Viewing profile — simon_

Analyses on this topic are always so bad. Some counterpoints: (1) CEOs are intentionally aligned with shareholders, for good reason. Shareholders often make money due to luck, so e…

One might as well say: "20K+ fatalities on the Boko Haram insurgency, and counting, but you're up in arms about one maybe-murder in the most privileged city in the world." Not ever…

Sigh, it is hard for me to imagine that this comment was made in good faith. First of all, owning "free and clear" is hardly the expected meaning of ownership in the context of car…

It does. Big pharma constantly acquires research-focused junior companies to input into its pipeline for regulatory approval / commercialization.

Well, it is also the world of professors, grad students, administrators, etc. I know American culture is in love with undergrads and their "college experience", but I don't see why…

I would not write them off - my whole point is that by making the double argument people are trying to avoid having to think about trade offs. I get very suspicious when I see conj…

I am always annoyed by the argument that torture is unacceptable AND it doesn't work. It's not totally implausible that this is true, but I think it's very likely that torture "wor…

I think when he says "genuine", he means they are genuinely giving it a try, not that they are doing it out of pure spiritual authenticity. Most business decisions (and most decisi…

I won't presume to tell you that you've evaluated your situation fundamentally incorrectly. If you've come to this point, I doubt that hearing "there is always hope" is going to sw…

Yep, having ever had to make hard decisions in serious situations should definitely disqualify presidential hopefuls.

Not a non-sequitur. The point is that AirBnB landlords are being singled out as though their apartments "belong" in some sense on the market, when nobody cares much about the milli…

I guess all hotels are also guilty of "displacing New Yorkers" by re-purposing perfectly good real-estate for the benefit of "tourists"?

"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not see…

Ugh, this apology seems lamely antiseptic. "We are reviewing our notification procedures" is not the level of self-abasement I would expect after a mistake this serious.

Could someone weigh in on the following quote? Sounds fishy / wrong to me: To put this in perspective, a balloon that is one kilometer in diameter is capable of lifting about 700,0…

I really appreciate your response, but I think there is a problem with our mental model of a moral paragon. Is it really smart to believe that childlike simplicity of purpose is mo…

It is uncharitable and silly to believe that a good person could not have those positions in good faith. You may disagree with it, but "torture is sometimes permissible" is not an …

What you're saying is only true if you assume the existence of a modern test-prep mentality. Do the applicants know in advance which facts they will be asked to regurgitate, or do …

Yeah, the strength of field that would literally destroy molecules is a ridiculously loose upper bound.

Without saying anything about the broader thrust of an argument, I'll highlight a pet peeve: the drawing of wildly overconfident conclusions from social science research. The econo…

If we stipulate that the charter schools in question have strong selection biases in their student bodies and better resources relative to public schools, then: a) It's true that s…

Maybe, but I would wait to hear from a physicist. When I was a student, one of the most important papers one year was about a dark matter (WIMP) detector that failed to find anythi…

The year-long isolation seems to me like a much crueler part of the ordeal than anything food related. We consider it inhumane to do this to convicted murderers, even when they hav…

This is one example of a number of ways the article is weirdly disingenuous. Thea author compares returns to equities but risks to nothing, as you point out. Separately, when he ci…

The gap between the US and the rest of the West is clearly (if you look at the charts) closing due to rapid catch-up growth from the others, not decline in the US. Wouldn't it be k…