I'm kind enough not to bore you with this stuff in person.
Upon some youtube recommendation I tried the site 10 fast fingers – and was my speed was actually a bit lower than expected. I’m posting this hear as a milestone – my goal is go get to 100 by October 1st, 2020. Previous typing tests I’ve taken had actual words in actual sentences, which helps with the mental parts. 10 fast fingers has a word salad, which is probably a more accurate way to assess ability.
From a slack conversation
Say you have a grandmother, who has lived in her house for sixty years and you accidentally break a lamp of hers – you go to replace it run into the following problem: The lamp itself is 60 years old and they don’t make it anymore.
No problem you say the world of lamps is diverse and varied – however her house has evolved over the past sixty years as things have worn out and been replaced. Nothing is in any way “Standard” (like it would be for a 19 year old’s first apartment where anything is fine). You find that they don’t really make a lamp that “goes” anywhere near as well as the original lamp. The varieties of lamp have increased arithmetically, whereas the complexities of Grandma’s house have increased exponentially – and finding a replacement is more tied to that – so, therefore
Time Spent Finding Perfect Lamp = 1/Number of Lamps Available * Complexity of Grandmas’s house,
where complexity of grandma’s house is a function of age (cognitive decline), wealth, and time spent in house
The comparisons would be existing interest groups, the perception of Pareto optimality as “fair”, all of the existing public and private programs, etc
You need some degree of Pareto optimality since everyone has some degree of veto power, “log rolling” used to be the solution to these sorts of things. That becomes less possible with more complex interest group relations
While thinking of this quote from Mencken
It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money
I’m thinking that more accurately describes the self and it’s conflicting desires – almost as well as the elephant/rider description.
From this Arnold Kling post
If the printing press helped produce the Enlightenment, then perhaps the iPhone is producing the Endarkenment
From the good people of Johns Hopkins,
I had the random thought today about the Joe Rogan interview with the author of a CIA assassin book who posited that neither Area 51, nor the Roswell incident involved extraterrestrial life at all. Instead it was absolutely horrible (and criminal) US government conduct.
This seems to make the most sense – why would the government cover up something that would give it more money and power? That sort of thing usually gets pushed front and center. Shameful government actions on the other hand get covered up and pushed way back…
From this interview – in a discussion about an astronaut who went full bore conspiracy theorist about UFOs
You go where the love is
The point being that here was this lonely old man, and a bunch of conspiracy theorist more or less “adopted” him, and showed him friendship, companionship and affection. In turn, he probably told them the most interesting stories, then emphasized other parts of others, and slowly went off the deep end as he lent this his authority.
Actually that makes you want to question famous members of all subcultures…
I was watching this blogging heads video about the Asian experience in America (it’s better than that description) – and the guest said something to the effect – “Chinese culture has prioritized test preparation for over 1,000 years” – referencing China’s long tradition of civil service exams. The actual number mentioned was dedicating 20% of family income to test preparation.
That puts Chinese culture on the commanding heights of modern “meritocracy” with it’s prioritization of symbolic analysis and abstractions – and very poorly suited for everything else. David Friedman made a similar connection in his “Legal Systems Very Different from Ours” book.