Links - 2022-08-20

Highly Linkable - links you need and deserve - counter-conventional wisdom

Let’s start with an update on Resident Contrarian’s review of SMTM’s Chemical Hunger. Here is part II where he breaks down the CH critique of the conventional thinking on what has caused the obesity trend. Here is part III, which is mostly just a summary and pointer to the excellent LessWrong post by Natália Coelho Mendonça, It’s Probably Not Lithium. <spoiler alert: it ain’t lithium>

Keeping with the theme of debunking, here is George Selgin arguing strongly against Paul Krugman, et al.’s conventional wisdom that private currencies cannot compete with public alternatives. His point is that there are no examples of government-backed money driving to extinction privately-issued currency without the power of the state enforcing the outcome. This extends as well potentially at least to digitally-issued currency.

Kevin Kelly offers wisdom on when and why to be counter conventional wisdom—“two areas where experts are not 100% reliable: when things are moving very fast, and predicting the future”.