2020 April Links

The Messages we don't Intend to Send

Consider two examples and ask yourself what they have in common:

1. Dan Crenshaw is a conservative politician who went on the Joe Rogan podcast. When the discussion came to marijuana legalization, Mr. Crenshaw said this,

"There's a normalization that occurs when you legalize something. Let's say you've made the age 21... what you've done is you've normalized it for teenagers. You said, "yeah, it's 21, but it's legal so there's no issues with it." I think that's what you're telling people.

2. A paper posted in the Progressive Economy Forum says that UBI would create social cohesion and prevent stigma because everyone would receive it. In regard to means testing, it says,

Applying for such benefits is shaming, undignified, often costly, time-consuming and an implicit admission of personal inadequacy. It is potentially and often stigmatising, to yourself, your family, your friends, neighbours and potential future employers.

A Very Important Paper on Infection Rate and Mortality

I was going to place this in my monthly links post, but it seems too timely to wait:

For a Better Right and Left

I don't want to beat the Republicans or Democrats. I want them both to get better.

"History will Judge"

You have been told, "history will judge," but I tell you, history is a bad judge.

Blogging: A lot of a LIttle or a Little of a lot

There are two ways to write a blog. You can do it a lot of a little style (Scott Alexander) or a little of a lot style (Tyler Cowen). At the moment, I am trying to do it a medium amount for a medium amount and utterly failing.

I get caught between writing an idea and writing a complete argument. An idea floats by itself in relation to other ideas, a complete argument bundles ideas together such that they can't easily be unpacked. I write incomplete arguments that I expect to complete over time in future posts. The problem is, I put so much time into each incomplete argument that I neither get the value of completing the entire argument nor the value of outputting many small ideas on paper.

Moving forward, this blog is going to become a lot more of a little. I will post more frequently but with less effort. They say that if you're falling to accomplish what you set out to do, break down the project into more manageable pieces. That's what I'll do.

This way not only lends itself to my skillset because I'm a terrible editor but also compliments the fractionated nature of my time. I am interrupted frequently when I try to write, and the intermittent process comes through in the final product. I zoom in and out of a post, losing my train of thought, and it's not only personally frustrating but it's also a broken method.

I will revise the style of this blog to fit better with more frequent, less effort posts. I will also transition my monthly links posts into posts of their own. This should also make them more timely.

It will be better this way.

Who Doesn't Understand Exponential Growth?

I don't know anyone who didn't understand exponential growth. Nobody is confused at why they get a big number when they hit the multiplication button on a calculator repeatedly. Nobody is confused at the lily pond example of exponential growth, or the chess board example, or the penny doubled everyday example.

I hear a lot about how Coronavirus "downplayers" just don't understand exponential growth. In my interaction with people, even lower intelligence people, I find this hard to believe.

When does Human Life become Worthy?

Whether life begins at conception is the wrong framing for the abortion debate. "Life" is a funny word. A germ is alive in some sense, and so is an ant, and so is a cow, and so it a human. To argue when life begins is to make the issue too easy on yourself. What we really want to know is when life becomes worthy. Worthy of what? Worthy of protection. Worthy of rights. Worthy of dignity. Worthy of being treated the way we treat other human beings.