Category: Uncategorized
*The Murder of Professor Schlick*
The author is David Edmonds, and the subtitle is The Rise and Fall of the Vienna Circle. I very much enjoyed this book, and found its direct style refreshing, and I hope it will serve as a model for others. The author actually tells you what you want to know!
I enjoyed the small tidbits. I had not known that Frank Ramsey traveled to Vienna for psychoanalysis, because he was in love with a married woman his senior. Ramsey ended up drinking the Freudian Kool-Aid, and also in Vienna became acquainted with Wittgenstein’s sister Gretl.
I had forgotten that Quine was two years the senior of A.J. Ayer. He also spoke sarcastically of his forthcoming audience with Wittgenstein but sought it nonetheless. Quine learned German remarkably quickly in Vienna, and then was lecturing philosophy in it without much difficulty.
Karl Popper was first an apprentice cabinetmaker, then a social worker, and then a teacher before he became a professional philosopher. When he moved to New Zealand during the War, the university library in Otago had fewer books than his father’s library back home.
You can pre-order the book here.
Monday assorted links
1. “Secularization, having fissured the sacred, leaves religion a pliable cultural tool.”
2. How people find ways to abide by comparative advantage in any case.
3. The race to redesign sugar (New Yorker).
4. Coinbase is a mission focused company, good to see them putting this piece out.
What Alex Has Been Watching
Ted Lasso on Apple TV. My go to feel-good show. The relentlessly optimistic US soccer coach Ted Lasso finds himself teaching a moribund team of British footballers. Everyone needs some Ted Lasso in their life! Especially now. Hat tip: Joshua Gans.
Mythic Quest on Apple TV a situation comedy where the situation is game developer’s office. Nowhere near as good as Silicon Valley but there were three excellent episodes (5, 7, 10) and no bad episodes which is a pretty good ratio. Probably would not hold my interest outside of a pandemic.
Lovecraft Country on HBO–my favorite show right now. I’m not a big fan of horror but Lovecraftian horror is more about revealing the black depths of the mysterious unknown than about chainsaw massacres. The story is a mystery, taking place mostly in 1950s Jim Crow America. J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele are among the show runners. I could do without the interruptions of spoken poetry. In one climatic scene we get a reading of Whitey On the Moon rather than a soundscape. Yeah, we get it, the horror is a metaphor for racism. The show also gets very weird. I worry that it is self-indulgent. Watchmen pulled it off by pulling it all together in the finale but that was a miracle. Can Lovecraft Country do the same? The show is based on the book Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. Ruff enjoys wordplay, fantastical stories, and he has a libertarian streak. My favorite Ruff novel, Sewer,Gas and Electric, features a billionaire beat to death with his prized first-edition of
Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand as a resurrected A.I. bottled up in a hurricane lamp. It’s a satire but there’s love there. Ruff is also a fan of David Friedman. I haven’t seen much if any libertarian influence in Lovecraft Country.
Bandish Bandits on Amazon–an Indian rom-com series in which pop-singer girl meets classically trained boy. The rom-com is ok but I liked it especially for the many gorgeous shots of Jodhpur. It’s also an effortless way to listen to some Indian classical music. It gets better after the first few episodes. Probably only worth watching if you have some prior interest in the region or the music. Panchayat is another Indian show I gave a shot. It does a good job of explaining how Indian village politics actually works. The lead character, however, is so sullen than I had a hard time continuing. Apparently, he gets less sullen over time.
The Pharmacist on Netflix. A great documentary following a pharmacist’s investigation of his son’s murder that takes him deeper and deeper into the opioid crisis. The first three episodes are stellar while the last is also good but covers the big picture I was already familiar with. Much better constructed than Tiger King or The Vow, the NXIVM doc on HBO, which is far too long and surprisingly boring.
Perry Mason on HBO. A film noir reboot of the classic series, basically Perry Mason meets Chinatown. Much darker than expected. Tatiana Maslany has a good performance as an old-time revival preacher but her story arc felt incomplete. Della Street should have written the bar, not Mason, or at least they should have made the fact that she didn’t more pointed. Overall, good but not great. Character and location driven–this one might grow on me, like Bosch.
