Thing Finder: January 2024

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Journalists who love authoritarian planned economies and AGW religion are enamored with China's strategies.

Two different pieces in the past month on an intriguing development. First there was China Goes All In on Green Industry to Jolt Ailing Economy by Jason Douglas in the Wall Street Journal.

China is doubling down on manufacturing to reboot its economy after a turbulent year, a strategy that risks igniting new tensions over trade as countries step up support for prized industries and global growth teeters.

The push for new growth drivers comes as figures showed the world’s second-largest economy expanded in 2023 at its weakest rate in decades, aside from the three years when China was closed to the outside world during the Covid-19 pandemic. A drawn-out property crunch means Beijing can no longer rely on debt-fueled real-estate investment to power the economy, and officials have shown little appetite to shift activity decisively toward consumer spending.

The result: Capital is pouring into factories as Beijing tries to nudge China’s supertanker economy onto what it hopes will be a healthier trajectory.

Central to that ambition is a plan to dominate global markets in emerging industries, such as electric vehicles, batteries and renewable-energy gear. Chinese companies such as automotive giant BYD, battery maker CATL and solar manufacturer Longi Green Energy Technology are already among the world’s most prominent players in those markets.

The hope is that growth in what Chinese officials refer to as the “New Three” industries and other favored sectors will help China’s economy banish the specters of deflation and Japan-style stagnation as a real-estate crunch weighs heavily on construction, investment and consumer confidence.

Longer-term, Beijing wants these and other high-tech manufacturing industries to be in the vanguard of its push to eventually unseat the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, while also helping it grow richer and weather the pressure of an aging and shrinking population.

Most American journalists are not natively Classical Liberal or Free Market Capitalist oriented. Given the choice between free citizens in a free market versus unfree citizens in a planned authoritarian economy, they will always go for the latter.

From Chartbook Carbon Notes 10: In China, clean energy is now THE driver of overall economic growth. by Adam Tooze.

As data from the IEA confirm, the scale of China’s green energy push in the last couple of years dwarfs the much ballyhooed green energy programs in the West - NextGenEU, IRA etc.

Chinese manufacturers are expanding production of solar, wind, batteries and EV at a breakneck rate. Fierce competition is driving prices and costs down at a rate never previously imagined. Barring some unforeseen technological upset, China is set to be the leader in the first decades of the global clean energy transition.

But what is even more momentous is that China is the first large economy in which clean energy investment has become the principal driving force of overall investment and economic growth.

It is one thing for China to take on a large slice of solar panel markets. That is a global story, but a sectoral one. It is another for China’s solar energy push to take on such dimensions that it becomes one of the most important forces driving the Chinese economy, which as Chris Giles insisted in a recent piece in the FT should now be recognized by the most meaningful metrics - PPP and physical output - as by some margin the largest in the world.

There is an unseemly frisson in the articles about China going all in on the renewable electric future. The clerisy is enamored of both the goal (net zero carbon) and the means (planned economy). And welfare of the citizenry de damned.

The only thing worse for freedom and prosperity for citizens than a planned economy is a planned economy swinging for the bleachers.

China is on a demographic cliff, their economy has run out of steam, they are botching their international relations, some of the mal-allocations of capital (real estate and Belt and Road) are beginning to come home to roost. There are increasing questions about corruption in governance, in the economy, and in the military. There are a lot of headwinds.

A different leader and/or with different policies and China still has huge potential. But my priors tell me they are about to head down a difficult path. The New Three industries won't be their salvation.

But it will be interesting. I am convinced that the EV policies are misplaced because their justification, Anthropogenic Global Warming, is faulty. We increasingly see just how badly the climate models are performing in their forecasts, we know the weakness of our long term economic forecasting, and we are increasingly aware of just how large are our knowledge gaps when it comes to comprehending the many chaotic, evolving, loosely coupled, power law driven systems which make up the global climate as well as just how inadequate are our empirical measures.

AGW and Climate Change as policies will implode in the next decade. We'll put the best face on it but the empirical realities are against it.

But China is betting on the AGW theology continuing and growing.

Further, it appears to me that we have already reached the realistic limits with current technology in terms of just how much role can be reasonably played by renewable energy. I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that renewable energy for grid purposes and the whole EV movement are going to see significant reversals in the next five years.

