Another experiment for everyone (in addition to the one in this week’s Covid post) is that I want to better figure out when to split things off into their own posts. Is there anything here you would link to or want to later refer back to, and thus you think would benefit from standing on its own and/or is worth expanding out? Leave a comment to that effect, or like a comment already there, and good chance I’ll go ahead and do that. One of the problems with writing is the constant
Master comment for 'this is a topic here that deserves more extensive treatment and/or should be posted on its own so we can refer back or link to it.'
1. Ukraine negotiation starting position is something like "2010 borders, Russia pays, mostly in advance, for all rebuilding, and 20 nukes + missiles from Russian stockpiles." Probably gets negotiated down to 2015 map, some fixed and insufficient rebuilding payment, no nukes, and a path towards NATO.
2. When posting Twitter polls, avoid hard to parse negatives. Just say "people far away should be equal to friends? Y/N".
Incidentally, I think the revealed preferences of humans, and I endorse it on reflection, is an exponential drop-off of value along the social graph. So, if you are 1, your friends are (1 - n)^1, thier friends, or your neighbors are (1-n)^2, the great-grandkids of your neighbors friends would be (1-n)^5, etc. So billions of people a million years from now count the same, collectively, as one life on the other side of the world today, give or take.
3. I also don't understand why "a room to sleep in and take a shower in the morning" seems to always bundle low quality mattress and blinds and soundproofing with its cheap location, small size, and low price. And if there is a motel chain that doesn't, they aren't advertising it.
I think perhaps I'd be more inclined to believe "election deniers are preparing to sabotage the election" if I was hearing it from people who didn't view any participation in election administration by the opposing side as 'sabotage'.
> How often does this car currently crash versus how often Google or Wikipedia would crash? Sometimes if it’s 99% vs. 99.9% (or 99.99%, or…)
I think the more subtle issue is that GPT3 isn't auditable or consistent in the way that google and wikipedia are. That is two people asking the same question could get different answers and can't compare sources or cross reference them.
My attempt at answers with the third being the "interesting" question, IMHO:
"One can also ask, if Democracy only works (and Democrats only win elections) under low gas prices, are they taking steps to ensure at least medium-term that gas prices remain low? Or are they continuously taking steps that raise gas prices?"
Broadly speaking, not so much with regard to medium-term fossil price reduction, although there are some actions in that direction - to the extent it is happening, it's generally reluctantly, short-term driven, and without a broad understanding of either the markets or the fact that we're talking about "real world" molecules & not something addressable by messaging or policy papers... Which means that "continuously" is a wee bit strong but, I'd agree directionally - and given the tie in to elections, I think that outside of substance, Democrats are widely viewed as the party that has advocated FOR high gas prices, which leads to the interesting question:
"If they are taking steps that raise gas prices, what are they getting in exchange?"
Obviously, with the recognition that we are generalizing here:
1) Less angry phone calls from "the groups", who have absorbed the idea that "end fossil now" is both desirable and feasible.
2) Related to #1, happier staff, who given age and other dynamics tend to be far more aligned with the "groups" than most elected officials and certainly than their electorate.
3) Righteous indignation (or at least the ability to message as such), knowing that they are fighting Big Oil and their cousin, Big Natural Gas, all while saving the planet.
....
And somewhere down the list:
Z) The awkward situation of trying to square (prior?) calls for demand destruction and (current) rejection of oil & gas projects with demand for more oil and gas delivered to places that demand it.
Z+1) Lost elections, higher inflation, increased risk of global recession and instability, reduced economic growth, lack of credibility on energy issues, etc...
Z+2) More speculative: A combination of backlash, lost credibility, and global geopolitics that actually leads to greater global emissions for a longer period of time than a less volatile energy marketplace.
"China stocks down after party congress. I found this odd given that I did not see anything happen that was all that unexpected. What wasn’t priced in? Or was even a small chance of a different outcome super impactful?"
Simplfying way to much, and not a China expert.
What I think the base expectation was: "Xi to take another term, and increase his control. A few market-friendly actors to remain"
What actually occurred: "Xi took full control, purged all other factions aggressively, including those which might be more market friendly"
I think there was some probability being assigned to some v. market friendly outcomes too. (All the coup rumours in the month prior, although I don't have a good sense of how much was priced in from this - I don't think people took it especially seriously)
I think the issue with DeSantis is not that his "thigh food" technique is so awful for the women on the receiving end of it, but that it reveals him to be the kind of domineering asshole who wants a girlfriend who will never contradict him even when he's obviously and embarrassingly wrong.
Writing feedback: I think the Tyler section of this post is substantially less valuable than anything else. My guess is that everyone who cares about any of that section already reads marginal revolution and this is basically duplicative.
The only one where I felt like I learned anything was the one about gas prices, where the Balsa take section was interesting. Maybe just that kind of thing and not so much the reporting ones.