The remixing of quality in the pandemic
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Now consider another of my favorite pastimes, watching professional basketball. I have been following the NBA bubble with great interest. The Miami Heat are now favored to reach the NBA Finals, even though they were only the fifth-ranked team in the East at the end of the regular season. What happened? They have played with grit and determination, and their entire active roster showed up in first-rate physical shape. That’s not easy to do after a five-month layoff, as it required tremendous discipline.
In contrast, the Los Angeles Clippers were among the favorites to win the NBA title. They were recently eliminated by the Denver Nuggets, a very good team but not previously a top contender. In the final quarter of the last game of the series, the victorious Nuggets played with energy and verve, while the Clippers seemed to be gasping for air. After their defeat, some of the Clippers admitted that inferior conditioning was part of their problem.
So “staying in shape during a five-month layoff” is now a critical skill for a basketball player. But this doesn’t necessarily mean the Clippers need to revamp their roster. Maybe they should just wait for a return to normal times.
And:
Might these changes in quality affect your choices beyond work — such as your decisions about friends, family relations, romance, and much more? Should you buy a dog, knowing you probably won’t be homebound two years from now? How about dating? On a first date, presumably, looks should matter less and social carefulness more. But again, for how long? It would be very strange, and probably unwise, to form a lasting relationship based on how well your romantic interest wears a mask.
Sadly the world has entered a new paralysis, most of all because no one knows when things will return to normal, or what might become normal, or what might remain strange. When this pandemic ends, one thing we can all look forward to is making better plans.
Recommended, at least until the pandemic is over.
Decentralized serological testing?
I would like to know more, but here is one new paper on the topic, by Lottie Brown, et.al.:
Serological testing is emerging as a powerful tool to progress our understanding of COVID-19 exposure, transmission and immune response. Large-scale testing is limited by the need for in-person blood collection by staff trained in venepuncture. Capillary blood self-sampling and postage to laboratories for analysis could provide a reliable alternative. Two-hundred and nine matched venous and capillary blood samples were obtained from thirty nine participants and analysed using a COVID-19 IgG ELISA to detect antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Thirty seven out of thirty eight participants were able to self-collect an adequate sample of capillary blood (≥50 μl). Using plasma from venous blood collected in lithium heparin as the reference standard, matched capillary blood samples, collected in lithium heparin-treated tubes and on filter paper as dried blood spots, achieved a Cohen′s kappa coefficient of >0.88 (near-perfect agreement). Storage of capillary blood at room temperature for up to 7 days post sampling did not affect concordance. Our results indicate that capillary blood self-sampling is a reliable and feasible alternative to venepuncture for serological assessment in COVID-19.
Via Alan Goldhammer.
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs
Pornography is the most common form of sexual experience available online — so common, perhaps, that a market for rarer intimacies has emerged.
Bottles of influencer bath water sell for $30 a jar. Some cam models have scaled back on erotic performance because they can earn more money selling homemade cookies and hair clippings. You can even pay a stranger to gorge himself on snacks from Trader Joe’s, if that’s your thing.
For some people, such work is a full-time job; others see it as a side hustle — one where the hourly pay can be considerably higher than the going rate for, say, dog walking or bartending. Plus, it doesn’t require leaving your dorm room or apartment…
Ella says that in her first semester at Parsons, she made around $800 a week from a few different sex-work-based revenue streams, including selling photos of her feet…
Still, what’s the appeal, one may ask, of having someone pay you to count your stretch marks, or selling pictures of your phalanges to strangers?
Do note this (Average is Over!):
Becoming a successful online sex worker isn’t easy. To gain a following, freelancers have to be savvy marketers, be highly proficient in search engine optimization, know how to budget, maintain a blog, and have pretty advanced video editing and producing skills.
Mz. Kim has created courses to help people build that skill set, including “Monetizing Your Appeal Online: Content Strategies for Models”; before the pandemic, she held classes across the country. Part of her gospel is: “It’s not about starting a profile on Twitter. You have to provide something more than selfies. You have to think about: What is your core appeal?” (Next week a new class, “Investing for Sex Workers,” will go live.)
