(2025-01-20) ZviM Monthly Roundup #26 January,2025

Zvi Mowshowitz: Monthly Roundup #26: January 2025. Some points of order before we begin the monthly:

• It’s inauguration day, so perhaps hilarity is about to ensue. I will do my best to ignore most forms of such hilarity, as per usual. We shall see.
• My intention is to move to a 5-posts-per-week schedule, with more shorter posts in the 2k-5k word range that highlight particular subtopic areas or particular events that would have gone into broader roundups.
• This means that the Monthly Roundups will likely be shorter.
• If you’re considering reading Agnes Callard’s new book, Open Socrates, I am reading it now and can report it is likely to get the On the Edge treatment and its own week, but of course it is too soon to know.
• I may be doing some streams of myself working, via Twitch, primarily so that a volunteer can look for ways to build me useful tools or inform me of ways to improve my workflow. You are also of course welcome to watch, either live or the recordings, to see how the process works, but I make zero promises of any form of interaction with the audience here. I also might stream Slay the Spire 2 when the time comes, once I have access and they permit this.

Table of Contents

• Bad News.
• Wanna Bet.
• A Matter of Trust.
• Against Against Nuance.
• Government Working.
• Scott Alexander on Priesthoods.
• NYC Congestion Pricing Bonus Coverage.
• Positive Sum Thinking.
• Antisocial Media.
• The Price of Freedom.
• Mood Music.
• Dedebanking.
• Good News, Everyone.
• While I Cannot Condone This.
• Clear Signal.
• When People Tell You Who They Are Believe Them.
• What Doesn’t Go Without Saying.
• Party at My Place.
• I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars.
• Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game.
• For Your Entertainment.
• Sports Go Sports.
• The Lighter Side.

Bad News

Older software engineers often report that once they lose their current job, they can’t get new jobs and that this is because of rampant ageism, others report this is not true, and it’s you in particular that sucks, or you’re seeing selection effects because most of the good ones get forced into management or start their own companies. It’s certainly not universal, but my sense is that many underestimate the downside risk of this outcome.

The replication crisis comes for experimental asset market results, out of 17 attempted replications only 3 results were significant with average effect size 2.9% of the original estimates.

Wanna Bet

Derya Unutmaz, M.D.: I accept this, and in fact, I counteroffer a $10,000 bet that by 2045 we will surpass a life expectancy of 95, with an increase of more than a year each year thereafter. I intend to collect it, so don’t die!
Gary Marcus: I hereby accept

A Matter of Trust

There are also rather well-supported accusations that Elon Musk’s supposed Path of Exile 2 characters are, at best, being played primarily by someone else.

when you pull a stunt like this, you call all that into question, and you dishonor the game, all of gaming and also yourself.
On some level, one must wonder if this was intentional.

Against Against Nuance

Tyler Cowen challenges whether there can be ‘an intermediate position on immigration.’ This is another form of Dial Theory

That what matters is the vibe, not the content

I believe that this distinction (between legal or skill immigration, versus illegal or unskilled) not only can be drawn, but that drawing it is the way to win hearts and minds on the issue.

So much of how I disagree with Tyler Cowen in general is perhaps embodied by his response to the death of Jimmy Carter. Essentially Tyler said that Carter had great accomplishments that stand the test of time, but the vibes were off, so he much preferred Ford, Clinton or Reagan – and without a ‘I know this is foolish of me but’ attached to that statement.

Government Working

I pledge not to ever vote for anyone who claimed in public that the ERA was a legal part of our constitution. This is a dealbreaker, full stop. Please remind me, if this ever becomes relevant. Note that this includes one of my senators, Kirsten Gillibrand, and also Tammy Duckworth. A similar reaction goes for organizations that bought into this, which they claim includes the American Bar Association.

Scott Alexander on Priesthoods (trade guild?)

His post is rather scathing. The fact that it tries not to be only makes it worse.

Let’s start out with a quote for those who thought I was kidding when I said modern architecture was a literal socialist plot to make our lives worse:
Peter Eisenman: What I’m suggesting is that if we make people so comfortable in these nice little structures of yours, that we might lull them into thinking that everything’s all right, Jack, which it isn’t. And so the role of art or architecture might be just to remind people that everything wasn’t all right.

the pure form of the argument that ‘blogs don’t count, only properly peer reviewed and published papers do, so your argument is invalid. I am not only allowed to but almost obligated to ignore it until you change that. Good luck.’

