Bad News Wild pigs continue to multiply and do increasing amounts of damage as they spread throughout America. Perhaps in the past we might have been willing to do what it would take to solve such problems. Today, we are not, and the situation gets steadily worse, and likely will continue to get worse.
On the wild hog question, surely we Americans would be more than happy to do some hog hunting for sport and maybe good eating? Do we need more incentive to hunt them? Hog bounties?
Similar issue in Florida with invasive green iguanas. It is legal to kill them on your property:
Re: gene editing and mundane utility, we are there! At least technologically. For instance see the YouTuber who goes by ThoughtEmporium curing his own lactose intolerance. There are many similar things you can do. Unfortunately any use of (human) gene editing that qualifies as mundane utility is by default illegal, and to make it not illegal you have to spend tens of millions of dollars, at least, and probably fail anyway because the FDA hates progess
re: "You work on the fusion program and everything is passively done for you."
I think this is A) something that does actually happen in a lot of ways, we just use terms like "secretary" or "spouse" or "part of the package they give to American doctors who go to Dubai for a few years" or "what they do for NBA/NFL stars", and also B) something that would make a good business, with not only fusion researchers as clients - call it "Ask Jeeves" and market as full service/pick-your-modules butler/maid/financial/everything solution. The market niche here is the one occupied by "house stewards for nobles, 250 years ago", "servants/butlers/maids 150 years ago" and "homebound wives 50 years ago".
Speaking personally, I am the person in my household that does a lot (not all) of that, and I kinda enjoy optimizing it, but I know tons of people who just Do Not Care. They want everything in their life - other than the things they want to focus on - to be on autopilot, and I can't blame them! I would love to see something where you deputize a professional with some kind of low-impact (and bonded) version of power of attorney and then they just .... take care of everything for, I don't know, some % of your income.
Re Algorithms of Cultural Blandness on architecture in particular:
The property market in major western cities is such that the vast majority of the value of a property is normally from its location. So the incentive on developers is to rent extract (if you'll pardon the pun) on that, not to make buildings that are particularly better. Since people rarely have a choice between two functionally identical locations where aesthetics is the determining difference.
Anecdotally I think you see more innovation where land is cheap and so genuine competition exists
Re: Utah Blocks PornHub, when I click through to the link it appears that it's actually the other way around, of PornHub blocking inbound connections from Utah?
Re: the final point about friction. Is the idea that the artificial frictions have gotten so large that it isn't _worth_ doing this in the real world? Because I see no reason that some fusion company couldn't do this currently. Hire people whose only job is deal with all the friction bull shit and let the smart people do the smart people things.
Obviously, the ideal solution is to minimize the _existence_ of friction as much as possible, but up until the point where friction becomes > value provided by those who can't stand it, Private companies should do this on their own.
So one of a few things is happening: Companies don't know how to find these smart-but-friction-intolerant persons, Companies don't know how to remove the friction from these smart person jobs, or the artificial frictions have increased to the point where the value is net negative to find these people and also find other people to remove the frictions.
Seems like an interesting area to find out more. My guess would be that some few places (fusion seems like a possible candidate), the final option might be true but in the vast majority of places the first one is true and in a lot more places, the second one is true. Not sure how easily solveable either of those problems are. Second option seems the easiest.
Good for nurse practitioners, now do pharmacists. Or, at least, make using pharmacists like how we currently use PAs and NPs actually reimbursable by Medicare.
I think the reason for aesthetics converging across different markets is resale value. So many people live in neutral, beige homes with minimal customization because if they were to give it any kind of personality, it might be harder to sell down the road. People build very plain commercial buildings because they're the easiest to retrofit for any potential tenant. Presumably cars are the same; some people might love a flashy red car, but nobody hates regular old black. It's all about negative reaction avoidance, rather than positive reaction seeking.
Basically no, nobody is subsidising anyone, these are arbitrary fees cooked up in 2008.
Re: board games
Sidereal Confluence! This game should be a big hit around here because it is really truely about trading. Win-win trading. Building a bigger pie and yes, trying to get a big piece yourself, but the only way to do so is to grow that pie.
Everyone has "converters" that take certain colored cubes in and output other colored cubes. But the game is designed that every faction has some colors they need but struggle to produce and others they produce but don't really need. Then add a bunch of assymetry in.
