK3FYkQOgsDyyN8wFj-fDbewcDv9hJupiEGzPjjnpsZ_uVQ45CRD8hX7lF5fL1PS8ohK1fwDkWH/s400/Picture+1.png">
<p>
It dawned on me: why not just look at the evidence of how the economy has done under the presidents of different parties? As shown above, the stock market did much better, on average, under Democratic presidents. When I looked at any other economic indicator - inflation, unemployment, GDP - the same pattern held up. So I decided, despite having considered myself a conservative all my life up to that point, I would support Obama. And sure enough, in keeping with the historical trends I had noticed, during his presidency the stock market grew more than under the average presidency.
</p><p>
I continued learning about politics/economics though, and at some point I decided the stock-market-performance-per-president was not a good way to judge which side is better on economics. The stock market is a mysterious beast, the president is just one of so many variables, correlation is not causation, etc. I no longer reached to that data to support my opinions on politics/economics.
</p><p>
...
</p><p>
Fast forward to now. Trump has been president for a year, and the stock market has been doing very well. And some people are pointing at that as evidence that Trump has been good for the economy. That is strange, obviously. If the stock market 1 year into Trump's presidency shows that Trump/Trumpism is good for the economy, don't you have to be consistent with your logic? Shouldn't you then believe that, on average, Democrats are better presidents? Shouldn't you believe that Obama was a good president?
</p><p>
You also have to consider this:
</p>
<a href="https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/942459981420523520?s=03"><img width="600px" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRRKWG8U8AE1yqd.jpg"/></a>
<p>
Stock markets <i>globally</i> have been doing very well the past year. In fact, we are <i>underperforming</i> compared to other countries. So Trump is doing great things, to cause stocks across the world to go up, and causing our own stock market to grow slower than the others?
</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7789740021865963925.post-58544177972551319622018-01-15T20:10:00.001-06:002018-01-15T20:10:45.016-06:00The hard problem of ... matter?<blockquote>
<p>
Every day, it seems, some verifiably intelligent person tells us that we don’t know what consciousness is. The nature of consciousness, they say, is an awesome mystery...
</p><p>
I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is... It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious.
</p><p>
The nature of physical stuff, by contrast, is deeply mysterious, and physics grows stranger by the hour...
</p><p>
Many make ... the Very Large Mistake ... of thinking that we know enough about the nature of physical stuff to know that conscious experience can’t be physical. We don’t. We don’t know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff, except ... insofar as we know it simply through having a conscious experience.
</p><p>
We find this idea extremely difficult because we’re so very deeply committed to the belief that we know more about the physical than we do, and (in particular) know enough to know that consciousness can’t be physical. We don’t see that the hard problem is not what consciousness is, it’s what matter is.
</p><p>
We may think that physics is sorting this out, and it’s true that physics is magnificent. It tells us a great many facts about the mathematically describable structure of physical reality, facts that it expresses with numbers and equations (e = mc2, the inverse-square law of gravitational attraction, the periodic table and so on) and that we can use to build amazing devices. True, but it doesn’t tell us anything at all about the intrinsic nature of the stuff that fleshes out this structure.
</p>
</blockquote>
-- <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html">link</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0