History

Pygmalion and Galatea by Ernest Normand (English artist, 1857–1923). Atkinson Art Gallery. Galatea had professed his disdain of all females, but fell deeply in love with the statue he was working on. His love was so great that Aphrodite took pity and breathed life into Galatea. pic.twitter.com/h69iJ2wCcS

— The Long Victorian (@longvictorian2) May 3, 2023

 

Looking for prosperity in all the wrong place

An interesting essay, not so much for the information it provides (some) but for the insight it provides into the thinking of left-leaning public intellectuals.  From Where China is beating the world by Noah Smith.  The subheading is On high-speed rail, EVs, and solar, China is doing truly amazing things.

Over the past two years I’ve written a lot of criticism of China’s economic policies. There were basically two reasons for that: First, China really did make a bunch of policy blunders during that time, and second, there was a narrative of Chinese economic infallibility in the late 2010s that needed correcting. Now I think that correction has largely been accomplished, and I see the possibility of an opposite narrative of Chinese economic incompetence taking hold. That would also be a mistake. The truth is that China has some serious weaknesses but also some amazing strengths, and we need to pay attention to both.

And what are those strengths one might ask?

If you thought those strengths might be in terms of cultural homogeneity, rising productivity owing to forty years of a partial market economy, increasing longevity, increased real GDP per capital, and improving morbidity, etc. you would be wrong.

Smith thinks that measured progress in terms of High-speed rail, electric vehicle production, solar power capacity and renewables capacity are the important measures of success.  

In other words, an authoritarian regime has excelled in the practice of central planning and coercive development.  

High-speed rail, EV production, and solar power/renewables are not measured in terms of their economic efficiency and effectiveness.  They are the darling of the authoritarian West.  But they, of themselves, add nothing to the productivity and prosperity of a nation.  Productivity and prosperity depend on systemic structures and institutions.  Building any particular thing faster or in greater volume is the mere accomplishment of coercive decision-making.  And that is what Smith is admiring.

High-speed rail is a prestige project of little or negative national economic value.  Occasionally worthwhile under the right conditions of regional productivity and population density but otherwise relatively immaterial.  Freight rail is a different matter entirely, usually crucial to the productivity to a nation.  But the bien pensant never focus on freight rail, only high-speed passenger rail.  

EV production?  Pffft.  Call me when it is more than 15% of the global auto market (not including China).  As best I can tell, EVs are 1% of the market in the US where consumers have a choice and perhaps 9% everywhere else where consumers have a varying degree of choice.  In China, where 59% of the 6 million vehicles sold are EV, consumers get to choose that which the government allows them to choose.  And the government wants them to buy EV.

Basically, currently, the freer citizens are, the less likely they are to buy EV.  EV sales are highest in nations and states where the government is most active in subsidizing or regulation EVs into existence.  

To that extent, EV sales are not a measurement of accomplishment but of repression of citizens.

And Solar?   Please . . . China, again through regulation and subsidies has indeed cornered that global market and are, apparently making solar and renewables an increasing portion of their national electric generation.  In a non-free planned economy, that is easy.  It is a government choice.  Will it work?  We'll see.  Everywhere else in the world, increasing dependence on solar and renewables is characterized by decreasing grid reliability which is significantly harmful to productivity and prosperity.  Will China buck that trend?  Maybe.  But it is not clear that they have or that they can.

Smith admires authoritarian economic development through central planning which shows best in such measures as miles of high-speed passenger rail, EV production, and solar power/renewables.  

Are those good measures in terms of economic productivity, prosperity and national well-being?  Typically not.  Mussolini famously focused on making the trains run on time but most historians and economists agree that those sort of narrow totalitarian measures are inadequate at reflecting the well-being of a nation.

Taking a systems view of China's prospects (instead of focusing on the Western clerisy obsessions with high-speed rail, EV production, and solar power/renewables), and I think there are legitimate rising concerns about China's future prosperity.  We should all want increased prosperity for everyone.

But the easy growth from partially transitioning to a market economy are just about over.  Instead of instituting more freedom and allowing citizens more economic choice and autonomy, China's current leadership is instead doubling down on the planned economy which bodes ill for productivity.  Even though the high-speed rail, EV production, and solar power/renewables numbers might appeal to a certain market.  The Western clerisy market.  