Gee I dislike the love/ hate graphs for pop lyrics. First the scale shift and zero offset, if you plot hate in the love graph you'd see no data points till after 2000. Second are you telling me that only 1% of songs are about love? This seems much too low. I suspect cherry picking of the data.
Re: sports and tanking. Tanking totally sucks for the sports fan (or at least this sports fan) it sends the totally wrong message to the fans and the players on the team. It took years for the Sabres Hockey franchise to overcome the tank (for Jack Eichel). It's only within the last year that I've been able to watch hockey again. How much fan joy is lost during the tank? (And the tank aftermath.)
>the only way to get a possible settlement is for Putin to lose such internal battles and be forced to sue for peace.
I'm a little at loss when I try to follow these kinds of arguments. I never understand why Putin would be forced to sue for peace given that nobody seems to deny he can always retreat to Russia and unilaterally force a peace with Ukraine this way (ignore Crimea, unless some argument explicitly depends on it).
Does "sue for peace" here simply mean "retreat from Ukraine"? and if so - and I mean this question non-rhetorically - does anyone seriously watching internal Russian politics think that Putin will face public pressure internally to retreat from Ukraine if the war keeps going badly? Or will the pressure from Russian society be to escalate, including by taking actions that hurt their perceived enemies in the West (see e.g. Europe and gas)?
The demand for transportation is much more elastic over long time frames than short timeframes. When the high external costs of transportation are internalized, people will gradually move closer to their jobs, bid higher for walkable residences, etc.
I'll admit that "if you shoot down half the missiles, half as many people die" is an oversimplification, but I didn't want to spend a ton of time trying to generate an estimate, and it's reasonably close and probably even conservative. In practical terms, there's a lot less overkill in modern nuclear arsenals than you might think (https://www.navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Weapon-Destructiveness) and I don't expect Russia or China to target to maximize deaths. They're going to be trying to maximize damage to our military-industrial complex, which is bad luck for certain people, but a lot of people don't live all that close to a major military target, and as they focus in on those major targets, they're going to be leaving all of them alone. There's never going to be a good time to live in DC with this going on, but you'll see a lot fewer nukes headed to, say, St. Louis. Note how effective Soviet missile defenses were in constraining the number killed by the British arsenal. Essentially, they went from 16 targets to 1 target, because they thought that was what was necessary to pierce the defenses around Moscow.
(If you want me to try to work out a more thorough estimate of the substitution effect, then you and Alyssa have my email.)
Master comment for 'this is a topic here that deserves more extensive treatment and/or should be posted on its own so we can refer back or link to it.'
What do you think is a good example of how Google has become worse?
General comments/hot takes:
1. Ukraine negotiation starting position is something like "2010 borders, Russia pays, mostly in advance, for all rebuilding, and 20 nukes + missiles from Russian stockpiles." Probably gets negotiated down to 2015 map, some fixed and insufficient rebuilding payment, no nukes, and a path towards NATO.
2. When posting Twitter polls, avoid hard to parse negatives. Just say "people far away should be equal to friends? Y/N".
Incidentally, I think the revealed preferences of humans, and I endorse it on reflection, is an exponential drop-off of value along the social graph. So, if you are 1, your friends are (1 - n)^1, thier friends, or your neighbors are (1-n)^2, the great-grandkids of your neighbors friends would be (1-n)^5, etc. So billions of people a million years from now count the same, collectively, as one life on the other side of the world today, give or take.
3. I also don't understand why "a room to sleep in and take a shower in the morning" seems to always bundle low quality mattress and blinds and soundproofing with its cheap location, small size, and low price. And if there is a motel chain that doesn't, they aren't advertising it.
I think perhaps I'd be more inclined to believe "election deniers are preparing to sabotage the election" if I was hearing it from people who didn't view any participation in election administration by the opposing side as 'sabotage'.
> How often does this car currently crash versus how often Google or Wikipedia would crash? Sometimes if it’s 99% vs. 99.9% (or 99.99%, or…)
I think the more subtle issue is that GPT3 isn't auditable or consistent in the way that google and wikipedia are. That is two people asking the same question could get different answers and can't compare sources or cross reference them.
My attempt at answers with the third being the "interesting" question, IMHO:
"One can also ask, if Democracy only works (and Democrats only win elections) under low gas prices, are they taking steps to ensure at least medium-term that gas prices remain low? Or are they continuously taking steps that raise gas prices?"
Broadly speaking, not so much with regard to medium-term fossil price reduction, although there are some actions in that direction - to the extent it is happening, it's generally reluctantly, short-term driven, and without a broad understanding of either the markets or the fact that we're talking about "real world" molecules & not something addressable by messaging or policy papers... Which means that "continuously" is a wee bit strong but, I'd agree directionally - and given the tie in to elections, I think that outside of substance, Democrats are widely viewed as the party that has advocated FOR high gas prices, which leads to the interesting question:
"If they are taking steps that raise gas prices, what are they getting in exchange?"
