T2_t2

The conjecture - in the article - is it doesn't work at, well at all is strong but certainly not to the degree that is claimed. Also, given the replication crisis in this field, any benefit is possibly noise.

By far the better approach than removing information by having blind / limited information applications is to have MORE information, e.g. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/02/re...

We conduct four randomized field experiments among 1,801 hosts on Airbnb by creating fictitious guest accounts and sending accommodation requests to them. We find that requests from guests with African American-sounding names are 19.2 percentage points less likely to be accepted than those with white-sounding names. However, a positive review posted on a guest’s page significantly reduces discrimination: When guest accounts receive a positive review, the acceptance rates of guest accounts with white-sounding and African American-sounding names are statistically indistinguishable.

I think it is more a case of being everything to everyone, and one size fits all just plain sux.

IMHO there is no Twitter problem, but there are specific Twitter niche problems. Twitter is trying to solve the problems of people who want to follow a sport with those who want to lead a culture war in the same way and with the same perspectives and expected outcomes. They are not just very different problem spaces, but fundamentally different cultures, with different expectations and rules, and making either group live with a compromise between their cultures leaves everyone unhappy.

Reddit sidesteps this to a degree, with subreddits, by everything being less personal, and with moderation of sub reddits. Twitter, being account based rather than topic based, can't manage that. Twitter is just Twitter - a singular entity used in non-singular ways and criticised as a singular entity from very specific and singular perspectives.

How do you fix that? No idea. My hope is that Machine learning can give us better filtering, because the problem with Twitter is that people are not brands, so if I follow a basketball coach, and he has a bugbear about an issue that annoys me, I either lose all of his tweets, or put up with off topic rants.

But then, thinking about it, I'm not sure if that is a bug or Twitter's key feature. Maybe Twitter only works because the poor filtering forces people to see what they don't want to, and that drives usage and, in a perverse way, a desire to use twitter. That's a dark timeline.

As opposed to wind and solar? Let alone batteries, that use extremely toxic chemicals.

What we do with waste is a key ingredient to any power source, and the plan with old batteries, solar panels and wind turbines is no better than nuclear.

There is no free lunch, only competing ideas with different sets of problems and difficulties.

Not all ads need clicking, and the big budgets have never been in generating clicks, but in Branding (like TV ads).

The 10% that click are likely spit somewhere around 50-50 between the least valuable eyeballs (suckers who click ads) and people that actually are interested, depending upon the ad type (Search more valuable, banners less so).

I really shouldn't suggest this because it is definitely a bug that I enjoy exploiting, but on YouTube, if you hit the next video link then immediately hit back on the browser, the ads all clear. As in all the yellow ad markers disappear. So no annoying mid video ads at all. My default YT viewing is click link, click next, hit delete.

This is on my Macbook and all three major browsers Safari, Chrome and Firefox.

... AAAAAAND watch as this gets fixed (I'm an idiot).

That's not the argument in full. Carbon cost of production includes the cost of wastage. If the cost in carbon to produce what is wasted is > than the savings elsewhere, it is a loss.

It is not so much a complicated equation as it is an involved one, and we risk simplifying the equation and getting it very wrong.

The cost in carbon of a thing is complicated, and this sort of X (local) is good, and Y (non-local) is bad causes a lot of the issues.

There was a debate about Dutch flowers vs Kenyan. The debate was framed as "local vs grown in sunshine", e.g. the cost of growing in cold greenhouses vs sunshine. I think you know where this is going...

https://ecoligo.com/blog/2018/08/08/the-air-miles-debate-are... (https://only-roses.co.uk/U/files/Cut_roses_for_the_British_m... is the study). Even after accounting for distance and transport, the Kenyan flowers have lower carbon usage.

A book like https://www.amazon.com/Drawdown-Comprehensive-Proposed-Rever... provides the context needed to choose between options, and the solutions are often odd, like replacing old fridges which has a HUGE climate change benefit (because the refrigerants are 1,000s of times worse than CO2), but that's not a story that is told because, well I think complicated narratives lose to simpler ones.

All this stuff is super confusing. https://www.austrade.gov.au/contact/faqs/i-want-to-export-my... says you need to register if: > your VAT taxable turnover is more than £85,000 (the 'threshold') in a 12 month period > you expect to go over the threshold in a single 30 day period

WTF? How the hell would anyone know that? What if you never sell to the UK, but someone goes on a run because some product randomly becomes popular. It is such an unnecessary minefield.