If that is the case, China will end up having made a Hail Mary commitment to a sector already at its peak. The amount of misallocated capital will be daunting.

In five years, if China heads down this path, their economy will flatline or shrink. If the US remains reasonably committed to the free market, we will see plenty of adaptation and reduced climate change policies and reduced investment in unsustainable and unfeasible EV and renewable energy policies. The US will continue its leading 1.5-2.5% a year increase in productivity.

We'll see. I might already be wrong. There might be some key technology breakthroughs that suddenly make China's commitments feasible. But given with what we know right now, I am happy to bet on the US, on free citizens and free markets. And I correspondingly think that the clerisy are wrong in their rosy expectations of China's command economy commitment to AGW and EV.

I am sorry for the Chinese citizenry as their government commits to what I am reasonably certain will be failed policies around AGW and EV. Central planning just won't work in the long run for a large economy and I think they are making a mistake which will make Chinese worse off. And by the time they get around to recognizing, acknowledging and changing direction, they will be a further 5-10 years into the demographic decline.

All of which will make China a more challenging place for the US to work with internationally. But those are bridges quite a ways down the road.

History

Temple of Isis; Philea - Egypt :

Temple was built during reign of Ptolemy II (Egypt’s Greco-Roman Period), Temple of Isis at Philae is dedicated to Isis, Osiris, and Horus. Temple walls contain scenes from Egyptian mythology of Isis bringing Osiris back to life, giving birth to… pic.twitter.com/mCN1U8eCdM
— Archaeo - Histories (@archeohistories) January 6, 2024

An Insight

% of global trade that passes through the red sea, currently being disrupted by houthi attacks: 12%

-intl chamber of shipping
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 19, 2023

The tangled web of historical numeracy

By the Numbers: Numeracy, Religion, and the Quantitative Transformation of Early Modern England by Jessica Marie Otis. Reviewed by Jay Hancock.

Why did some countries become wealthy after 1800? Historians argue about the relative influences of religion, climate, geography, slavery, colonialism, legal systems, and natural resources. But the key, famously shown by economist Robert Solow, who died in December, is technological innovation enabling more and more goods and services to be produced per worker and unit of capital. Innovation needs research, development, and engineering. All those require numbers and numeracy.

In the 1500s, the English began realizing that Arabic numbers, with place values and a zero symbol, are better for calculating than other methods. (Try adding up hundreds of fleeces and sacks of wool with Roman numerals.) But old habits persist. Otis goes into 16th-century account books and finds Roman notation for fixed quantities on the same pages with Arabic marks used for summing. The English used Roman numerals, tally sticks, and counting discs long after priests took up Arabic numerals to indicate the number of years since Christ was born.

People needed to learn the new “arithmetick.” But universities were busy teaching ancient Greek. Textbooks, paper, and even literacy were rare. From 1500 to 1700, however, math books and “cyphering schooles” multiplied. Lessons dropped Roman numerals and took up compound interest and decimal fractions. “Arithmetic” became synonymous with Arabic numbers.

Part of the change, explains the author, involved a retreat of religious fatalism. Once probability calculations started showing that gambling outcomes were not random, clergymen argued about whether God was still in charge. “Yes, but…” was the answer. At the same time, people got over the idea that national censuses were like King David’s sinful “numbering of the people” in the Bible. The English were already used to local parish registers. The stage was set for demography and population-data analysis.

Arabic numerals were so embedded in the commercial system by 1700 that it “would go near to ruine the Trade of the Nation” if merchants had to revert to Roman numerals, tally sticks, and other older systems, Otis quotes a Scottish physician and mathematician as saying. Like all good historians, though, she cautions readers against modernity bias, in this case assuming that Arabic notation seemed any more familiar to most early-modern Europeans than, say, Norse runes look to people today.

Sounds like an interesting book.

I have perhaps half a dozen or a dozen books on the history of numeracy which I find deeply interesting. Reading, writing and arithmetic being the foundations of modernity.

But sometimes you can know something without knowing it.

I do plenty of genealogical research and since a good portion of my ancestry came over as pilgrims and Puritans (1620-1640) they are smack in the middle of that transition Otis is discussing from Roman numerals to the Arabic numbering system.

