2021-09-28 Tweets GOP sliding into authoritarianism. How is the trend reversed? Or is this a misguided take - is the GOP not actually getting more authoritarian? Podcasts Amia Srinavasan on Conversations with Tyler. This was an amazing view of how disciplines can talk right past one another. The particularities of what you focus on when thinking about an issue shape how you think abou that issue so much. Very awkward, very good....
2021-09-12 Podcasts China talk I originally came across this podcast as an Adam Tooze fanboy. He’s been on as a guest a number of times and his episodes are as insightful and rich as you might imagine, but I listened to a trio of non-Tooze episodes on U.S.-China relations as part of my self-education on China’s shifting role in the global economic and political order. I am woefully undereducated in this realm and this podcast is an amazing resource....
Essays by George Orwell So much of his worldview seems to be about his experience of violence and the political context in which he experienced it. The scale and scope of violence that was part of European life in the first half of the 20th century is so hard to fathom. Reading Orwell really drives home the idea that this experience was such a formative part of not just political, financial and public life, but the way in which people forged their beliefs and their sense of self - who they were in the world and the ways in which they understood themselves and their role in society....
2021-07-18 Podcasts David Epstein on People I (Mostly) Admire. Most interesting is the discussion on learning and knowledge retention. Ease is almost surely a sign you are not learning as much as you think. The bit on Fermi estimation (i.e. back of the envelope estimating everything) is also something I would like to try and incorporate into my thinking more. Lex Friedman’s interview with Roger Reaves is a trip. Laughing about insane torture in a Mexican Prison, running through the hills from federales....
Articles Nabeel Qureshi’s Notes on Popper Noah Smith on the Hispanic shift to the right. Come for the political drama, stay for the economic and social mobility charts. I hadn’t realized the degree to which Hispanics were moving up in the US. I want to send this other Noah Smith explainer newsletter on why economics isn’t just a way for rich folks to excuse themselves from social responsibility to everyone who has ever asked me what I think about stocks when they learn I studied economics....
2021-06-29 Articles “Smoke a fuckin’ fatty, ya fuckin’ Nazi” What is nostalgia like, under such historical conditions? I fear any attempt at answering such a question, today, will necessarily come up short. Today this is how we experience nostalgia: we become anchored to an era, and when it dies, when it is subducted under the ground of time, and we are reminded of that every day in the way other people around us are now dressing and talking and being themselves, in some important sense we die too, and live out our days as ghosts....
Works in Progress The Public Domain Review Gapminder (Dollarstreet) Our World in Data Cochrane Library - summaries of state of knowledge based on RCTs
2021-06-22 Articles This article on Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Jay’s reflections on the Fast Grants program they started to fund COVID related research during the pandemic. This quote stands out: Scientists are in the paradoxical position of being deemed the very best people to fund in order to make important discoveries but not so trustworthy that they should be able to decide what work would actually make the most sense!...
2021-06-15 Books A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age. I started this book some time ago, but didn’t really get into it. This time, I think I’ll finish it. The first part is a mostly personal history, which is interesting, but part two is really where it starts to get good. As someone completely unfamiliar with information theory, the basic concepts are presented very well and clearly....
Links Tyler Cowen and David Perell Anna Gat Music: A Subversive History Agnes Callard on the Ezra Klein Show Me, being oh so witty Motivating questions How do we know when to push and when to rest, both at the micro level (e.g. in daily/weekly subproject level) and at the macro level (e.g. what projects to take on, when to quit a project)? What is the relationship between striving and acceptance?...