Depends on the tax code. In Australia, corporate taxes are passed down as a deduction to real humans. So if I get a fully franked dividend (fully franked means the company paid the 30% company tax) of $70, I also get a tax credit for $30. If my marginal rate is > 30%, I pay the difference (e.g. 50% means I owe $20) but if it is lower I get a refund - the marginal rate is 19% up to $37K, so those people would get a refund of $11.

This seems to me a sensible law, as doesn't double dip, and foreign owners don't get the credit, so the government does get a smidge more revenue, while not F$%^ing over their citizens.

Except Digital sales take place in no-man's land, and are hard to tax. A federal tax hits Amazon, but would it hit Alibaba? The specifics are what make these ideas so difficult.

Who gets the bulk of the fruits of his labors, and to a very large extent what he does is determined by said expropriating suits

At any other ti in history, with any other technology (Tesla vs Edison) that would be true. But in tech, the billions made the companies. Page, Brin, Bezos, Gates all got the "bulk of the fruits".

There is this weird idea that work creates value in a vacuum. That's not true. Work in a context - of a company that has funding/profitability/stores of cash creates value. Work done in a vacuum does not.

We need to balance those elements carefully, because not enough workers slows growth, but so does not enough capital/misallocation of capital (see housing).

The ideal world is one in which we all move in the same direction together not out of compulsion but out of an understanding that we all benefit from moving in said same direction.

Just some causes that I think are mostly good:

1. Complexity - a change in exchange rates can hurt Netflix's / Google's / Apple's profit, even if all underlying numbers are correct. Guessing exchange rates is a terrifyingly difficult task, and it is just one of many complications 2019 CEOs have over 1969, let alone 1919.

2. Globalisation - rather ironically, if a company employs an extra 10% of people - no one loses their job they just add an extra 10% - the ratio likely gets larger. How is that a BAD thing that more people are employed? Mattel is the most telling in this context ($6,271 average worker salary). IMHO it's a GOOD thing that Mattel directly employs workers, rather than using a, say, Foxconn. But it makes the ratio a lot worse. Obfuscating real worker wages is bad for workers, but good for avoiding ending up on these sorts of reports.

3. Market size - a follow on from 2, if Google makes 50% of it's revenue outside of the USA, what should the ratio relate to? US workers to CEO? Or South African? A lot of these CEOs are multi-country CEOs, and that is a level of difficulty beyond what existed a quarter century ago.

4. Market forces - a law to make CEO pay public means it is signaling something negative when a CEO makes a low ratio, which drives it up. Having public records of salary makes negotiating easier for workers, and CEOs are no different, so it has had a double upwards pressure.

Just some things that have made it grow over time.

Video transcoding is particularly suited to the cloud. This sort if unpredictable load - new titles will pop up at odd intervals - is ideal for striking the balance between speed to market (you don't want to delay releasing new titles) and cost (having extra capacity for transcoding on the off chance you need it is expensive).

Spool up hundreds of servers when they need to get a new title out, and buy them at cheapish rates is pretty much what the cloud was built for.

If anything, that is a call for better immigration, not better utilisation of those born in a country. Reasoning:

1. The US will not be able to compete w/ India or China when it comes to population

2. Most people with high ability are born outside of the US or any country statistically.

3. Importing the best and brightest is the surest way to continue growth.

The argument for immigration is that most 1st world countries do a great job of filling the middle 80% - most jobs in other words. We struggle at the top - as the top is hard to fulfill by definition - and the bottom, as most 1st world born don't want to, say, pick fruit.

To make sure 1st world economies continue to grow maximally, we need more of the very best, and more of those willing to do the sort of menial tasks we collectively simply don't want to.

Everyone wins from that. Those born in a 1st world country get to work at better run companies, and have their menial tasks fulfilled at a rate that keeps fruit cheap, and wait times low for things like fixing a broken door / getting a house painted.

It isn’t just about raw intelligence

That's the problem though - blank slate theory. If we had a more biological attitude towards this, we'd be able to help individual more effectively. Do IQ tests yearly, find smart kids and get them into better programs. On the flipside, accept that some schools have naturally less intelligent kids, and that their performance will, as a result, be lower.

Blank slate and no child left behind and similar ideas create this false belief that bad results are the teachers fault. If you teach kids that all have below average IQs, and they achieve average results, you are an awesome teacher. If you teach geniuses and the get average results, you are awful.