I have for some years been reading wills from 1630s onwards in which worldly chattels are spelled out and enumerated. 10 pigs, 20 sheep. In some wills, it is quantities of things. In others, it is quantities and values - 20 sheep worth 8 shilling 3 pence.

And in all those years I never gave a thought to the fact that the implication is that the Pilgrims and Puritans who arrived in the American settlements were not only disproportionately literate (as they were) but that they were also apparently disproportionately numerate. It is even possible that they had stolen a base and were already fully inculcated into the new numbering system and unencumbered by the challenges of Roman numerals.

I do not recall ever seeing Roman numerals in these early wills but I would not have been looking because I didn't even think to look.

And now that I am thinking about it, I sort of suspect that some dates might have been rendered in Roman numerals but I am pretty certain I do not recall seeing any enumeration or calculation in Roman numerals.

I'll have to keep my eyes more open in the future.

But it is one of those challenges that end up biting you. I knew the history of numerical writing transition and I knew the history of the Pilgrims and Puritans. And I never linked the two conceptual categories together.

Superego choices

From How to do things if you're not that smart and don't have any talent by Adaobi.

The headline tips follow. Click through for the interesting discussion behind the suggestions.

Be audacious.

Do grunt work.

Do the boring things.

Learn undefined skills.

Work hard.

Bring a sense of urgency & move fast.

Don’t let things be scheduled to be discussed in the next meeting.

If you can get something done faster, or produce more per unit of time, then do it.

Keep things stupid simple & focused.

Improve things.

Ask your naive questions.

Simplify things.

Follow up.

Show up during the hard times.

Figure out the first step.

Finish things.

All good points and easy to comprehend. Doing? Well that's also pretty easy but doing it consistently can sometimes be a challenge. Making all these things an unconscious habit has huge dividends but takes work.

I will add to the "Show up during the hard times" a further observation. There is nothing like hard times to bring people together. Sure, they are . . . hard, but working collaboratively to muscle through to achieve a shared goal? Maybe you won't all be best friends but you will all be bound together in a reasonably awesome fashion.

Some of my better long term friendships were people I once, for one reason or another, either disliked or avoided. But once we delivered great outcomes from difficult projects, there was at least mutual respect and some of them became good friends for a lifetime.

Do your genes, your family environment or your life choices determine outcomes? Yes.

From How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills by Tyler Cowen. That is actually from the title of a new paper, The Nurture of Nature and the Nature of Nurture: How Genes and Investments Interact in the Formation of Skills by Mikkel Aagaard Houmark, Victor Ronda, Michael Rosholm. From the Abstract of the paper.

This paper studies the interplay between genetics and family investments in the process of skill formation. We model and estimate the joint evolution of skills and parental investments throughout early childhood. We document three genetic mechanisms: the direct effect of child genes on skills, the indirect effect of child genes via parental investments, and family genetic influences captured by parental genes. We show that genetic effects are dynamic, increase over time, and operate via environmental channels. Our paper highlights the value of integrating biological and social perspectives into a single unified framework.

They are getting at the conclusion I reached a number of years ago. Judith Harris back in the 80s or 90s argued that parents did not matter for child development, it was all about peer effects. Strict deterministic hereditarians argue that it is all and only about the genes.

I noted in The id, ego, superego and self-selected (manipulated) feedback mechanisms,

It also relates to one of the paradoxes posed by Judith Harris. She posited, and presented good evidence, that the effect of children's peer networks are a greater influence (along with genes) than the direct behavioral influence of parents.

In the early popular formulation, this was represented as "parents don't matter". In her later writings, she clarified that they do matter but that we need to take into other effects from outside the home.

My speculation has always been that parental behavioral influence (controlling for genes) is even greater than that. Parents choose the environment in which their children grow, specifically the social networks to which they can avail themselves. By choosing the churches, the schools, the neighborhoods, etc. in which their children grow, they are indirectly exerting behavioral influence (but not direct control).

In Henderson's framing, the id, the animal self, the gene driven self is born into a multi-layered environment consisting of family and then multiple social groups, both of which have direct influence. Family helps form ego and social groups form superego.

But the individual can exert control on the feedback mechanisms by selecting those groups which are more likely to provide the positive feedback which they crave to justify their id and ego desires.

You have at least three systems loosely couple with one another tied together by both individuals and affiliative groups. The genetic system, the family system and the epistemic system - the id, ego and superego.