Here is the full NYT piece, with plenty of further examples.
Sunday assorted links
1. Lisa Feldman Barrett update, on the emotions not being so innate.
2. Amazon in Italy during the pandemic, and further on (NYT).
3. Some communities in Qatar have herd immunity it seems.
4. John Cochrane on Casey Mulligan on the Trump administration, and many other matters.
Virginia fact of the day
In 1790, nearly half of the nation’s enslaved people lived in Virginia.
That was about 236,000 people, and that is from Alan Taylor’s excellent Thomas Jefferson’s Education. In 1785, by the way, the state legislature unanimously rejected a proposal from evangelicals to free the state’s slaves.
Tyrone joins…that group…
Many of you ask me for reports of my evil twin brother Tyrone, but of course I demur because I am too embarrassed to pass along his doings. They get worse and worse. Nonetheless, Tyrone said he was going public with this one, so I thought the damage was done in any case. The sad news is that Tyrone is now an active proponent of QAnon. How can he fall for such fallacies and stupidities? He sent me this letter to explain his decision:
Dear Tyler:
You have yourself blogged about the import of child abuse, and asked why it is not condemned more widely, most of all among elites. You even wrote that the right wing ignored the issue — I thought it is time to remedy that! We needed a right-wing movement to protect the world’s most vulnerable citizens, and it turned out that looked like QAnon. Besides, who is more of an elite than I am?
To be sure, the QAnon movement has its excesses, but do not all social movements? At least it attacks criminals rather than defending them. The key question is whether social movements shine a light on abusive practices that need further scrutiny, and there QAnon passes with flying colors.
QAnon truly has attracted attention — just look at all the complaints about Facebook enabling it. In this world you haven’t arrived until someone can turn a criticism of you into a criticism of Facebook.
Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of…stuff…and the world’s elites continued to treat him as normal and to take his money and fly on his plane. He wasn’t cancelled.
Roman Polanski had a successful and feted career after repeatedly doing very bad…stuff.
The sexual abuse of children has turned out to be rampant in the Catholic Church and also in Hollywood.
I saw the new HBO documentary Showbiz Kids: “In my experience, I know a lot of kids that grew up in the industry. And what surprised me when I got older was finding out that pretty much all of the young men were abused in some way, sexually.”
French intellectuals — and was there ever more of an elite than them? — petitioned to repeal age of consent laws so they can do…bad stuff…with less fear of the consequences. (See? Petitions really are wrong!)
By the way, Berlin authorities placed children with pedophiles for thirty years. And that is in Germany, a country with relatively responsible governance.
This is all so sickening I can’t go on any further, and we haven’t even discussed all that goes on over the internet.
There is in fact an epidemic of child abuse, it ruins or seriously damages many millions of lives, and elites are complicit in covering it up and refusing to address the preconditions that generate so much of it. These same elites often downplay or discourage the elevation of social conservatism, one of the few possible regulatory mechanisms society might have. In the very worst situations, these elites are directly complicit in covering up the abuse of children. Many of the elites partake in it themselves.
Which group has done more to publicize these failings than QAnon, the worthy successor to The Jerry Springer Show?
Yes, Yes I know. I do not endorse all of their hypotheses concerning political economy. Maybe Donald Trump will not in fact set all things straight, and perhaps the apocalypse is not around the corner. No, the molesters do not worship Satan, but given their behavior they might as well. Should we lock up all those journalists? I don’t know. Comet Ping Pong was never as good as Pupatella anyway. But look — this is what you get when you build a mass movement. The message does get dumbed down and the crazies climb on board, just as we have Antifa and some other weird groups and demands connected to what are otherwise valuable social marches. Tyler — you have to get used to this new world of internet communications! Walter Cronkite is gone. Either compete or give up, and I’m not willing to do the latter.
For whatever structural reason, elite media seem less obsessed with child abuse as an issue than is “non-elite media.” That is simply a reality we need to work with, and our unwillingness to discard traditional canons of journalism has led to the perpetuation of these abuses for centuries, indeed dating back to the very founding of the American nation.