GP IS skeptical, by asking that the facts be made clear. The non-skeptical people are the ones implying "this MUST be wrong just because".

Does it though? If Germany's policies hurt the economy, at a time when the cost of energy goes up, it may threaten the plans. The last thing a costly reform needs is less money to spend.

Ignoring possible second order effects is a dangerous course of action. The nuclear shutdown in Germany was so bad not just for emissions (which have gotten worse) but also, as the Marginal Revolution article above points out, geopolitically as well. One decision can have a multitude of flow on bad effects.

The important part to remember is that the goal is not clean energy. The goal is for humanity to continue to exist and, if possible, to prosper. That is why climate change is awful, as it threatens our species. Not the planet. The planet will be fine. It is our species that is at risk.

Decisions made for vague, second effect ignoring reasons are worrying, especially when there are known second order effect consequences.

That's cool but where are the lines? The problem is that a LOT of lobbying goes on, and we don't know how to allow what, when or why - and no country does it well.

Examples: protests - are they ok? What if they are funded by some group?

What about a concerned citizenry meeting a politician? Is that OK? What if their funding comes from Iran?

It gets real complicated real quickly.

Politicians should craft laws based on what's best for the country

That seems so simple, but man, that is SOOO complicated. Imagine a law that made life better for 80% of people, but made 20% worse off - should it be implemented? What about 2% better off, 98% worse off, but the worst off 2% amongst us benefited?

That simple sentence fragment is why lobbying, and groups like the NRA and teachers unions, exist and hold so much sway. Many laws affect groups disproportionately, and how we decide who to hurt and why is what politics is, in part, about.

There just aren't any magical, mystical policies where everyone wins, not even things like free trade which has been great for almost everyone on the entire planet.

Is the problem then the search for a solution that works 100% of the time? I don't see any solution not having a downside, except maybe a UBI, and that's, lets be honest, just way too expensive.

I think superannuation (or 401K in US parlance) with a means tested pension backstop is the most likely to be successful, simply because it removes this sort of shenanigans, and at scale becomes a really boring industry where shonksters are less likely to exist (NOTE: LESS not ZERO) but still has a social backstop for people that just don't ever get it.

To be fair the P/E will start to move towards 12. That's just inevitable.

If the P/E moves from the 39.37 I just Googled towards 12, the profit needs to triple to maintain share value. Heck, it was over 60 to start the year: https://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/pe_ratio, and that seems a little insane to me.

The article is weird in that Google has the single greatest advantage - YouTube. Ctrl + F youtube and ... nothing.

TV ad revenue is going to start changing, but the value of video ads is massive. Google has not just YouTube, but the best video advertising platform for others to use.

If 15% of the US$70B on TV ads moves to YouTube, Google's growth should be sustainable. Multiply that by not just by the USA but Europe, Japan and Asia, and Google's growth looks fine.

If Google reaches the point they can buy the NBA TV rights for YouTube, heck, start small and buy the TV rights for a major Australian sporting league as a test run, or perhaps a single college conference like the ACC, and lets see how that article ages.

And startups are populated by young people, so the cultural shifts that exist matter. If you have any employees at all between 18 and 30, the current culture is something you need to understand.

And I don't think even big companies like Google do. The backlash against drones and that China SE were telling.

I don't have any answers to those problems, and these sorts of articles are interesting as background to what it all is.

Government is excellent - BEYOND excellent - at policing others. In most every 1st world country, when the government goes after an industry, things change. See the recent Australian Royal Commission for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_into_Miscondu...

The problem is when Government is a player as well. Government struggles to play both referee and player - as anyone would. Just imagine Michael Jordan refereeing his own games. Every drive would be a foul.

The problem with government is there is no creative destruction. When a company turns bad, it dies. When government turns bad, we elect a new one and all the same shitty institutions remain. And the good ones to be fair, but certainly all the shitty ones.

Government should stick to what it does well, hold other entities accountable, and not get too involved in things that can fail that they can't then kill off.

I've seen countless people leave the restroom without washing their hands

I am not a germaphobe at all (I'll eat food off the floor if it falls), and I agree 100%. The non-washing of hands is endemic.

Fist bump to the rescue!

"I've got a cold, and you don't want it. Fist bump?"

All of Asia was dragged out of poverty - over time - by doing stuff cheaper. China is a world power not from communism or protectionism or by some grand gesture. They took awful jobs for a tiny amount of pay (by western standards) and eeked their way up the GDP ladder.

