What My Mind Thinks

What could the fire at Notre Dame NOT mean? The NYTimes describes the inescapable symbolism of the fire representing the tumultuous times in France. What would the symbolism mean in teams of stability and plenty? Surely, it would be a sign of our carelessness amidst decadence. In a time of austerity it might mean that we did not spend enough money/time/effort to maintain society. In a time of hope it might represent hubris. Could there be a time in France when the burning of the cathedral might simply be seen as an accident, signifying nothing about society or the state of things? Probably not. It seems the news outlets are increasingly prone to broad interpretations of big events. Rather than simply describing what happened, we hear pontifications about how it shows this or that about the way we live. And as outlets are increasingly polarized, pitching the most click-worthy slant to that outlet's clickiest audience, the role of interpreting events to suit that slant f...

I got this from the excellent marginal revolution on teen suicide and screen use. https://twitter.com/drandreahoward/status/1111641594141143040?s=12   I cannot believe we are studying teen suicide based on teen self reports of screen time. You think teens reliably know their screen usage? Looks like the whole field has been using self report, and the correlation is only 0.2 ! (Meaning people are almost no better than chance at accurately reporting screen time.) Anyway, the best part of the teen study is that they recommend against 1-5 hours per day as really dangerous. Even though of the kids who attempted, over half had less use and some had zero. So, you could just as easily say that heavy screen time was protective.  A shocking number of times, data seems to add fuel to bad thinking, rather than the opposite. Maybe it won't be fire or nukes that proves to be the technology that humans can't handle responsibly and ruins us, it'll just be data.  ...

To be sure, Tyler Cowen has fantastic guests. But Conversations with Tyler  wouldn't be what it is without Cowen's unique interview style. I'm not sure what it is, but I think there's an intellectual reward to dissecting this style: He asks questions to hear what the interviewee has to say, largely uncorrupted by Cowen's views. Occasionally Cowen chimes in or gives a little push back, but this is relatively rare, and when he does so, it draws really draws your attention to the need to go deeper. He doesn't belabor an answer, choosing instead to jump to another question. It seems that Cowen believes that most of what an interviewee is going to bring to the table on any given topic, say 70% of his or her insight, will be reached with one spoken paragraph. The more time you spend on a particular answer, the less return on your investment of time and the more you crowd out other insights. Perhaps my favorite habit is that Cowen spends a bare minimum a...

Sure, it'd be great to change the world through elected office, but it's just not for me. But what about running for the position of being the person who gets to ask the candidates questions? We elect our politicians, but we don't elect the people who ask our politicians why we should elect them (for the most part). It seems that, in a democracy, the questions posed should represent the interests of the electorate. Furthermore, the questions should be put in a way that is sharp, to the point, and difficult to evade. Instead, the press generally poses questions that serve the press's interests: garnering attention, boosting ratings and selling advertising. Maybe most Americans don't really want to hear sniping and mudslinging, maybe they actually want to hear about healthcare reform, environmental policy, criminal justice reform and all the other pressing needs. We just need a press core that will ask. Do we have any candidates to stand for intervie...

Jim Holt's book  Why Does the World Exist?  explores what many call the fundamental question: why is there something rather than nothing? I think the book is dynamite, and  Holt's TEDTalk is an engaging summary, recommended to anyone who may be unconvinced that this question is both profound and worthwhile. And I have an answer: It's both something and nothing. To see this, consider for a moment how big nothingness would be. How many nothings could you fit in the room you are in? Truly nothing, not even space, would be infinitesimally small, and so you could fit an unending number of nothings in your room. A universe of something can be chock full, both within and without, with infinite minuscule universes of nothing. So, it seems you can have something AND nothing, because nothing fits very easily, inside and outside, of something. More: This bit by Louis CK on being and nothingness is just incredible. Jim Holt's summary statement from the prologue is ...