Links 2023-02-11
Highly Linkable - links you need and deserve
Gurwinder shares the 10 best ideas he learned in 2022. I particularly liked #4:
4. Anattā:
There's nothing constant about a person. Habits are picked up & dropped. Beliefs asserted & refuted. Dreams forged & shattered. Passions ignited & extinguished. The self is a work-in-progress being constantly rewritten.
And yet we’re all judged as if we’re final.
Richard Hanania writes a very thoughtful essay on Canadian euthanasia that certainly challenged my initial impression. In fact I would have to admit he not only enlightened me on what is actually going on but forces me to realize I was wrong in my first impression. Instead of giving into conclusions driven by my emotional reaction, I should have relied on my base assumptions: it’s complicated, people should have the freedom of self determination including the right to end their own life, and Canada [like all developed, free societies] isn’t a tyrannical regime that could or would create an environment of forced death.
Arnold Kling discusses dominance, prestige, and propriety hierarchies. Examining the recent trends and interactions among them, he finds reason to be wary. From his conclusion:
I think that the concepts of dominance, prestige, and propriety are useful, even though the distinctions among them may not be bright lines. I think that when our intuition tells us that people are relying on dominance moves, we should be wary. When people are gaming our systems of propriety or prestige, we should be very concerned. Many of us see the social justice movement as engaging in dominance moves and we see the important system of academia falling victim to extensive gaming.
Tyler Cowen shares a meta-study that pushes back on the monocausal idea that lead exposure caused so much that has ailed us. This has become somewhat conventional wisdom. He follows up with some of his thoughts on why he has always doubted the lead-violence connection. This was refreshing to me because it always seem tenuous and a bit too convenient.
Erik Torenberg explores the concept and differences between Money Crypto & Tech Crypto. I am probably 60/40 Money/Tech. Where are you?
Morgan Housel offers 13 insights about the art of spending money. These are as great as they are surprising—at least surprising coming from a financial advice column. To wit: to let your dying regret be I should have spent more money. Also, don’t miss the lesson on $3 versus $30,000 decisions (aka, don’t step over dollars to pick up pennies).
Mark Buchanan, an internal medicine physician, cautions us against Tamiflu—certainly a counter-conventional take worth embracing.
Katja Grace’s recent piece on why we don’t trade with ants is downright brilliant. She both identifies the true reason despite what should be but isn’t obvious to most and then shows why this parable is not applicable to the concerns over AI.