adlorger

Hanania: Why you are pathologically risk averse, and the problem with "mental health"

Your formatting got me to read every line of what you wrote, even though I only agree with about half of your thesies

can you clarify your case here about Apple as an antitrust or monopoly power?

In what ways are they using their market power to diminish welfare or competitiveness of the marketplace?

the answer here is about the competitive space that he's in and whether his competitor is buying brand terms around his area. if not, he's probably fine and he can use his organic strength to stay tops.

tell me more about this hypothetical Russia+China+NK+Iran axis and why they would be so united in this particular fight?

PJ O'Rourke was my first into to a feeling that I've become more familiar with over the years - "liberal cringe"

I still count myself as a liberal (more classical than modern) these days but I can't help but view a lot of standard progressive empty promises through an O'Rourke-ian lens.

1. Having Data 2. Using it to Predict 3. Using it to Manipulate

There are major, major leaps from collection to then even having effective prediction models. Prediction is hard, especially when it comes to longer term behaviors.

Manipulation is extremely hard especially when the content space is so crowded.

My fear of TikTok is far more mundane. It just dulls us into the most passive form of entertainment the world has ever known making us a basically disengaged, lifeless people. Its the modal opposite in life to 'touching grass'.

i believe this is true but it is not reflected in the public earnings at all.

User growth in the US may be flat but earnings per US/CA active user is up which implies that the value is here and growing for users in the US/CA

FB lost US about 2M users in summer 2020, but has been pretty flat since then.

See FB's slide 13: https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2021/q4...

The drop this round is in the rest of the world and not US, Asia, or Europe which are flat or even up

The hot takes of Peak Facebook are unfounded, or at least premature.

where do i sign up?

Hasnt the economic story of 2020-2022 so far has not been "lets see what happens when we open up" but rather "lets see what happens when we close down"?

How does 2022 so far imply to you negative evidence of "here's what happens when you open economies?" I am sincerely curious.

I suspect, like all political shifts of independents, that this would have a strong moderating impact on the Republican Party.

Swing independents tend to be more political practical and less ideological.

counterpoint: nothing has happened to us as a society.

we have always had pressures to monitize things and do things for money, but of course money isnt everything and there have always been happy generous people who are happy to make things for free.

In fact, the proliferation of freely released, happy things in to the world has probably gone up over time.

the article's whole point is that this conclusion ("covid made us crazy") is the "official explanation" but that there is better alternative explanation in road design and traffic density changes

my read of the diabetes tie is that it is unlikely that covid causes diabetes but rather that the causality could be both ways, with obesity or other medical confounders making Covid experiences more severe.

this doesn't diminish the importance of the tie, but rather should just reveal that what we've always known about covid remains true - its a serious disease and having other underlying medical issues makes it significantly worse.

i would bet against any conclusion however that having covid makes kids more likely to develop diabetes.

capitalism seems like a more likely home for broadly distributed systems than government systems which are, by their nature, centralized

What would a global plan of attack look like? Who coordinates it and who decides when they've been successful?

i think you see this rarely discussed because its an issue that is rapidly declining in importance over time.

The trade off of either-this-US-kid-gets-it-or-that-Indian-adult-gets-it becomes less severe when availability of vaccines is going up everywhere rapidly.

Where vaccine availability is low, its not due to US hoarding but rather due to regional government policy constraints that wouldn't be alleviated if this-US-kid gave up their dose.

so, scarcity is certainly the case sometimes (like right now for Paxlovid) but not for general availability vaccines worldwide.

I dont think the concern for what our neighbors are doing has gone up so much as our ability to make noise about it. Dealing with conflicts between neighbors is ancient.

in the past, local voices did not have power to organize or constrict local development. its a form of social technology that has enabled this around the world over the past 80 years.

when people look at urban sprawl they see the culprit as cars, which is maybe true, but the real cause is democracy.

yes. many people are vaccine hesitant because they dislike or are afraid of shots.

also if this can help impact the rate of hospitalization and death among unvaccinated than it also alleviates the need for actual vaccinations to do the lift of ending the overall pandemic.

its important to note two things; Facebook does not target 6 year olds. Many other companies do.

i continue to be highly unimpressed with the quality of criticism about facebook - but impressed by its staying power.

FB made no secret of its plans to make an Instagram for Kids with added safety controls and parental controls but it was basically shunned out of exististance for reasons ranging from "Lol Mark Zuckerberg is so awkward" to "we cant tolerate any advertising in our Late Stage Capitalism age" to "Instagram makes teenage girls want to kill themselves".

None of these really stuck and Facebook continues to chug along in general with a good core business model (down a bit due to Apple's ATT, not press coverage) and lots of experimental and ambitious non-core businesses. People continue to use and rely on the products - both brands and the people who love them.

If you were to ask Facebook employees themselves what their real external risk factor is, its definitely not congress or headlines - it's TikTok. And TikTok is not a better alternative when it comes to user privacy, teenage mental health, or the pernicious role of social media in our lives.

its a lame word for sure, but the role in society is very old.

book reviewers, fashion critics, the people who decide which products get premium placement in store selves.. those people all used to control the machinery of influence. Now its in the open.

I think we'll get better at this over time but to me its a far more transparent system than we had in the past.

prob safe to assume that almost everyone who has clicked into a HN article mentioning TC is already very familiar with MR

I have on occasion reached out to public intellectuals for personal advice and wisdom over the years. Unique among everyone, he's been invariably wise and generous with me (a total stranger). He also writes back almost immediately.

The only people online who have a similarly thoughtful and generous spirit, in my direct experience, is Russ Roberts and Scott Alexander.

Prob reveals a lot about the media I consume (and my demo profile) but I am definitely open to others if there are more like these three out there.