Haven’t you read Marcuse on repressive tolerance?
And come on, this very serious guy just wrote this, but not about QAnon:
“But actually diving into the sea of trash that is social science gives you a more tangible perspective, a more visceral revulsion, and perhaps even a sense of Lovecraftian awe at the sheer magnitude of it all: a vast landfill—a great agglomeration of garbage extending as far as the eye can see, effluvious waves crashing and throwing up a foul foam of p=0.049 papers. As you walk up to the diving platform, the deformed attendant hands you a pair of flippers. Noticing your reticence, he gives a subtle nod as if to say: “come on then, jump in”.”
The rot runs much deeper than the fallacies of QAnon.
Besides, it seems that the guy behind QAPPANON (don’t ask) is “
And Tyler, I know your criticize me for following these conspiracy theories. But you yourself have written of the need to imagine a future very different from the present and then bring it about? Is that not what a conspiracy tries to do? Do we not need to counter these evil conspiracies with some more benevolent plans?
Most of all, when it comes to evaluating social movements, you can only elevate so many victims at once. Isn’t the notion of children as the true victims the most universal and indeed the only vision that can unify this great nation? People complain about the truth-stretching in QAnon, and OK I get that, but isn’t their real worry the revolutionary re-appropriation of which groups in society can be granted true, #1 victimhood status? Just as Christianity accomplished a similar revaluation way back when? (And look at some of the wacky stuff that they believe — ever read The Book of Revelation Tyler?)
I don’t want QAnon to be in charge, but what other tool do we have to force elites to deal with this issue? Aren’t these just Saul Alinsky tactics? QAnon isn’t going to control Congress anyway.
Besides, is not apophenia one of the roots of creativity? Have not Millenarian movements played key and sometimes beneficial roles in Western history? Is not Christianity itself a Millenarian movement? How about all that weird ass shit on the back of your dollar bill?
Child abuse is the #1 issue in society right now so…pick your side! If you don’t like it, stop your silly blogging and come up with a better anti-child abuse movement.
TC again: See? This is why Tyrone doesn’t appear much on this blog any more. It used to be a funny or sometimes even thought-provoking schtick, but these days things are so out of control you’ve got to stick with message discipline. You can’t just let one speculation lead to the next, because we have so many crazies with major league internet platforms.
Rationalism. Fact-checking. Only one family member at a time (sorry sis!).
Please return tomorrow, or perhaps later in the day, for a proper analysis of the incidence of property tax reform in eastern Colorado. And perhaps there will be some new service sector jobs as well — you can apply! In the meantime, let’s hope that Tyrone’s QAnon fandom isn’t one of them.
And no, I’m not going to try to reenter the Philippines.
Where do economics journal editors live and work?
Over half the journals we consider have over two thirds of their editorial power located in the USA. A large majority of journals have a tiny editorial contribution from academics located outside of North America and Europe. Any one of the states of California, Massachusetts and Illinois has more power than the four continents of Asia, South America, Africa and Australasia combined.
That is from a new paper by Simon D. Angus, Kadir Atalay, Jonathan Newton, and David Ubilava. Here is a useful visual showing the actual distribution.
Saturday assorted links
2. Late nights make the President angry on Twitter.
3. Many experts downplay or even sneer at the preexisting immune response idea when “the kooks” bring it up (e.g., Fauci vs. Rand Paul, for one), but the evidence for it is growing. Its relevance now seems quite likely.
4. Law Firms Pay Supreme Court Clerks $400,000 Bonuses. What Are They Buying? (NYT)
5. Could Einstein get published today? (WSJ)
6. NLRB Files Complaint Against Socialist-Themed Vegan Meat Company That Fired Union Organizers. The company is called No Evil Foods.
7. Raj Chetty during the pandemic (Bloomberg).
Spain’s second wave of Covid-19
Did this happen? Were Spain’s hardest hit provinces in the spring spared in the second wave?