An Insight

A counterpoint to the thesis that education/prosperity causes social liberalism: 80% of South Koreans would not like to have homosexuals as neighbours. https://t.co/92nl66x3tN pic.twitter.com/00IrcLDwv9

— Noah Carl (@NoahCarl90) April 27, 2023

 

I see wonderful things

In the world of animal models, naked mole rats are the supermodels. They rarely get cancer, are resistant to some types of pain, and can survive up to 18 minutes without oxygen. But perhaps their greatest feat, a new paper suggests, is that they don't age https://t.co/D4n1bXuNBR pic.twitter.com/sAO3r46OUW

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 1, 2023

 

Offbeat Humor

A fabulous outtake from MARY POPPINS (1964) as Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews have fun lip synching each others vocals.

pic.twitter.com/X7a3YlZ9Cf

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) May 2, 2023

 

Where is the effect size and what does it mean.

From All Medications Are Insignificant In The Eyes Of God And Traditional Effect Size Criteria by Scott Alexander in Astral Codex Ten.  

A long and detailed essay, rewarding of the time to read.

SSRI antidepressants like Prozac were first developed in the 1980s and 1990s. The first round of studies, sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, showed they worked great! But skeptics found substantial bias in these early trials; several later analyses that corrected for this all found effect sizes (compared to placebo) of only 0.30.

Is an effect size of 0.30 good or bad? The usual answer is “bad”. The UK’s National Institute for Clinical Excellence used to say that treatments were only “clinically relevant” if they had an effect size of 0.50 or more. The US FDA apparently has a rule of thumb that any effect size below 0.50 is “small”.

Others are even stricter. Leucht et al investigate when doctors subjectively feel like their patients have gotten better, and find that even effect size 0.50 correlates to doctors saying they see little or no change. Based on this research, Irving Kirsch, author of some of the earliest credible antidepressant effect size estimates, argues that “[the] thresholds suggested by NICE were not empirically based and are presumably too small”, and says that “minimal improvement” should be defined as an effect size of 0.875 or more. No antidepressant consistently attains this. 

He then goes on to point out this absence of effect size is in itself misleading.   Basically, there are multiple measures which are narrowly useful but you have to stitch together multiple, often contradictory of one another, measures before even beginning to understand something.  

Effect size is indeed important.  But it is not the only measure of importance.

Universities have become a kind of halfway house for the most neurotic and conformist members of the educated class.

From Understanding the Tech Right by Richard Hanania.  The subheading is The next decade will be shaped by Silicon Valley fully entering our politics. 

I eventually concluded that there was a common thread between DEI, IRB, and covid. Universities have become a kind of halfway house for the most neurotic and conformist members of the educated class. People who care about truth and are passionate about their work would be outraged by DEI and IRB requirements and less likely to stand for them. If you go into academia, however, because you want the status of being a professor so it can make you feel like an intellectual who is more enlightened than other people, then the more paperwork the better.

You would think people who try to become professors are those most interested in ideas. My experience is, if anything, the opposite. They’re the kind of people who like the idea of thinking about themselves as people interested in ideas, but actually lack genuine curiosity about the world. If they did have curiosity about the world, they would go participate in it, where they’d have real experiences, find out how it works, and not spend their time bogged down in so much paperwork (disclaimer here: I’m talking about the social sciences, I have no direct experience with STEM). To the extent they wanted to produce intellectually important work, they would want to share it with the world, rather than write in impenetrable jargon directed at a select few. Of course there are exceptions, but the majority of academics have little to nothing important to say because they’re playing a status game, not a truth game.

One thing I’ve noticed from talking to conservatives in academia is that the university bureaucracy provides endless opportunities for their enemies to persecute them. The complaint processes surrounding ethics and anti-harassment are extremely easy to abuse, and one’s professional life can be ruined even if an individual has done nothing wrong. Left-wing academics are good with paperwork, small minded, and vengeful, making them very skilled at navigating these system and bending them to their ends. They don’t need to actually ban heretical ideas, but instead use the machinery of academia to gradually grind down those who won’t conform, as they did with Joshua Katz. Always keep in mind that academics are the people who selected into this world, and they did so for less money than they could’ve earned doing something else, since their reward is being part of a priestly class. Of course they’re going to defend established dogma.

Data Talks

Britain has been ranked as one of the most accepting countries of ethnic minorities in the world, as well as immigrants and gay people | @RobLownie https://t.co/DAspr2PQL1

— UnHerd (@unherd) April 27, 2023

 

The Three Graces, 1949 by Luigi Lucioni, (American - Italian, 1900 - 1988)

The Three Graces, 1949 by Luigi Lucioni, (American - Italian, 1900 - 1988)

Click to enlarge.

History

The towns of Europe, North Africa and West Asia with over 40,000 residents as per 1050. A thousand years ago we needed to live on farms to ensure everyone was fed. Map explains why towns on the map still think so highly of themselves too. Source: https://t.co/CT2hwdo6IA pic.twitter.com/W87LV9IbeK

— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600) May 2, 2023