It is a the worst kind of white, privileged attitude that taking a higher paid job won't improve things for the locals.

But lets give this a fair airing. Name a country that had a GDP increase in any other way. I'll wait.

I think the foolish view is that there is an option that ISN'T evil, and Google chose the wrong one.

So think that one through. Rubin was accused of whatever, and Google owes him money. Which is NOT evil:

A. Not pay any money to Rubin - despite legally owing him some - because the mob has decided that is best?

B. Pay the full amount he is owed to get rid of him?

C. Negotiate a reduced amount, as he is indeed owed money?

C. Take this to court, and make all parties go through all the hassle, be forced to keep Rubin, what, employed but suspended? and then hope that by some miracle you get the outcome you desire?

Again, I think the foolish view is that there is an option that ISN'T evil, and Google chose the wrong one. They are all TERRIBLE options.

I agree 100% with everything you have said. But I also think this isn't the right hill to die on.

The fact that this is the best case scenario here - for all sides - is irrelevant to anyone likely to comment. Pragmatism is dead in this area.

This issue is just too hot for anyone to be rational about with the current Zeitgeist, and it is wise to, if not say nothing, at least use a throwaway account!!!

That needs a citation.

If you cut out everything we have they didn't - cable TV, Netflix, computers, internet, cafes, restaurants, Kindle, better choices in grocery food and alcohol - and ate the sort of cheap food people lived on, things like meatloaf and crappy ingredient dishes, I reckon it would be entirely possible.

The only thing that is prohibitively expensive today vs 1980 is housing. The reasons for that are multiple, but mostly NIMBYism.

This is a view of freedom of speech that seems odd to me. IMHO, you are free to say anything, but that does not mean you are freed from any and all consequences. You aren't freed from slander or libel laws. You aren't freed from criticism. You aren't freed from being mocked. The freedom of speech that allows you to say X allows everyone else the freedom to attack X, and seek restitution for untruths.

If you lie about someone, you bare the consequences of that decision. That is not an attack on freedom of speech, it is part of the same framework.

Any freedom of speech notion that frees people from consequences would only encourage lying and vendettas, and negate the true power of free speech, which is to let ideas out so that we can collectively muddle our way to a better answer.

Bingo! This debate is almost entirely predicated on all sides claiming to know the unknowable, and predict the future outcomes of policy changes where not only is the evidence and data very mixed, but where we aren't really sure what outcome we want. This is terrifying to me, because we have smart people with zero skin in the game playing with the poorest, most vulnerable people's lives in an ideological shouting match.

On what outcome we want, I think people are confused about the actual affect minimum wage has. Some people will lose their jobs when minimum wages increase. That is just inevitable, and not something anyone really argues against. The most positive response is that job losses will be small, and/or those jobs are usually not very pleasant anyway.

If we assume someone on an unlivable wage can either have their wage increased to livable, stay the same - i.e. minimum goes up, hours go down, actual pay is ballpark the same - or lose their job and become unemployed, what population level outcome is acceptable?

In the most simplistic case, what split of people losing jobs and becoming unemployed is acceptable if everyone else gets a livable wage? 60 (made unemployed) vs 40 (employed)? 50-50? 40-60?

What if the the group that works for unlivable wages stays almost static, and it is 10% job loss, 70% no change, 20% increase? Is that the success or failure?

These examples ignore people outside this group, and it is possible that some people who currently make livable wages today could have their hours cut or accelerated automation catches them as well. Even with the most simplistic outcomes, I don't know what numbers society wants to optimise for. How can we judge if a policy works if we don't know what we want to achieve?

It also ignores the economic diversity of the USA. Prices will rise a LOT in some places if Seattle/SF minimum wages are applied to less economically strong states, and the results could be disastrous. AFAIK (data is a few years old) there are a few states with median wages less than $15 in the USA - see https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/free-lunches-like-th... A blanket $15 is troublesome, while maybe ineffective (if it works) in some other states.

So it seems to me we have no clear objectives, no outcomes we are excited by, but what we do have are people for whom minimum wage laws are an article of faith. Any attempts to actually measure the affects of any of this will be fought vociferously by all sides, usually with competing BS studies. You just have to see what happened in Seattle, where a long term, detailed but ultimately negative study was countered with a hastily written pro-report for ideological reasons.

Terrifying certainty in an uncertain domain combined with unclear goals and a determined effort to not measure? Nah, nothing could possibligh go bad here...