To get a quick sense of the answers to those questions I plotted the cumulative number of cases per 100,000 population in the Spanish provinces since June 15 against the proportion of the population in the provinces that tested positive for antibodies after the first wave. If herd immunity were playing a large role in suppressing cases in the second wave, we would expect to see a negative relationship between provinces with high levels of antibodies in the population at the end of May and total case counts since that time…
Instead of a negative correlation, there is a positive, although weak, correlation between having higher prevalence of antibodies in the population and having a higher case rate in the second wave.
…Take Madrid for example, if roughly 13% of the population had antibodies after the first wave, at least one of the low-HIT models estimates the Rₑ would be approximately 60% lower than than the unmitigated reproductive rate (R₀). If population immunity were reducing transmission in the Madrid area by 60% below unmitigated levels, it seems unlikely Madrid would again have one of the highest rates of infection in the second wave [yet it does].
…Ultimately, the strongest conclusion that can be drawn from this look at infection rates is that there is not clear evidence herd immunity is playing a significant role, yet.
Also take a look at a deeper dive looking for herd immunity in Sweden (spoiler alert: no signs of it yet).
It is fine to call this inconclusive, but still the pattern predicted by standard herd immunity claims is not yet showing up. Here is the whole piece from Kbenes, very useful.
And elsewhere, this was not supposed to happen, as New York Orthodox Jews also have been cited as a “herd immunity” community:
Officials this week released statistics showing that the positivity rate in some Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods [in NYC] had grown to anywhere from 3 percent to 6 percent, significantly more than the city’s overall rate of between 1 percent and 2 percent. Officials are especially worried about the positivity rates in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Midwood and Gravesend, which they have referred to as the “Ocean Parkway Cluster.”
Here is that full story (NYT).
Jimmy Butler markets in everything
You’ve heard of Bubble Tea? Well, this is Bubble Coffee:
In a recent interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, Butler said coffee was hard to find on the NBA’s Orlando campus. He and his French press are keeping his teammates caffeinated, one extremely overpriced cup at a time.
“You can’t get coffee nowhere here,” [Jimmy] Butler said in the interview. “So I might bump it up to 30 bucks a cup. People here can afford it.”
…According to the menu outside his Walt Disney World hotel room, Butler’s offerings include a latte, a cappuccino, a macchiato and more. A small cup goes for the hefty price tag of $20. (A medium and large go for the same price, so you might as well spring for the venti.)
Here is the full ESPN story, via Christina.
Friday assorted links
A Vitamin D Bet
It was always odd to me that hydroxychloroquine became a shibboleth. Vitamin D seemed like a better focal point (cheap, safe, natural!) and the case for its effectiveness is not without merit. Indeed, an Israeli company, RootClaim, which combines crowdfunding of data with Bayesian algorithms to improve decision making (yeah, some reasons for skepticism here) has offered to bet anyone $100,000 (I think at 1:1 odds) that Vitamin D works against COVID. The precise bet is as follows:
Rootclaim is willing to bet $100,000 that vitamin D is effective in reducing the severity of Covid-19.
Our claim: By April 1st, 2022, it will be accepted by health professionals that a vitamin D treatment protocol similar to that used in the study is better than existing treatments (remdesivir and corticosteroids) in reducing the odds of severe outcomes, which we will define as a minimum 1.5x reduction in odds of admission to the ICU.
- The challenger needs to show that they can commit $100,000. We are open to discussing lower or higher amounts, and the funds can be pooled from multiple sources.
- Both sides will agree in advance on the specifics of how a winner is determined, and what arbitration mechanism to use, if need be.
- The challenger needs to declare that they do not have access to any relevant non-public information. This is to protect from abuse in case of unpublished research (there is still a small chance that further research will discover the treatment is ineffective). For the same reason, we may update these terms or withdraw the offer, as new information emerges.
Rootclaim is putting a lot of weight on their analysis of this study. Evaluate at your own risk but I have been taking Vitamin D and trying to get some extra sun since the beginning of the pandemic.
Hat tip: Gordon Shotwell who has a useful overview of Vitamin D research and COVID here.