Genes are indeed determinative in a limited fashion. You inherit some mix of the genes of your parents and those inherited genes are both limiting and potential. But no single attribute arising from genetic contribution is determinative of larger outcomes.

This is part of what is reflected in the developmental model I have been using - Knowledge, Experience, Skills, Values, Behaviors, Motivations, Goals, Capabilities and Personality. Genes, more or less heritable, affect different aspects of these nine elements. But not all, and not determinatively.

They are an immensely strong influence, but they fall short of determinism. And that is where family and then superego come into account in interactive fashions as described above.

My operating assumption is that across the three loosely couple evolving systems, perhaps 50% of outcomes are strongly influenced by genes, 25% by family environment and 25% by individual choices. But the outcomes are very indirect products of those three systems and highly contingent.

I see wonderful things

As you can imagine, the proportion of grass in giraffes' diet is very low. Yet, they can eat it by distantiating their forelegs.pic.twitter.com/fWSu8qvdQF
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 5, 2024

Offbeat Humor

Colorado Saves Democracy By Not Allowing People To Vote For Preferred Candidate https://t.co/N15XfiPRbK pic.twitter.com/K637JI4Rk6
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 20, 2023

Data Talks

"Keeping Your Mouth Shut: Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States" https://t.co/0BgDb0r8LT
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) December 19, 2023

Decadent young woman. After the dance, 1899 by Ramon Casas

Click to enlarge.

Relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error

From Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates and short lifespans by Saul Justin Newman. From the Abstract.

The observation of individuals attaining remarkable ages, and their concentration into geographic sub-regions or ‘blue zones’, has generated considerable scientific interest. Proposed drivers of remarkable longevity include high vegetable intake, strong social connections, and genetic markers. Here, we reveal new predictors of remarkable longevity and ‘supercentenarian’ status. In the United States, supercentenarian status is predicted by the absence of vital registration. The state-specific introduction of birth certificates is associated with a 69-82% fall in the number of supercentenarian records. In Italy, which has more uniform vital registration, remarkable longevity is instead predicted by low per capita incomes and a short life expectancy. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status, and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.

Good work.

Three of four decades ago I recall reading an account in the International Tribune of the challenge in Japan of people keeping deceased aged relatives on the bureaucratic records for improbable stretches of time.

Vox has an article as well. Many of the “oldest” people in the world may not be as old as we think by Kelsey Piper. The subheading is A new paper explores what “supercentenarians” have in common. Turns out it’s bad record-keeping.

Just imagine all the tracts, books, dietary fads, etc. predicated on the misunderstanding of who is actually old. I hold the dictum that all knowledge of contingent dear but my goodness. Maybe it needs updating to, all knowledge is extremely contingent.

And Mary Pat Campbell has very good coverage in The Sentinel Effect, Centenarians, and Pension Fraud The subheading is The secret of a long life? Lying about your age! Or who you are!

Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral

From Kranzberg's six laws of technology, excerpted by Jesper Balslev.

First Law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

Second Law: Invention is the mother of necessity. “Every technical innovation seems to require additional technical advances in order to make it fully effective.”

Third Law: Technology comes in packages, big and small. “The fact is that today’s complex mechanisms usually involve several processes and components.”

Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions. “… many complicated sociocultural factors, especially human elements, are involved, even in what might seem to be ‘purely technical’ decisions.” “Technologically ‘sweet’ solutions do not always triumph over political and social forces.”

Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant. “Although historians might write loftily of the importance of historical understanding by civilized people and citizens, many of today’s students simply do not see the relevance of history to the present or to their future. I suggest that this is because most history, as it is currently taught, ignores the technological element.”

Sixth Law: Technology is a very human activity-and so is the history of technology. “Behind every machine, I see a face–indeed, many faces: the engineer, the worker, the businessman or businesswoman, and, sometimes, the general and admiral. Furthermore, the function of the technology is its use by human beings–and sometimes, alas, its abuse and misuse.”

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Reverses for Woke forces

The Mandarin Class are in a tizzy owing to a number of setbacks on the fields of the culture wars.

In academia, DEI appointments such as President Claudine Gay of Harvard and President Elizabeth Magill have had to resign because they were unwilling to condemn antisemitism and unwilling to ensure rule of law on their campuses and more such dismissals and resignations are on the horizon. DEI is not dead but it is getting its first real pushback and there seems a real (yay!) risk of a preference cascade undoing more than a decade's worth of Marxist gains.

