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patrickcollison.com

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Re: Questions

#51

Post by mjw1007 »

csomar wrote: post #9

> Why is US GDP growth so weirdly constant? This is something I noticed too. And it can't be just blamed to "inflation" of the US GDP. Almost any other country I checked does have fluctuations. Goes through booms and bust. China has gone through an exponential rise but slowed down and seems like it broke the pattern recently. The US is the only country so far that has been going decades through a constant rate of cha…

Maybe there's a problem analogous to "clustering" in opinion polls.

I presume every now and again econometrics people have to tweak the way they measure GDP.

Maybe if someone proposes a plausible tweak and it results in a surprisingly high or low figure their idea gets ignored, while it might be taken seriously if it ended up moving the figure towards the historical average.

Re: Questions

#52

Post by fredsir »

unixhero wrote: post #47
chucky wrote: post #35

> Why are there so many successful startups in Stockholm? Several reasons. First, you need to recognize that any Sweden-based startup will, when it gets to be known internationally, have a Stockholm-based office. So it's not about a city of 1 million inhabitants, it's a country of 10 million that's the true number here. As an example, I believe Spotify opened their original offices in both Stockholm and Göteborg more…

Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of…

> Quality of life was insanely better there,

> yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.

Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Norway? If not, how do you mean that quality of life was insanely better?

Re: Questions

#53

Post by gomox »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #5

"Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?" Because relative prices (e.g. the ratio of the price of a 42" TV to the price of a cinema ticket) are constantly changing due to changes in technology and competitive dynamics. Some things have gotten (and continue to get) much cheaper due to technological progress and economies of scale. So, relative to those, anything that hasn't benefited from the same trend…

On a more cynical perspective, capitalism is effective at extracting the most money from consumers. People will pay almost anything for the really essential things: health, housing, air, food and water. Education is essentially the only reproducible way to pay for all of the above.

Therefore, any sufficiently late stage capitalist society has extremely high costs for all of those areas: it's just the stuff people will pay the most for.

Don't quote me on this.

Re: Questions

#54

Post by jimhefferon »

jaggederest wrote: post #14

The easy answer for the "Two Sigma" problem is that you... don't try to reproduce it on a large scale by finding some other method. You provide individual, one-on-one full time tutoring to each student, if that is the analytically best method. It's worth it, since educational spending is close to the most effective public spending imaginable - something in the $3-$5 return per dollar spent, which you'd be hard presse…

> individual, one-on-one full time tutoring to each student

Isn't this the promise of the various platforms? I'm talking about Canvas, Moodle, WebWork-type programs. In principle, they can have everyone in the room working at their own level, and only moving up when the system says they are ready.

Not that, as far as I know, those platforms are now being leveraged that way.

Re: Questions

#55

Post by sumedh »

_wzsf wrote: post #36

Not to be critical, but I pose this question in response: Why do billionaires so often love to muse about interesting things outside of their field, get attention and praise for their thoughts, and then publicly allocate only tiny portions of their wealth and time to these projects so ineffectually while passing down the majority of their wealth to disinterested heirs? e.g. Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Edgar Prince, Stev…

billionaires can afford to muse about interesting things outside of their field, they get attention because they are billionaires.

Just because they are asking questions does not automatically mean they have the passion to solve the other problems.

I dont know about others but isnt Zuckerberg donating majority of the wealth?

Re: Questions

#56

Post by reitanqild »

fredsir wrote: post #52
unixhero wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of…

> Quality of life was insanely better there, > yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic. Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Norway? If not, how do you mean that quality of life was insanely better?

>> I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia.

> Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Denmark?

Calling a Norwegian a Dane is about as popular as saying a Canadian is from USA or calling an American British I guess ;-)

Re: Questions

#57

Post by JepZ »

panic wrote: post #8

> What's the successor to the book? And how could books be improved? > Books are great (unless you're Socrates). We now have magic ink. As an artifact for effecting the transmission of knowledge (rather than a source of entertainment), how can the book be improved? How can we help authors understand how well their work is doing in practice? (Which parts are readers confused by or stumbling over or skipping?) How can…

There are very few people who want to read many books that are 1000 years old. The few books that interest more people can be converted to newer formats, the few people that want to read all old books will have to use extra tools to do so.

That said, I am not a particular fan of books. They take a lot of physical space, are heavy and age. So as long as we stick to reasonable formats (e.g., text-based, non-binary), it should not be too hard for future generations to use our books.

Using DRM, on the other hand, might make things complicated.

Re: Questions

#58

Post by coldtea »

fredsir wrote: post #52
unixhero wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good observations! You forgot one major thing. This goes for all of Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The winter is horribly dark and boring. (Unless you're super rich). Therefore most turn inwards, staying indoors, thinking deeply at problems, spending endless afternoons and nights on things. Be it software development, game development, car tuning, car engine work, engineering, knitting or just reading loads of…

> Quality of life was insanely better there, > yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic. Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Norway? If not, how do you mean that quality of life was insanely better?

Why wouldn't they prefer it?

Re: Questions

#59

Post by oxymoron »

chucky wrote: post #35

> Why are there so many successful startups in Stockholm? Several reasons. First, you need to recognize that any Sweden-based startup will, when it gets to be known internationally, have a Stockholm-based office. So it's not about a city of 1 million inhabitants, it's a country of 10 million that's the true number here. As an example, I believe Spotify opened their original offices in both Stockholm and Göteborg more…

I think Stockholm does have more startups than the rest of Sweden, though, so there is probably more to it. The article understates the size of Stockholm a bit though. As measured by urban area it’s a city of 2.5 million.

Re: Questions

#60

Post by coldtea »

JepZ wrote: post #57
panic wrote: post #8

> What's the successor to the book? And how could books be improved? > Books are great (unless you're Socrates). We now have magic ink. As an artifact for effecting the transmission of knowledge (rather than a source of entertainment), how can the book be improved? How can we help authors understand how well their work is doing in practice? (Which parts are readers confused by or stumbling over or skipping?) How can…

There are very few people who want to read many books that are 1000 years old. The few books that interest more people can be converted to newer formats, the few people that want to read all old books will have to use extra tools to do so. That said, I am not a particular fan of books. They take a lot of physical space, are heavy and age. So as long as we stick to reasonable formats (e.g., text-based, non-binary), it…

>There are very few people who want to read many books that are 1000 years old.

That's their loss. There are very few people who want to learn math too.

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