I recently finished Nassim Taleb’s latest book “Skin in the Game.” Much like Antifragile previously, I highly recommend reading it. The subtitle of the book is “Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life” and while I am not a fan of the obsession of publishers to add a subtitle to every non-fiction book (try finding one without), asymmetries are the leitmotif that runs throughout, including a wonderfully succinct table on “Asymmetries in Society.” The book is in the classical philosophical tradition of...

I recently finished Nassim Taleb’s latest book “Skin in the Game.” Much like Antifragile previously, I highly recommend reading it. The subtitle of the book is “Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life” and while I am not a fan of the obsession of publishers to add a subtitle to every non-fiction book (try finding one without), asymmetries are the leitmotif that runs throughout, including a wonderfully succinct table on “Asymmetries in Society.” The book is in the classical philosophical tradition of...

Last Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced the idea of beliefs. Today we will make this idea more precise. We started with an extreme belief, the one that a coin is so biased that we will only observe “heads” (H). More realistically one might belief that a coin is fair, but has some possibility of being slightly biased in either direction (e.g., more likely to observer H or more likely to observe T). So how do we formalize this? A belief is simply a probability distribution. For instance the on...

Last Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced the idea of beliefs. Today we will make this idea more precise. We started with an extreme belief, the one that a coin is so biased that we will only observe “heads” (H). More realistically one might belief that a coin is fair, but has some possibility of being slightly biased in either direction (e.g., more likely to observer H or more likely to observe T). So how do we formalize this? A belief is simply a probability distribution. For instance the on...

NOTE: As every Monday, I am continuing to post excerpts from my book World After Capital. Today, starts Part Two of the book, which is title “Getting Past Capital” with an overview and a section on population growth dynamics.Part Two: Getting Past CapitalDigital technology is shifting scarcity from capital to attention. That is one of the central arguments of World After Capital. With the philosophical foundation out of the way now is the time to back this claim up with some numbers. First I ...

NOTE: As every Monday, I am continuing to post excerpts from my book World After Capital. Today, starts Part Two of the book, which is title “Getting Past Capital” with an overview and a section on population growth dynamics.Part Two: Getting Past CapitalDigital technology is shifting scarcity from capital to attention. That is one of the central arguments of World After Capital. With the philosophical foundation out of the way now is the time to back this claim up with some numbers. First I ...

The last few weeks in Uncertainty Wednesday we took a detailed look at the various problems with p-values. Now we will start to work towards an alternative approach based on Bayesian inference. Along the way though we have a chance to think about more foundational ideas, including the subjective versus objective and beliefs versus truths. Today we will start by looking at beliefs and how observations may influence those. As before with p-values we will use coin flips as they are easy to follo...

The last few weeks in Uncertainty Wednesday we took a detailed look at the various problems with p-values. Now we will start to work towards an alternative approach based on Bayesian inference. Along the way though we have a chance to think about more foundational ideas, including the subjective versus objective and beliefs versus truths. Today we will start by looking at beliefs and how observations may influence those. As before with p-values we will use coin flips as they are easy to follo...

I have been openly critical of Trump as a president going back to before the election. While I want radical change I do not believe the price for this ought to be going backwards on foundational issues such as the rule of law, press freedom and science. Nonetheless it has been fascinating to observe how Trump’s potential or actual irrationality has opened the door for progress on some issues that were previously deemed intractable, such as North Korea. It is well known that even in relative s...

I have been openly critical of Trump as a president going back to before the election. While I want radical change I do not believe the price for this ought to be going backwards on foundational issues such as the rule of law, press freedom and science. Nonetheless it has been fascinating to observe how Trump’s potential or actual irrationality has opened the door for progress on some issues that were previously deemed intractable, such as North Korea. It is well known that even in relative s...

NOTE: This is the last post for the foundations section from my book World After Capital. In it I propose a catalog of basic human needs. As set out earlier much of today’s confusion around scarcity results from our willful conflagration of needs and wants.NeedsThe definition of scarcity that I just introduced is based on the notion of needs. To argue that there is a shift in scarcity from capital to attention thus requires an agreed upon set of needs to show that we indeed have sufficient ca...

NOTE: This is the last post for the foundations section from my book World After Capital. In it I propose a catalog of basic human needs. As set out earlier much of today’s confusion around scarcity results from our willful conflagration of needs and wants.NeedsThe definition of scarcity that I just introduced is based on the notion of needs. To argue that there is a shift in scarcity from capital to attention thus requires an agreed upon set of needs to show that we indeed have sufficient ca...

I recently wrote a post about requiring APIs for social and other applications that have more then 1 million users. Now that is an approach to the problem of market power that adds new regulations. There is an alternative that would go the route of removing existing laws which I want to discuss today. What prevents someone today from creating their own programmatic control over services? Why can’t I simply write code that interfaces on my behalf with say Facebook? After all, Facebook’s own ap...

I recently wrote a post about requiring APIs for social and other applications that have more then 1 million users. Now that is an approach to the problem of market power that adds new regulations. There is an alternative that would go the route of removing existing laws which I want to discuss today. What prevents someone today from creating their own programmatic control over services? Why can’t I simply write code that interfaces on my behalf with say Facebook? After all, Facebook’s own ap...

Today’s Uncertainty Wednesday will be the concluding post in my mini-series on the problem with p-values. We have already seen that it is much easier than expected to reject a null hypothesis if you have incentives to do so. We also saw that the ability to work backwards and generate hypotheses from the data is a big issue. Today we will consider a more foundational, epistemological problem with p-values: what is it that we are really learning when we are rejecting a null hypothesis? Let’s on...

Today’s Uncertainty Wednesday will be the concluding post in my mini-series on the problem with p-values. We have already seen that it is much easier than expected to reject a null hypothesis if you have incentives to do so. We also saw that the ability to work backwards and generate hypotheses from the data is a big issue. Today we will consider a more foundational, epistemological problem with p-values: what is it that we are really learning when we are rejecting a null hypothesis? Let’s on...

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section provides a technological definition of scarcity (instead of an economic one) and provides a brief history of how scarcity has shifted over time from food to land to capital and is now shifting to attention. Scarcity In this book I will be arguing that capital is no longer scarce but that attention now is. Furthermore this constitutes the third major shift in scarcity in the history of humanity....

NOTE: I am continuing to publish revised sections from my book World After Capital. Today’s section provides a technological definition of scarcity (instead of an economic one) and provides a brief history of how scarcity has shifted over time from food to land to capital and is now shifting to attention. Scarcity In this book I will be arguing that capital is no longer scarce but that attention now is. Furthermore this constitutes the third major shift in scarcity in the history of humanity....

The Zuckerberg hearings were predictably pretty weak. First, the format does not lend itself to a deeper inquiry on a complex topic. Whenever someone seemed close to getting somewhere, the next questioner would take it somewhere else (or weirdly start over). Second, the politicians asking the questions appeared for the most part not to have a super deep understanding themselves which means they stick to the questions prepared by their staff even when an answer provides a small opening that th...

The Zuckerberg hearings were predictably pretty weak. First, the format does not lend itself to a deeper inquiry on a complex topic. Whenever someone seemed close to getting somewhere, the next questioner would take it somewhere else (or weirdly start over). Second, the politicians asking the questions appeared for the most part not to have a super deep understanding themselves which means they stick to the questions prepared by their staff even when an answer provides a small opening that th...