jmh

[Question] Will the many protests through­out the USA prove to be good test cases for re­open­ing?

• jmh 27 May 2020 21:06 UTC

  3 points

  on: Pre­dicted Land Value Tax: a bet­ter tax than an unim­proved land value tax

  Have you even looked into Henry Ge­orge’s Land Value Tax the­ory, or the cri­tiques made of that the­ory? If not might be worth skim­ming or check­ing out the cliff notes or other sum­mary.

  Also, I’m not en­tirely sure I un­der­stand the prob­lem be­ing solved. Is this about a more ac­cu­rate or effi­cient tax­ing?

• jmh 26 May 2020 19:32 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: jefftk’s comment on: Bak­ing is Not a Ritual

  Here is a recipe that might be helpful, as ei­ther a rit­ual ap­proach or by look­ing at the differ­ent in­gre­di­ents and then at what they might be do­ing chem­i­cally and struc­turally.

  Egg whites are pro­teins and so are gluten in wheat and both will provide some de­gree or struc­tural rigidity.

  Since we don’t know your recipe I would make a rather wild guess that per­haps the use of cream of tar­tar. This sug­gests “A pinch of cream of tar­tar also helps sta­bi­lize whipped cream to pre­vent it from deflat­ing”, so per­haps as well as func­tion­ing as a leav­en­ing agent with the bak­ing soda it is also adding some strength.

  Here is one more link. A quick scan of some sec­tions sug­gests you won’t need a chem­istry back­ground but it does talk about how the in­gre­di­ents work at the level. For in­stance, I never new salt worked to act as a strength­ener for gluten dur­ing bak­ing.

• jmh 26 May 2020 15:37 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Raemon’s comment on: Bak­ing is Not a Ritual

  Put a lit­tle differ­ently, there is a rea­son why we have Betty Crocker cake mixes and Aunt Jamima or Bisquick pan­cake mixes for peo­ple. It pro­vides a rit­ual they can blindly fol­low and get re­peat­edly good re­sults.

  How­ever, it they try de­vi­at­ing from the rit­ual (the defined recipes on the box) the re­sults will start get­ting un­pre­dictable with the un­der­ly­ing knowl­edge. In worst case sce­nar­ios (not sure bak­ing gets us there but per­haps) peo­ple start think­ing the world in that area is just ran­dom out­comes or is un­pre­dictable.

• jmh 26 May 2020 15:20 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: __nobody’s comment on: Bak­ing is Not a Ritual

  Yes, I would say bak­ing is the most com­pli­cated form of cook­ing to un­der­stand be­cause it is chem­i­cally the most com­plex.

  I think the gen­eral point of the OP is you can­not eas­ily vi­o­late the rit­ual (ad lib with the recipe in bak­ing). I sus­pect most peo­ple don’t grasp the differ­ence be­tween bak­ing and other cook­ing (which is also rather chem­i­cal re­ac­tion driven). I would sug­gest the differ­ent is widths of the er­ror bands. Bak­ing has re­ally nar­row bands, other cook­ing has rel­a­tively wide ones.

  I think the post gets to a much deeper ques­tion. Just when should some­one be a rit­ual fol­lower and when is that not so im­por­tant. I think part of that an­swer re­lated to the er­ror band con­cept. It also re­lated to knowl­edge of the gears.

• jmh 25 May 2020 22:50 UTC

  3 points

  on: The Oil Cri­sis of 1973

  this re­ces­sion will be differ­ent, be­cause (among other things) we will si­mul­ta­neously have a la­bor short­age and a lot of peo­ple out of work. That’s re­ally weird, and there’s al­most no his­tor­i­cal prece­dent

  La­bor short­age and re­ces­sion. It strikes me that per­haps WWII offers a similar set­ting. Mas­sive la­bor short­age since many men were off fight­ing. A re­ces­sion set­ting by a lot of met­rics from a con­sumer de­mand and sup­ply per­spec­tive—so lots of ra­tioning and the like.