Obviously, with the recognition that we are generalizing here:
1) Less angry phone calls from "the groups", who have absorbed the idea that "end fossil now" is both desirable and feasible.
2) Related to #1, happier staff, who given age and other dynamics tend to be far more aligned with the "groups" than most elected officials and certainly than their electorate.
3) Righteous indignation (or at least the ability to message as such), knowing that they are fighting Big Oil and their cousin, Big Natural Gas, all while saving the planet.
....
And somewhere down the list:
Z) The awkward situation of trying to square (prior?) calls for demand destruction and (current) rejection of oil & gas projects with demand for more oil and gas delivered to places that demand it.
Z+1) Lost elections, higher inflation, increased risk of global recession and instability, reduced economic growth, lack of credibility on energy issues, etc...
Z+2) More speculative: A combination of backlash, lost credibility, and global geopolitics that actually leads to greater global emissions for a longer period of time than a less volatile energy marketplace.
"China stocks down after party congress. I found this odd given that I did not see anything happen that was all that unexpected. What wasn’t priced in? Or was even a small chance of a different outcome super impactful?"
Simplfying way to much, and not a China expert.
What I think the base expectation was: "Xi to take another term, and increase his control. A few market-friendly actors to remain"
What actually occurred: "Xi took full control, purged all other factions aggressively, including those which might be more market friendly"
I think there was some probability being assigned to some v. market friendly outcomes too. (All the coup rumours in the month prior, although I don't have a good sense of how much was priced in from this - I don't think people took it especially seriously)
I think the issue with DeSantis is not that his "thigh food" technique is so awful for the women on the receiving end of it, but that it reveals him to be the kind of domineering asshole who wants a girlfriend who will never contradict him even when he's obviously and embarrassingly wrong.
Are these Weekly Roundup posts now Substack-only? I don't see this one on Wordpress.
Writing feedback: I think the Tyler section of this post is substantially less valuable than anything else. My guess is that everyone who cares about any of that section already reads marginal revolution and this is basically duplicative.
The only one where I felt like I learned anything was the one about gas prices, where the Balsa take section was interesting. Maybe just that kind of thing and not so much the reporting ones.
Wordpress not updated? I like its formatting and rendering much better.
It would appear that people had enough of silly love songs.
Gee I dislike the love/ hate graphs for pop lyrics. First the scale shift and zero offset, if you plot hate in the love graph you'd see no data points till after 2000. Second are you telling me that only 1% of songs are about love? This seems much too low. I suspect cherry picking of the data.
Re: sports and tanking. Tanking totally sucks for the sports fan (or at least this sports fan) it sends the totally wrong message to the fans and the players on the team. It took years for the Sabres Hockey franchise to overcome the tank (for Jack Eichel). It's only within the last year that I've been able to watch hockey again. How much fan joy is lost during the tank? (And the tank aftermath.)
>the only way to get a possible settlement is for Putin to lose such internal battles and be forced to sue for peace.
I'm a little at loss when I try to follow these kinds of arguments. I never understand why Putin would be forced to sue for peace given that nobody seems to deny he can always retreat to Russia and unilaterally force a peace with Ukraine this way (ignore Crimea, unless some argument explicitly depends on it).
Does "sue for peace" here simply mean "retreat from Ukraine"? and if so - and I mean this question non-rhetorically - does anyone seriously watching internal Russian politics think that Putin will face public pressure internally to retreat from Ukraine if the war keeps going badly? Or will the pressure from Russian society be to escalate, including by taking actions that hurt their perceived enemies in the West (see e.g. Europe and gas)?
The demand for transportation is much more elastic over long time frames than short timeframes. When the high external costs of transportation are internalized, people will gradually move closer to their jobs, bid higher for walkable residences, etc.
I'll admit that "if you shoot down half the missiles, half as many people die" is an oversimplification, but I didn't want to spend a ton of time trying to generate an estimate, and it's reasonably close and probably even conservative. In practical terms, there's a lot less overkill in modern nuclear arsenals than you might think (https://www.navalgazing.net/Nuclear-Weapon-Destructiveness) and I don't expect Russia or China to target to maximize deaths. They're going to be trying to maximize damage to our military-industrial complex, which is bad luck for certain people, but a lot of people don't live all that close to a major military target, and as they focus in on those major targets, they're going to be leaving all of them alone. There's never going to be a good time to live in DC with this going on, but you'll see a lot fewer nukes headed to, say, St. Louis. Note how effective Soviet missile defenses were in constraining the number killed by the British arsenal. Essentially, they went from 16 targets to 1 target, because they thought that was what was necessary to pierce the defenses around Moscow.
(If you want me to try to work out a more thorough estimate of the substitution effect, then you and Alyssa have my email.)