I have no problem with various people playing intricate ingroup status games. But when that makes my buildings ugly and economics largely Obvious Nonsense, and so on throughout the various disciplines with notably rare exceptions, and those with power are accepting their status claims, and they’re doing it all effectively at public expense, I’m not a fan. (elite)

Scott Alexander tries to say that hard boundaries with the public are not only useful, but even necessary.
Scott Alexander: This hard boundary – this contempt for two-way traffic with the public – might seem harsh to outsiders. But it’s an adaptive artifact produced by cultural evolution as it tries to breed priesthoods that can perform their epistemic function. (Anathem)

Then there’s the point that so many of these organizations got politically captured. Scott Alexander offers a theory as to how that happened. It isn’t flattering

Scott Alexander: I think the priesthoods are still good at their core functions. Doctors are good at figuring out which medicines work. But now this truth must coexist with an opposite truth: the priesthoods are no longer trustworthy on anything adjacent to politics.

Yes, I can probably count on architects to design builds that don’t collapse. That’s a case where they are forced to match physical reality. We’d find out real quick if they stopped doing that one. But I can’t count on them to, beyond this basic requirement, design good buildings I want to exist.

I am not convinced I can count on journalists to tell me which Middle Eastern countries are having wars today. There has often been quite a lot of them pretending that countries that are effectively fighting wars (e.g. through proxies) are not fighting wars today

Doctors are not good at figuring out what medicines work. I know this because I had a company based largely on trying to figure out which medicines work in a given context, and because I know doctors and I know people who encounter doctors.

In what universe are these not rent-seeking cliques?
They are not only rent-seeking cliques. The stationary bandits have to provide some value to defend their turf, after all. But to use doctors as a main example and pretend they are not very literally a rent-seeking clique – whatever else they also are – is rather deeply confusing.

At this point, the ‘jealously guard their own reputation’ function is ineffective enough as a group that I don’t see the point. Individuals also guard their own reputations, often far better, whereas the priesthoods have burned their reputations down

NYC Congestion Pricing Bonus Coverage

Bloomberg finds (in line with MTA data and also claimed expectations) that the number of cars entering the congestion zone is down 8%. That puts an upper bound on the negative impacts from people not coming in. The share of taxis is up about 6%, replacing private cars.

Here’s more anecdata.

The levels of decline in traffic in such pictures presumably involved a lot of selection. Even so, they’re pretty weird.

Positive Sum Thinking

Antisocial Media

Not making enough from your videos on YouTube? Post them on PornHub!
Zara Dar: People may not know this, but I publish the same STEM videos on both YouTube and Pornhub. While YourTube generally generates more views, the ad revenue per 1 million views on Pornhub is nearly three times higher

Unfortunately, there are now a bunch more states where this won’t work, thanks to PornHub pulling out in the face of new ID laws.

The Chinese version of TikTok is called Little Red Book. We know this because its creator, whose name is Mao (no relation!) gave it the name of three Chinese symbols that mean ‘little,’ ‘red’ and ‘book.’ The fact that he’s trying to claim

a ‘conspiracy theory’ only makes it that much more galling. Also see this.

we were correct to attempt to ban TikTok, and that we will regret that due to corruption we failed to do so. TikTok demonstrated, in so many ways, that it is toxic, and that it is an instrument of foreign propaganda willing to gaslight us in broad daylight about anything and everything, all the time

The Price of Freedom

Roon: the thing about America is that its clearly always functioning at like 10% of its power level due to the costs of freedom and yet manages to win anyway due to the incredible benefits of freedom

Richard Ngo: This also applies to people. A significant number of the most brilliant people I know avoid self-coercion to an extent that sometimes appears dysfunctional or even self-destructive. But it allows them to produce wonders.

Mood Music

Dedebanking

What should we think about claims regarding ‘Operation Chokepoint 2.0’?
For all things in the category that includes debanking, the person I trust most is Patrick McKenzie. He wrote an epic 24k word post on the overall subject. Here is his Twitter thread summarizing.
I see no reason not to believe the things in that post.

Did the government encourage this, including some Democratic officials using various forms of leverage to cause more cracking down? Yes.

Did they intentionally kill Libra using their leverage? Yes.

Are banks ‘part of the government’ as Marc Andreessen claims? Do we ‘not have a free market’ in banking? Well, yes and no, banks certainly have a lot of rules to follow and when the regulators say jump they have to ask how high, but centrally no, that’s not how this works in the way he’s trying to imply, stop it.