For example the engineer species can permanently make some converters more efficient, but their converters are bad choices for that benefit. How do you trade that with other players? Another faction makes a lot of resources they cannot use, can only trade, also they can steal some resources from other players, but if you trade with them you are immune from stealing temporarily. How much is "protection" valued in the trade?
It is great! It is educational and wholesome! Capitalism and trade as a force for good while still being an enjoyable competition!
Re: “High IQ jobs should have lower friction”Speaking as someone who is literally graduating with a degree in rocket science and then shamelessly going into finance, I completely agree. I would prefer to work on something with impact, but society had made that difficult with low expected value compared to working in finance. I applied to one job, was recommends by a current employee who knew I was smart and am paid very well. I’ll work 40 hours a week, and can expect my salary to increase dramatically rather than plateau like essentially all engineering jobs. I’m not happy about this, but humans respond to incentives, and society has deemed working in finance to be more valuable
Fusion research should be banned. This is just such a ridiculous stupid waste of money - untold billions of dollars to perhaps eventually maybe build a trillion-dollar machine that will produce 20 Chernobyls worth of high-level nuclear waste every couple of years (occurs via neutron capture, absolutely unavoidable regardless of the way the fusion plant is designed). Wake up ppl!
For any given LTV range it's true that better credit scores never lead to worse LLPAs.
However, it is also true that some riskier (LTV, credit score) tuples will pay more than less risky ones. A borrower with a 730 score putting down 80% has an LLPA of 1.25%, while the borrower with a 710 score putting down 3% gets an LLPA of 0.875%.
The most bizarre part is that people aware of this schedule can game it. Credit scores are fixed in the near term, but you can always put down less. The loan will cost far less if you choose to put down nothing at loan origination time and then use your original planned down payment to immediately pay down principal.
That being allowed to shoot wild pigs from a helicopter without a licence hasn’t done anything to curb the pig menace says a lot. Is access to helicopters the problem..?
On the wild hog question, surely we Americans would be more than happy to do some hog hunting for sport and maybe good eating? Do we need more incentive to hunt them? Hog bounties?
Similar issue in Florida with invasive green iguanas. It is legal to kill them on your property:
https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/reptiles/green-iguana/
Re: gene editing and mundane utility, we are there! At least technologically. For instance see the YouTuber who goes by ThoughtEmporium curing his own lactose intolerance. There are many similar things you can do. Unfortunately any use of (human) gene editing that qualifies as mundane utility is by default illegal, and to make it not illegal you have to spend tens of millions of dollars, at least, and probably fail anyway because the FDA hates progess
re: "You work on the fusion program and everything is passively done for you."
I think this is A) something that does actually happen in a lot of ways, we just use terms like "secretary" or "spouse" or "part of the package they give to American doctors who go to Dubai for a few years" or "what they do for NBA/NFL stars", and also B) something that would make a good business, with not only fusion researchers as clients - call it "Ask Jeeves" and market as full service/pick-your-modules butler/maid/financial/everything solution. The market niche here is the one occupied by "house stewards for nobles, 250 years ago", "servants/butlers/maids 150 years ago" and "homebound wives 50 years ago".
Speaking personally, I am the person in my household that does a lot (not all) of that, and I kinda enjoy optimizing it, but I know tons of people who just Do Not Care. They want everything in their life - other than the things they want to focus on - to be on autopilot, and I can't blame them! I would love to see something where you deputize a professional with some kind of low-impact (and bonded) version of power of attorney and then they just .... take care of everything for, I don't know, some % of your income.
Re Algorithms of Cultural Blandness on architecture in particular:
The property market in major western cities is such that the vast majority of the value of a property is normally from its location. So the incentive on developers is to rent extract (if you'll pardon the pun) on that, not to make buildings that are particularly better. Since people rarely have a choice between two functionally identical locations where aesthetics is the determining difference.
Anecdotally I think you see more innovation where land is cheap and so genuine competition exists
I found the roulette story, and another horse racing story captivating. Thanks.
Re: Utah Blocks PornHub, when I click through to the link it appears that it's actually the other way around, of PornHub blocking inbound connections from Utah?