  Maybe some in­sights from anal­y­sis of those times?

• jmh 23 May 2020 16:30 UTC

  5 points

  on: High­lights of Com­par­a­tive and Evolu­tion­ary Aging

  Prob­a­bly not as rele­vant to this spe­cific post as the gen­eral se­quence on ag­ing but have you seen and read Lifes­pan by Sin­clair & LaPlante? If so what is your as­sess­ment. I’ve just started read­ing.

• jmh 23 May 2020 16:25 UTC

  1 point

  on: The Oil Cri­sis of 1973

  I am pretty sure that the price of all goods started to fall rel­a­tive to gold af­ter the USA moved to a pure fiat money regime. If so do the gold price of oil it­self in­for­ma­tive or should one look to the rel­a­tive price of oil (in what ever money units) to other goods or bas­kets of other goods.

  Put a bit differ­ent, how was oil perform­ing in the in­fla­tion­ary world?

• jmh 22 May 2020 0:42 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: What are ob­jects that have made your life bet­ter?

  Im­ported japanese tooth­paste that has hy­drox­ya­p­atite. It’s un­der patent dis­pute in the USA. Rem­iner­al­izes teeth.

  + 1 on this one. Hope the availa­bil­ity does not dis­ap­pear. But it also seems hy­drox­y­patite is available on its own so one might be able to just add to any tooth­paste.

• jmh 21 May 2020 14:29 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: kjz’s comment on: If bac­te­ria gave us a tool for bio en­g­ineer­ing, have viruses given us a de­liv­ery mechanism?

  Thanks. In­ter­est­ing. Seems that the term I want is “viral vec­tor”.

  Clearly some bugs still to work out (bad pun, sorry) but seems like a very promis­ing ap­proach though I think even­tu­ally the fix should be some­thing that is also pre­sent in off-spring (which cur­rently is prob­a­bly ille­gal so and will change the risk as­sess­ment needed)

• jmh 21 May 2020 13:55 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Decius’s comment on: True or False

  We’d have to look into the spe­cific rules here. The only thing I do know is limit or­ders trade be­fore mar­ket or­ders do and or­ders are time stamped. In other words, the cur­rent in­sti­tu­tional struc­ture is more about man­ag­ing or­der flow than es­tab­lish­ing the clear­ing price when sup­ply and de­mand are con­sid­ered in the larger con­text—such as buy­ers and sel­l­ers who want to par­ti­ci­pate to­day but will be send­ing the or­ders at much differ­ent times dur­ing the pe­riod the mar­ket is open.

  Draw a sim­ply Sup­ply and De­mand pic­ture, and as­sume those curves do rep­re­sent the true price quan­tities of the mar­ket par­ti­ci­pants that ex­ist dur­ing the given pe­riod. The in­ter­sec­tions would then be the stan­dard eco­nomic model clear­ing prices. Let those curves rep­re­sent one day.

  Cur­rently, un­der the or­der flow regime, the when ever the or­ders come in at at­tempt to find a match­ing or­der on the other side oc­curs. But that would al­low a sup­plier that has a price in the sup­ply curve that is above the in­ter­sec­tion to be pairs with buyer on the de­mand curve that is at or above the ask price.

  The differ­ence be­tween the trans­ac­tion price and that im­plied mar­ket clear­ing price when con­sid­er­ing the days ac­tual sup­ply and de­mand char­ac­ter­is­tics seems to rep­re­sent the loss of value the buyer would have saved if they could have bought at the the­o­ret­i­cal mar­ket clear­ing price, which is only known when the day closes. This also rep­re­sents a trans­fer to the sel­ler with the above mar­ket price. This sel­ler, on some pretty stan­dard mar­ket logic, re­ally should not have been able to get that trade as the price asked was too high.

  Chang­ing the rule about match­ing trades (sup­ply and de­mand) at the end of the day rather than as the or­ders come in pre­vents that type of in­effi­cient pairing of buyer and sel­ler.

