Data Talks

Important chart from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Highlights what I’ve been saying since the start of 2024

US Nominal Home prices are expected to be flat to slightly up through 2029, slightly lagging the rate of inflation (thus, negative in real terms, as depicted here) pic.twitter.com/EtPMPwrCmq

— Amy Nixon (@texasrunnerDFW) September 17, 2024

 

Leading and widely acknowledged experts misjudged with a degree of certainty that in retrospect is no less remarkable than the analytic failure itself.

From The Russia-Ukraine War: A Study in Analytic Failure by Eliot A. Cohen and Phillips O'Brien.

Surprise occurs in many forms. Many think of it in terms of a surprise attack, but it occurs in other dimensions. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 is a good example: the attack was foreseen, but the immediate outcomes were astonishing. To use an old Soviet phrase, analysts misunderstood in fundamental ways the “correlation of forces.” Their judgments about Russian and Ukrainian military capacity were not merely off—they were wildly at variance with reality. And even more perplexing, leading and widely acknowledged experts misjudged with a degree of certainty that in retrospect is no less remarkable than the analytic failure itself.

Their misjudgment was not a case of normal error or exaggeration. The expert community grossly overestimated Russian military capabilities, dismissed the chances of Ukraine resisting effectively, and presented the likely outcome of the war as quick and decisive. This analytic failure also had policy implications. Pessimism about Ukraine’s chances restricted military support before February 24, 2022. 

True enough for Ukraine but more generally true as well.

It seems as we become increasingly expert in narrow domains, we become increasingly incapable of systematizing and integrating knowledge and expertise across domains to produce useful insight into the future.  

Partly, I suspect this is a consequence of the structure and nature of incentives within academia.

Partly, the sheer volume of knowledge and information is likely a contributor to the problem.

I wonder whether Woke ideology (Critical Race Theory, Social Justice Theory, Postmodernism, etc.) might not also be a contributor, both as an ideology as well as a consequence.

If there is no truth or meaning, a fairly fundamental Woke position, if everything is socially constructed, then expertise loses meaning both as a pursuit and as an outcome.  Thats what I mean by an ideological contributor.

But I suspect the consequences of Woke are also a contributor.  With the DEI pursuit of inclusion, dismissal of empirical standards and deliberate pursuit of variety, you can see a consequence.  If you are at expertise level 100 and suddenly start including those below 100, you necessarily must now have a sub-100 expertise level.  Independent of the ideological commitment against expertise, you also generate less expertise in the first place.

What we attribute to institutional decline is often, I suspect, simply a matter of fact that we have deliberately recruited lesser capability into important positions and are now beginning to see the consequences.  

Decline is a choice, once again. 

And always, the more individuals are gifted through edict the prestige of expertise, without actual expertise, the more they are going to have confidence in their expertise which exceeds their demonstrated capability.  

Experts will have great confidence in their erroneous judgments.  As we have seen in just about every field since it became unavoidably obvious with Covid-19 in February 2020.

A cultural transmission belt

From JOINT REVIEW: Family Unfriendly, by Timothy P. Carney by Jane Psmith and John Psmith.

The correct way to view all the changes that Carney lists is as a sort of transmission belt that has slowly and inexorably propagated and magnified the effects of the one, very simple technological change that occurred. The story goes something like this: birth control is introduced, but large families are still normative and supported by generations of cultural accretion. So people still have an above-replacement number of kids, because they remember their mothers and grandmothers having 10 or 12 kids, and because society is still basically set up for families. But time passes, and culture gradually shifts to accommodate material reality. Law and economics follow culture. The next generation remembers their parents having 3 or 4, and maybe manages 1 or 2 themselves. The fewer people are having lots of kids, the less of a constituency there is for having lots of kids, and the harder society makes it, further turning the screws on marginal parents.

There is a separate implication here.  There is a tendency to view culture as a set of folkways and values.  Things people value and believe in.  And I believe that is true up to a point.  But those folkways and values produce outcomes.