Re: the final point about friction. Is the idea that the artificial frictions have gotten so large that it isn't _worth_ doing this in the real world? Because I see no reason that some fusion company couldn't do this currently. Hire people whose only job is deal with all the friction bull shit and let the smart people do the smart people things.
Obviously, the ideal solution is to minimize the _existence_ of friction as much as possible, but up until the point where friction becomes > value provided by those who can't stand it, Private companies should do this on their own.
So one of a few things is happening: Companies don't know how to find these smart-but-friction-intolerant persons, Companies don't know how to remove the friction from these smart person jobs, or the artificial frictions have increased to the point where the value is net negative to find these people and also find other people to remove the frictions.
Seems like an interesting area to find out more. My guess would be that some few places (fusion seems like a possible candidate), the final option might be true but in the vast majority of places the first one is true and in a lot more places, the second one is true. Not sure how easily solveable either of those problems are. Second option seems the easiest.
Good for nurse practitioners, now do pharmacists. Or, at least, make using pharmacists like how we currently use PAs and NPs actually reimbursable by Medicare.
"Keep it Hayekian, keep it grounded, keep administrative aspects light."
Great advice in pretty much every realm!
I think the reason for aesthetics converging across different markets is resale value. So many people live in neutral, beige homes with minimal customization because if they were to give it any kind of personality, it might be harder to sell down the road. People build very plain commercial buildings because they're the easiest to retrofit for any potential tenant. Presumably cars are the same; some people might love a flashy red car, but nobody hates regular old black. It's all about negative reaction avoidance, rather than positive reaction seeking.
Re the high credit scores subsidising the low: https://kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/no-biden-isnt-punishing-you-for-your
Basically no, nobody is subsidising anyone, these are arbitrary fees cooked up in 2008.
Re: board games
Sidereal Confluence! This game should be a big hit around here because it is really truely about trading. Win-win trading. Building a bigger pie and yes, trying to get a big piece yourself, but the only way to do so is to grow that pie.
Everyone has "converters" that take certain colored cubes in and output other colored cubes. But the game is designed that every faction has some colors they need but struggle to produce and others they produce but don't really need. Then add a bunch of assymetry in.
For example the engineer species can permanently make some converters more efficient, but their converters are bad choices for that benefit. How do you trade that with other players? Another faction makes a lot of resources they cannot use, can only trade, also they can steal some resources from other players, but if you trade with them you are immune from stealing temporarily. How much is "protection" valued in the trade?
It is great! It is educational and wholesome! Capitalism and trade as a force for good while still being an enjoyable competition!
Re: “High IQ jobs should have lower friction”Speaking as someone who is literally graduating with a degree in rocket science and then shamelessly going into finance, I completely agree. I would prefer to work on something with impact, but society had made that difficult with low expected value compared to working in finance. I applied to one job, was recommends by a current employee who knew I was smart and am paid very well. I’ll work 40 hours a week, and can expect my salary to increase dramatically rather than plateau like essentially all engineering jobs. I’m not happy about this, but humans respond to incentives, and society has deemed working in finance to be more valuable
Re: reducing friction
40% of time for most research professors is spent writing grants to get funding for research rather than actually doing research. This is laughable
Fusion research should be banned. This is just such a ridiculous stupid waste of money - untold billions of dollars to perhaps eventually maybe build a trillion-dollar machine that will produce 20 Chernobyls worth of high-level nuclear waste every couple of years (occurs via neutron capture, absolutely unavoidable regardless of the way the fusion plant is designed). Wake up ppl!
On mortgage rate adjustments and risk, see this series of tables for the new LLPA schedule: https://singlefamily.fanniemae.com/media/9391/display
For any given LTV range it's true that better credit scores never lead to worse LLPAs.
However, it is also true that some riskier (LTV, credit score) tuples will pay more than less risky ones. A borrower with a 730 score putting down 80% has an LLPA of 1.25%, while the borrower with a 710 score putting down 3% gets an LLPA of 0.875%.
The most bizarre part is that people aware of this schedule can game it. Credit scores are fixed in the near term, but you can always put down less. The loan will cost far less if you choose to put down nothing at loan origination time and then use your original planned down payment to immediately pay down principal.
That being allowed to shoot wild pigs from a helicopter without a licence hasn’t done anything to curb the pig menace says a lot. Is access to helicopters the problem..?