  To my knowl­edge that is what hap­pens in the morn­ing for all trades, and why some­times when un­usual events oc­cur the open­ing for a se­cu­rity is de­layed while the mar­ket or mar­ket mak­ers try to figure out just where the open clear­ing price re­ally is.

  Large in­sti­tu­tional and large in­vestors will also use some slightly differ­ent or­ders and pay some­thing or an weighted av­er­age price for the shares they sell on a give day. This ap­pears similar to my sug­ges­tion and I would sug­gest lends sup­port to the un­der­ly­ing thought.

  You are cor­rect that the du­ra­tion of the pe­riod might mat­ter and a day may not be the right one. I picked that be­cause gen­er­ally in­for­ma­tion is fairly con­sis­tent over a day so re­vi­sion to or­ders places should me small.

[Question] If bac­te­ria gave us a tool for bio en­g­ineer­ing, have viruses given us a de­liv­ery mechanism?

• jmh 20 May 2020 16:49 UTC

  1 point

  on: Sig­nal­ing: Why Peo­ple Have Conversations

  Peo­ple like talk­ing more than listen­ing. If we par­ti­ci­pated in con­ver­sa­tions pri­mar­ily to gain in­for­ma­tion, then you’d ex­pect peo­ple to want to listen more than they speak. Peo­ple al­most always show the op­po­site be­havi­our.

  This seems to shift the line a bit. If the goal of con­ver­sa­tions ex­change of in­for­ma­tion I don’t think we can re­ally say who will do the most talk­ing so should not try to draw any con­clu­sion about con­ver­sa­tion as info ex­change based on peo­ple lik­ing to talk more than listen. (It is per­haps in­ter­est­ing that is seems a lot of com­mu­ni­ca­tion the­ory agrees that peo­ple who don’t ac­tively listen tend not to be good at com­mu­ni­ca­tion or con­ver­sa­tion.) That said, I sus­pect one might use the sig­nal­ing view to ex­plain why more want to talk than listen. Knowl­edge is power. Power is sta­tus. Peo­ple like sta­tus. There­fore peo­ple want to talk more than listen.

  But that be­hav­ior is fully con­sis­tent with the idea con­ver­sa­tion is largely about info ex­change.

  I did en­joy read­ing and ap­pre­ci­ate that your wrote up your thoughts and sum­maries from read­ing the book. So don’t take my se­lect­ing one point to ques­tion as a sig­nal oth­er­wise ;-)

• jmh 20 May 2020 16:23 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Bob Jacobs’s comment on: A Prob­lem With Patternism

  This seems re­lated to the post on Point­ing to a flower. Do you seem the two lines of think­ing/​in­quiry as com­ple­men­tary?

• jmh 19 May 2020 2:43 UTC

  1 point

  on: Isn’t Tesla stock highly un­der­val­ued?

  Their 5+ year lead in au­tonomous driv­ing is, by it­self, a re­ally ex­cit­ing thing to bet on

  I”m not ex­actly how to as­sess this but prob­a­bly worth men­tion­ing that Buick, GM and Ford were con­duct­ing test­ing for self driv­ing cars back in the early 1990s. To be sure, they were a lot differ­ent and how the en­tire sys­tem would need to come to­gether to be suc­cess­ful is differ­ent.

  How­ever, it is also not clear, to me at least, that the best next gen­er­a­tion small ve­hi­cle trans­porta­tion sys­tem will sim­ply be the same net­work of roads and con­trol sys­tems with “smart” cars. In other words, Tesla may well be a great step­ping stone to the next level of trans­porta­tion but not re­ally where that is go­ing and per­haps not even po­si­tion­ing it well for a bet­ter sys­tem/​in­fras­truc­ture set­ting.

