Max Roser of Our World In Data takes a close look at historical economies. I’m drawing attention here to the ‘Malthusian Trap’ section, not the parts after that. He makes the case that pre-industrial economies are essentially Malthusian: new technology doesn’t improve people’s lives, it just results in more very poor people. I don’t think that’s very controversial, but the charts really bring it home.
Interesting read on critical thinking in an environment of unreliable information:
One of the things I noticed throughout the past year has been that a lot of my friends who had grown up in authoritarian or poor countries had a much easier time adjusting to our new pandemic reality. My childhood was intermittently full of shortages of various things. We developed a corresponding reflex for stocking up on things when they were available, anticipating what might be gone soon. That was quite useful for the pandemic. So was trying to read between the lines of official statements—what was said and what was not, who was sitting with whom on the TV, and evaluating what the rumor networks brought in. It turns out those are really useful skills when authorities are lying at all levels…
https://zeynep.substack.com/p/critical-thinking-isnt-just-a-process
Bryan Caplan:
How come no country on Earth tried voluntary paid human experimentation?* As far as I can tell, the most important factor was the formal and informal opposition of bioethicists. In particular, bioethicists converged on absurdly (or impossibly) high standards for “truly informed consent” to deliberate infection
…I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Bioethics is to ethics as astrology is to astronomy. If bioethicists had previously prevented a hundred Tuskegees from happening, COVID would still have turned the existence of their entire profession into a net negative for humanity. Verily, we would be better off if their field had never existed.
[note that we are, finally, starting a human challenge trial, in the UK]
2-3x as old as the oldest known cave paintings! Not terribly impressive visually, but their argument for intentionality seems compelling. Symbols? Counting? Art?
New Light on the Human History of Symbols
It’s wonderful to see 3D-printed houses starting to get beautiful.
Beautiful 💚
This is a just for fun article on the folks who put together the microcovid risk calculation website.
Although Welch had been an early donor to Buckley’s National Review in the 1950s, Buckley had come to believe that Welch’s feverish rants threatened the conservative movement’s credibility and its future.
“Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn,” John B. Judis wrote in his 1988 biography, “William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives.” Buckley told Goldwater, according to Judis, that the John Birch Society was a “menace” to the conservative movement.
But Goldwater had a problem — much like the one that Republican leaders face today, as many of their voters embrace QAnon conspiracy theories and President Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Goldwater wanted to distance himself from the conspiracy theories, but he feared alienating his base.
“Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society,” Goldwater told Buckley and Kirk. “I’m not talking about commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks. I’m talking about the highest cast of men of affairs.”
Peter Turchin has an extremely interesting end at least somewhat empirically backed theory of historical cycles. It’s hard to know whether it’s true, but he’s taken seriously by some smart people (recent piece in The Atlantic, Slate Star Codex review of his book). Here’s a recent piece on why current division is likely to get worse, and what we can potentially do about it.
We predicted political upheaval in America in the 2020s. This is why it’s here and what we can do to temper it.
The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, wrote in a blog post that Europe needs “to be able to better regulate the contents of social networks, while scrupulously respecting freedom of expression. It is not possible for this regulation to be carried out mainly according to rules and procedures set by private actors.”
Manfred Weber, chairman of the EPP group at the European Parliament, concurred, telling Brussels Playbook: “The EU mustn’t let Facebook and Twitter decide what’s within the boundaries of the acceptable on their platforms.”
“We cannot leave it to American Big Tech companies to decide how we do and do not discuss, what can and cannot be said in a democratic discourse. We need a stricter regulatory approach,” Weber added.
https://www.politico.eu/article/angela-merkel-european-leaders-question-twitter-donald-trump-ban/