Digest 1: Journal problem in science, Blinken’s reading, Bridgewater’s CIOs
Brian Armstrong
A commendable attempt at solving the Journal problem in science:
~5 minutes: https://www.researchhub.com/
Tim Palmer
This on climate change, with Steve Hsu, is very interesting: an alternate view of what everyday life/risks might be:
~1 minute: What are the main health threats from climate change? Relentless cloud cover... you'll never see the sun in the winter. Not heat stroke and skin cancer, but depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and rickets.
Graham Allison
(Who knows more about the looming conflict than just about anyone in the U.S.), on Taiwan:
First, not just Xi Jinping but the entire Chinese leadership and nation are unambiguously committed to preventing Taiwan from becoming an independent state. If forced to choose between accepting an independent Taiwan and a war that destroys Taiwan and much of China, Xi and his team will choose war.
...Presidential hopeful Mike Pompeo has called for the United States to recognize an independent Taiwan, and given the dynamics among Republicans, this will likely be a common plank in the Republican Party’s platform in the 2024 presidential campaign.
Actually listen
Could we start actually to listen to what foreign leaders say? General David Petraeus:
1-minute: Leaders tend to reveal their inner thoughts publicly. Also, interesting immediate next point: people who served in the trenches in WWI were more likely to see Hitler and want to fight.
On this: a clip with Putin getting annoyed at Western journalists:
~2 minutes
Blinken's reading
A stonking endorsement of Foreign Affairs by the U.S. Secretary of State:
This to me felt genuine. (I don't think he's saying it just because of the centenary.)
Dominic Cummings on democracy
The theory of democracy is: when obvious opportunities open up, like ‘don’t kill tens of thousands of voters unnecessarily, drown them in their own fluids, destroy millions of jobs’, then a political party will see the opportunity and act. As I’ve explained, this theory is false. ‘Winning elections’ does not drive behaviour until at least the election is imminent, but even then a lot of behaviour that is irrational — given the goal of ‘win election’ — is locked in by previous decisions. Most people in politics are operating on much shorter timescales than ~4 years and optimise for different priorities, mainly: obsess on the old media and social media, signal to in-group activists.
Bridgewater
An update from their Chief Investment Officers:
The markets are discounting one sharp round of tightening to bring inflation down, with stable growth and earnings. We think the odds of a long period of too-low growth and too-high inflation (i.e., stagflation) are much higher.
one should not be firmly committed to one scenario or another. But as things now stand, odds favor a stagflationary environment that could last for years.
Today, our indicators suggest an imminent and significant weakening of real growth and a persistently high level of inflation (with some near-term slowing from a very high level).
we doubt that policy makers will be willing to tolerate the degree of economic weakness required to bring the monetary inflation under control quickly.
we see good odds that they pause or reverse course at some point, causing stagflation to be sustained for longer, requiring at least a second tightening cycle to achieve the desired level of inflation. A second tightening cycle is not discounted at all and presents the greatest risk of massive wealth destruction.
American Experience
I’ve started watching one historic American Experience documentary a week.
On the ‘Crash of 1929’: it was thought growth would last forever, and that they were in a ‘new era' (the exact language of the 2000s).
The fervour around stocks throughout the 1920s felt reminiscent of crypto 2018–2021. Hardly anyone understanding what they were, but putting their life savings in them.
Balancing Effective Altruism with Longtermism
Will MacAskill
Interesting counter-example offered to his main thesis: in the mid-late 1800s, our predictions of what would benefit the future were not accurate:
46:31 here, for two minutes.