The question this leaves us with is, how far beyond crypto that did this go? Marc Andreessen claims that they also debanked “tech startups and political enemies.” But this is a highly unreliable source, very prone to hyperbole and exaggeration – he could in both cases essentially again just mean crypto.

did partisan officials engage in a campaign to debank political enemies? Marc Andreessen claimed yes in front of 100 million people.
Patrick McKenzie points out that if that was true, the world would look very different. That these claims seem to be almost entirely spurious.

I’d also use this opportunity to agree strongly with Brian Armstrong here that Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations are nowhere near passing a cost-benefit analysis

The primary intended effect, of course, is exactly in the deterrence of activity and cost of compliance. You only intercept 0.2% of criminal proceeds, but if that makes all sorts of crime more expensive and inconvenient

I’m very confident we’re spending at least double (in terms of money and inconvenience) what we should be spending on this, as opposed to our underinvestment in many other forms of crime prevention, and probably a lot more than that.

Good News, Everyone

Men love quests. Give them quests. Then say thank you rather than sorry.
Nadia: You can literally just email a museum and ask them to connect you to exhibit creators and geek about their art with them – what a beautiful and open world??!

Speaking from experience: Creators are by default yelling into the void, and even at a surprisingly high level hearing they’re appreciated is kind of amazing, it’s great to interact with fans, and also the data on exactly what hit home helps too.

*Graduates of MBA programs more likely to be unemployed for longer after graduation.
“Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator. You have to have the skills.” —Harvard Business School’s Career and Professional Development Director

A majority of diamond engagement rings now use artificial diamonds, up from 19% in 2019, with prices for artificial diamonds falling 75% this year

Blast from the past (March 2024): The Best Tacit Knowledge Videos on Every Subject. I have never learned things this way, and generally hate video, but I could be making a mistake.

While I Cannot Condone This

Visakan Veerasamy: I’ve personally helped several hundred people with their problems at this point and one of the most widespread issues was they were previously thinking of focus or attention span as something fungible, like a commodity, when it always turns out to be more like love and caring.

Clear Signal

I do agree strongly with his opt-repeated call Towards More Direct Signals. Or signals are often indirect, and costly. Would it not be better for them to be direct, and not costly, but still credible? Alas, we do not want to admit what we are doing to others or even ourselves, and punish overt signaling and demands for it, so this is difficult.

I final problem is that some amount of strategic ambiguity is important to social interactions. In a typical group you would know who is highest and who is lowest in status, but there is often deliberate effort to avoid creating too much clarity about status within the middle of the group to maintain group cohesion and let everyone tell themselves different stories – see The Gervais Principle.

So you often want to be able to signal ambiguously, and with different levels of clarity, to different people, about things like wealth but also things like intelligence. And you want to have some control over methods of that.

When People Tell You Who They Are Believe Them

I endorse the principle here from Kelsey Piper that if someone is rhetorically endorsing mass murder or other horrible things, one should assume the people involved do indeed endorse or at least are willing to be gleefully indifferent to mass murder, far more than you might thin,, no matter how much they or others explain they are using ‘dramatic license’

Also, if someone says that endorsing very horrible proposals is ‘standard [X]-ist fare’ a la Haltigan here, and you find yourself thinking they are right about that, then you should draw the obvious correct conclusions about standard forms of [X] and act accordingly.

The other problem is, if you start out saying such things ironically or as hyperbole, especially if people around you are doing the same, you all start believing it. That’s how human brains work

What Doesn’t Go Without Saying

The title of the excellent post by Sarah Constantin is ‘What Goes Without Saying,’ because in the right circles the points here do go without saying.

Party at My Place

Tyler Cowen directs us to Auren Hoffman’s advice on how to host a great dinner party. I think a lot of the advice here, while interesting, is wrong. Some is spot on.

My biggest disagreement is that Auren says the food does not matter. That’s Obvious Nonsense. The food matters a lot. Great food makes the night, both directly and indirectly.

Of course, you can have a great night of discussion over pizza. Nothing wrong with that. That’s a different type of party, and it has different rules.

I agree that planned conversation can be better than unplanned, but I think unplanned is fine too, and I especially push back against the idea that without a plan a dinner party will suck. If you bring together great people, over good food, it will almost never suck. Relax. It’s all upside from there.

The full easy mode is ‘let’s all go to a restaurant and have dinner together’ and there is 100% nothing wrong with choosing to play in easy mode.

I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars

New study from Waymo and Swiss Re concludes their self-driving cars are dramatically safer than human drivers

Full self-driving living up to its name far more than it used to, with disengagements down 75% in Tesla version 13.2.x. There’s a huge step change

Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

For Your Entertainment

Sports Go Sports