Government, another reservoir of the Mandarin Class, also seems in peril with the figurehead of DEI and ESG (and incompetence in general) receiving ever lower marks for his performance and the lawfare being conducted against his rival, Trump, seeming increasingly unlikely to keep Trump off the ballot.

In the past week, the lamentations of the 4th Estate have come to the fore. Perennial Millennial Taylor Lorenz has put out a four minute lamentation on the ills of the journalism business. Nobody wants to employ journalists and they are being let go hither and yon. She is lost and cannot see the forest for the trees.

Double click to enlarge.

It has gotten a lot of attention. Journalists feel like she has articulated their woe and desperation well and are generally admiring of the piece. Everyone else seems to feel like her four minutes are a micro-example of exactly what is wrong with the whole Mandarin Class journalism - elitist, Woke, anti-capitalist, self-regarding, privileged insiders claiming victimhood, abhorrent of objectivity, and completely blind to how little they know of America and Americans, and just how massively ignorant they are of the current and recent past.

Among the most striking things to me is her apparent complete unawareness of all the media blossoming around her. It is her part of the media which is collapsing, not media in general. The old mainstream media is dying but substack and podcasts and new outlets and channels are blossoming. She sees the dying and not the blossoming. She is an example of the intraindustry ignorance which is killing the legacy media.

Glenn Greenwald, part of that new media ecosystem, has some choice words for Lorenz's lament.

Double click to enlarge.

DEI, ESG, Victimhood, blatant deception - they are not dead yet. They aren't even yet mortally wounded. But they are wounded.

Matthew Yglesias tries to catastrophize what is otherwise of straightforward commercial problem. Demand for what the mainstream legacy media produces has collapsed. From The two crises in the news business by Matthew Yglesias. The subheading is One is bad for journalists, the other is bad for democracy

It is hard to make out the arc of Yglesias' argument or even which are the two crises he is talking about. He has a bunch of interesting and even relevant factoids randomly scattered about along with a fair amount of dross.

I think it would be reasonably fair to argue that there are six main trend lines over the pst forty years which have dramatically changed the nature of the legacy media.

No more TV oligopolies

No more newspaper monopolies

Increased Supply

Lower industry concentration

Greater choice

Unbundling of news

From the 1960s onwards, newspapers were exempted from anti-monopoly regulations which guaranteed local newspaper profits for at least four decades. It was a profitable business federal regulations made it a profitable business.

From the 1950s onwards, TV was allowed to consolidate into the three national channels and regulated accordingly. National TV news was a profitable business because federal regulations made it a profitable business.

With the internet and smart phones in the 1990s and 2000s, technology unlocked a new era of plentiful news content supply, at very low cost, and of new infinite variety.

Profitable legacy news media saw their profitable oligopolies and monopolies dissolve. Legacy media was not producing content people were willing to buy and people now had a choice to buy elsewhere. Which they did.

We saw what we always see in newly competitive markets - an unbundling of services, increasing consumer choices, falling consumer prices, increased specialization, and lower industry concentration. And there really isn't much to be done about it. Legacy media has been lowering the quality of their brand year by year. The error rates keep climbing, the outright abuses keep proliferating, the destruction of trust is endemic.

As I have mentioned in the past, I was a prolific purchaser/subscriber of newspapers and magazines. I loved that old epistemic ecosystem and miss it greatly. But it has not existed for a long while now. It has been perhaps at least five years since a major newspaper could be considered reliable, even longer since TV news was anything but paid propaganda.

We are witnessing the wittering among the pseudo cognoscenti remnant journalists of the withering legacy mainstream media. They long for the old days of easy money, plenty of reporting time, foreign bureaus, the heroic status of Woodward and Bernstein, and captive audiences.

Now people have a choice and they are choosing better to the detriment of legacy media. It is a long suffocating death and the new media landscape, exotic though it currently is, is also unfamiliar and nerve racking.

There are only three certainties. The legacy media model will not survive in its old form, the woke media version will not replace it, and it will take a while to get to a new model that is both meeting the demand for news and is financially viable. What exactly it will look like is anyone's guess. Just not anything legacy.