February 2022 BenGoldhaber(.com) Newsletter
Well… February sure hasn’t been boring.
#links
Like a lot of folks I’ve been doom scrolling news on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The reports and analysis I’ve found most compelling and trustworthy have come from Samo Burja, T. Greer, and the Metaculus community.
Metaculus in particular has really hit its stride over the past two years. It’s an active community where forecasters are sharing information and collaborating on predictions. In general I recommend browsing Metaculus - or searching it directly or with Metaforecast - to find questions of interest, then read the comments for the sources and discussion.
I really like the idea of undermining Russia by draining technical talent and welcoming them to the states. In general I’d like to see a lot more creative policy solutions like this one, that obliquely damage authoritarian regimes without starting a world war.
Thoughts on Shitpost Diplomacy. Scholar Stage describes symbolic vs. material reality, with many otherwise smart actors thinking that winning the war on twitter is the same as winning it in real life. However, it’s fair to say the essay, from February 22nd, feels a bit dated six days later. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has leveraged charisma and excellent info-ops to get material support from many Western countries, as well as far harsher sanctions against Russia than anyone initially predicted. It turns out that Twitter does in fact have many divisions at its command. Related: Pausing at the Precipice, Reality Honks Back
Qi hu nan xia. (Once you’re riding a tiger, it’s hard to get off.)
- Chinese Proverb I encountered a few weeks ago that feels prescient.
There's only one sensible way to measure economic inequality: Consumption and consumption disparity should be the primary way to measure inequality, and the measure by which policies aimed at addressing inequality are assessed.
You cannot put the burden of a tax on someone unless you cut into his or her consumption. If the Obama tax increases did not cause Gates and Buffett to tighten their belts, then they paid precisely 0% of that tax increase. Someone else paid, even if they wrote the check. If they invested less due to the tax, then workers might have received lower wages. If they gave less to charity then very poor African’s paid the tax. I have no idea who paid, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Gates and Buffett.
Misidentifying Talent: Another great essay from Dan Luu detailing systematic biases in talent identification. Almost all organizations claim that finding and empowering the best people is key to success, but few take concrete steps to implement more robust systems for identifying talent.
If we look at activities where there's a fair amount of gatekeeping before people are allowed to really show their skills but where performance can be measured fairly accurately and where hiring better employees has an immediate, measurable, direct impact on company performance, such as baseball and hockey, we can see that people went with their gut instinct over data for decades after there were public discussions about how data-driven approaches found large holes in people's intuition.
The quality of decision making among financial professionals was the same as their clients when making decisions on behalf of their clients, but was higher when making decisions for themselves. The experiment also revealed principal-agent difficulties in matching portfolios to risk; they in general seemed to put more risk on for clients than for themselves.
Why America has so few doctors: Supply side solutions for a lot of the chronic problems America is facing - like high priced medical care - are coming back in vogue. This is a good piece describing how difficult it is to actually become a practicing doctor because of credentialism and regulation.
#good-content
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window: Slow moving but worth the investment. A brilliant parody of a very particular genre of show/movie.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: The fourth season of this show about a Borscht-belt era comedian remains delightful - not always the most plot driven, but always enjoyable.
Sundown: The most Tim Roth-y Tim Roth film. It’s a somewhat depressing 80 minutes of time spent with Tim Roth, which I’m fine with because it’s Tim Roth, he’s great. You’ll probably leave the theater slightly bemused.
Spider-Man: No Way Home: One of my favorite Marvel movies. The new Spiderman trilogy has been great, and I was impressed with the pacing; they managed to make a dense set of characters and references enjoyable.
The Abolition of Man: I’m sure C.S. Lewis would appreciate having his classic work on taste and virtue right below a blockbuster comic book movie. It’s a short essay, and worth reading. Lewis posits an objective, eternal set of values that have been shared by all cultures, and that it’s important for civilization to follow these values, the ‘Tao’. While I have my disagreements, I appreciate it as a rock-ribbed argument against overly clever deconstruction and in favor of some common-sense virtues.
“You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see.”
Best,
Ben
Note: If we’re going to replay the first half of the 1900s beat for beat - pandemic, economic problems, world war - I hope this art and architectural style comes back.