  Ex­cit­ing yes but I think his­tory has a pretty good num­ber or first in­no­va­tors that ended up get­ting sidelined for var­i­ous rea­sons—all I sus­pect re­lat­ing to net­work type effects as they re­late to the larger eco­nomic nexus in which they need to fit.

• jmh 18 May 2020 23:03 UTC

  3 points

  on: Ex­tract­ing Value from Inad­e­quate Equilibria

  I won­der if some of the dis­cus­sion in the posts re­lated to Mo­ral Mazes might offer any in­sights.

• jmh 16 May 2020 17:49 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Mark Xu’s comment on: What are your great­est one-shot life im­prove­ments?

  It re­ally is sur­pris­ing just how much you can get from a very lit­tle amount of time. When I quit smok­ing (and even some of the times I un­suc­cess­fully tried) one sim­ple trick I used when I felt the urge was to sim­ply say “I’ll go in 5 min­utes” and re­sume what­ever I was do­ing.

  Every sin­gle time it was 30 min­utes, an hour, a cou­ple of hours later that the next urge for a smoke re­turned. More­over, I never re­ally felt I was wait­ing in an­ti­ci­pa­tion of that 5 min­utes to ex­pire.

  Now, I don’t think that is what ul­ti­mately ac­com­plished the quit­ting but it did ad­dress one of the prob­lems that will lead to not quit­ting.

[Question] Do any mam­mal species ex­hibit an im­mune re­sponse in some of the herd in re­sponse to the in­fec­tion in other herd mem­bers?

• jmh 16 May 2020 12:48 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Decius’s comment on: True or False

  I don’t un­der­stand ei­ther of these points.

  Stop-loss is merely a spe­cial form of limit price and would cer­tainly fit into a end of day clear­ing/​set­tle­ment pro­cess for sup­ply and de­mand. Here I don’t see where the mul­ti­ple clear­ing prices can emerge due to stop-loss or­ders but not from other limit or­ders. And, even if there is a spread be­tween the limit bid/​offers that might pro­duce a gap, so in­de­ter­mi­nate price in that range, it would be rare where the mar­ket price or­ders were in­suffi­cient to close the gap.

  The fact that the end of day price might be above or be­low the price you will trade at is not differ­ent if it’s end of day only or tick-by-tick. If no one was will­ing to sell at your bid or buy at your offer you are not part of the mar­ket in that pe­riod of time. That is now we think mar­kets should work. The con­cern here seems re­lated to my next para­graph.

  One thing that has mo­ti­vated my mus­ing here is the mar­ket ar­gu­ment about max­i­miz­ing sur­plus gen­er­ated by mar­kets—the area be­tween the sup­ply and de­mand curves. End of day trad­ing al­lows those two curves to be known and match the trades that al­lows that max­i­mum sur­plus to emerge. Ran­dom trades as they show up through­out the day does not. Some of the trades my well be pure trans­fers gen­er­at­ing zero sur­plus.

  I do think it’s fair to ask is the lost of sur­plus is mean­ingful and I’m not 100% sure. But if not then there is a lot of welfare eco­nomics that needs to be rethought and a cer­tain amount of mar­ket philos­o­phy to re­con­sider. Is a so­ciety just as well of un­der the stan­dard free mar­ket out­come with pro­ducer and con­sumer sur­plus as it is un­der a regime of perfect price dis­crim­i­na­tion (i.e., only pro­ducer sur­plus)?

• jmh 16 May 2020 12:21 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: ESRogs’s comment on: The EMH Aten’t Dead

  I’m pretty sure there is an en­tire liter­a­ture (but can­not know think of the term) re­gard­ing the prob­lem if ev­ery­one were to be in­dex in­vestors. Ba­si­cally, if no one is in­vest­ing in the un­der­ly­ing as­sets, in the ex­treme, we don’t get pric­ing for those as­sets and ul­ti­mately can­not even price the in­dexes well. In short, the mar­ket im­plodes on it­self with­out all those in­di­vi­d­ual mar­ket in­ter­ac­tions.