As long as technology is unchanging or slowly changing, over time, culture will refine towards the mean of its outcomes.  Culture becomes outcomes.

But when technological change is a reality (last five hundred years) and accelerating (last fifty years), the cultural transmission belt slips.

There are now outcomes arising not from culture and values but from technological munificence.  Dysfunctional value and behaviors can now survive despite their negative outcomes.  What the Psmiths are pointing out is that cultural transmission is part explicit (values learned in church or school or explicitly articulated in family) and part implicit (values picked up by emulating the examples set by others).  

Abundance arising from technological productivity is eroding the explicit transmission of culture.  But that happens it undermines the implicit transmission via the environment of examples.  

Eight pillars of connection

From 8 Ways of Connecting a Smartphone Can't Deliver by Ted Gioia.  The subheading is They are the pillars of a happy life. So why are they under such fierce attack?

My systematizing brain rebels because the list has duplications and omissions.  My intuition is there is none-the-less useful insight.

These are alarming statistics but the don’t even begin to capture the total assault on connectedness that’s currently underway.

Here are my eight pillars of connection—and none of them require Wi-Fi access.

If you want a happy life, you nurture them. If you let them all topple, you’re at grave risk.

Connection with the natural world;

Connection with family, friends, neighbors, colleagues;

Connection with history and tradition;

Connection with the community via institutions and organizations (e.g., civic engagement);

Connection via charitable acts, and giving (material and emotional) support;

Connection with spiritual and other metaphysical or higher values—sources of meaning outside the materialist realm;

Connection with creative human expression in art;

Connection via all those other things a computer can't provide (love, forgiveness, fidelity, trust, empathy, kindness, etc.).

 

Here’s the saddest part of the story. We all recognize the importance of these things—yet each one of these connections is currently eroding in society.

It’s even worse—they are all under attack simultaneously. That’s true whether we’re talking about the natural world, or friendships, or civic engagement, or whatever.

I note that religion and church intersect across several of these eight paths, hinting at one of the losses which we have failed to attend to.

In the Park, 1938 by Hugó Scheiber

In the Park, 1938 by Hugó Scheiber

Click to enlarge.

History

A carved jade plaque from the Maya civilization, originating from Nebaj, Guatemala. Collection: Cincinnati Museum Center, Ohio. pic.twitter.com/BdjwcHMVjZ

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) September 16, 2024

 

Furious, the woman storms away.

From Life is a Joke, 100 Life Lessons by John and Gordon Javna.

—35— Head Case

“Vilify, vilify, some of it will always stick.”

—Pierre Beaumarchais

On her way to work every day, a woman walks past a pet shop. One day there’s a parrot in the window. As she stops to admire the bird, it says, “Hey, lady! You’re ugly.” Stunned, the woman looks around, and the parrot says, “Yeah, I’m talking to you. Beat it, will you? You’re scaring the puppies!” Furious, the woman storms away.

The next day, as she passes the shop, the parrot says, “Wow! Lady, you are really ugly!” This continues for days, and finally the woman can’t stand it anymore. She marches into the pet shop and tells the owner that if that parrot calls her ugly one more time, she’ll have the man charged with harassment and sue him for every cent he’s got. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I promise he’ll never do it again.”

The next day, as she passes the shop, the parrot says, “Hey, lady.” The woman stops in her tracks, turns, and stares intently at the bird. The parrot climbs onto its perch and starts swinging gently, then looks away from the woman and says, “You know.”

An Insight

A reminder from Clear Thinking on the difference between kind and nice pic.twitter.com/FwX4BFUx1f

— Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish) September 17, 2024

 

I see wonderful things

A mesmerizing time-lapse of the Sun in ultraviolet light, captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft over the course of a month. pic.twitter.com/j6z0Ud2XDu

— Curiosity (@MAstronomers) September 17, 2024

 

Offbeat Humor

They say this seriously ... pic.twitter.com/PFqxTrEahw

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) September 17, 2024