Noah Smith is optimistic; Scott Newman on Princeton lying; Martinez and Ferguson also bemoan higher ed; N.S. Lyons on lost liberalism; Steven Pinker on Wokism vs. facts.
The elites in our society are increasingly becoming liars to themselves. Not "stupidity" - dishonesty.
"Hopeful high school students lie about their commitment to social justice in a bid to gain admission, while the universities themselves lie about all the risk-taking, world-changing mavericks they’re looking to nurture. "
FBI agents lie to FISA court knowing the FISA court will pretend to believe the lies so as to illegally spy on the Trump campaign (2016)
FBI director lies about HR Clinton, her illegal email server, and her many illegal lies to the FBI (from 2008-2012).
Pres. W. Clinton lies, committing perjury under oath, about having (legal but immoral) sexual relations with Monica L. Is impeached by Congress but not convicted due to the votes of Democrats supporting perjury (1998).
Elisabeth Warren lies to Harvard about her "Native American" ancestry, is hired in 1993 and counted by Harvard in its diversity statistics.
Elite liars, not all Democrats, have been allowed to benefit from their lies.
Accepting lies and living a life of lies has been growing for decades since the 60s.
Tho the reality might be less actual dishonesty and more internal self-censorship:
"The sort of student who gets into Princeton has probably spent his or her teenage years in constant fear of slipping up in any way that might threaten his or her picture-perfect college application...
progressive ideals are mostly for show—as evidenced by the fact that the actual career paths of typical Princeton graduates are guided by a hunger for status and security, not social justice. "
This essay seems emblematic of Tyler Cowen’s Strivers/Enthusiasts dichotomy in the complacent class. The strivers are suffering under the weight of increasingly intense competition and a more vivid awareness of how many people are better than them. The pressure to excel in this environment makes them increasingly willing to lie and the end result is a hyper-conforming elite class.
Ed West explored just how far this behavior can go in a recent essay on the phenomenon of lying about your racial identity, which is apparently very common when the incentives are there.
“One study of 14 African states showed that, when a member of one ethnic group becomes president, it leads to an increase in people identifying with that group, since ‘citizens [who] perceive more ethnic favoritism see higher levels of ethnic switching.’”
I think he meant to write "subsidized solar, subsidized wind and subsidized storage". Battery storage prices per kWh have stopped declining by double-digit percentages yearly because there is only so much one can squeeze out of Li-ion chemistry, and it's still the best we have despite decades of search. Fusion hype is simply preposterous. NIF numbers of energy output vs energy input traditionally don't include the wall plug efficiency of its lasers (around 1%). Tokamaks are much more advanced, and there's been a lot of private money flowing into fusion startups recently. This process seems to generate these hype pieces like the one in Bloomberg, drumming up valuations and investment from important people, but this does not necessarily indicate it's promising (think Theranos). It's hype not even so much because a reactor cannot be built, although recently discovered problems with turbulent transport limiting plasma performance in toroidal magnetic confinement systems are bad news, but because how capital-expensive a power fusion reactor would be even if the still unsolved materials science problems were worked out. A fusion reactor is much more complicated than a fission reactor, and there is not much one can do about it until we have room-temperature superconductors.
I don't know what planet Noah Smith is living on, but here, electricity prices are increasing, and forcing increased use of renewables is a big part of the reason. He completely ignores just how expensive battery storage is.
Electricity prices in renewables-intense Europe are now at all-time record levels, up 300% in the last two years, and they have doubled in most places in just the last six months. So much cheaper you can't afford it anymore.
This area is a great example of never believing any normal journalist or news outlet says unless they are willing to invest or bet to put their money where their mouth is. I'd be happy to play Ehrlich as Noah Smith plays Simon and bet a good 5 figure amount that prices won't come down anywhere near that much in anywhere near that time. Spoiler: he would never agree to that bet.
As a hobby I've been keeping track of the difference between news-hype claims about breathtaking price declines, and the actual reality of unsubsidized prices for standard quantities of solar panels and batteries, for nearly 20 years now.
Over that time, there has been some progress, sure, but it's been pretty slow and steady. But the gap between reality and typically reported claims (not even the obviously 'hype' ones) is literally at least an order of magnitude, which, if you are using those rates in the manner of compound interest and extrapolating into the future as the basis for """analysis""", you are going to end up not just a little off over the long run, but almost entirely wrong in the short run. If you have any influence at all and are seriously recommending that governments make tremendously costly and very risky policy decisions based on such conclusions as if they could confidently rely upon them despite this kind of ridiculously bad track record, then you are little more than a public menace.
I made a comment on that article. Actual prices in Australia paid by commercial entities for grid scale batteries in 2020 were around A$1000/kWh, US$700/kWh.
The eastern half of Australia uses 500GWh per day, so one day’s storage has a capital cost of US$350bn. For a 5-year life, that’s $70bn per year, around the cost of the entire health service.
Even economists often learn from spruikers, and journalists (but I repeat myself).
> But could you have written something similar [that nominal democracies are really authoritarian oligarchies] in 1936? And would that not have turned out to be wrong?
This would have been correct in the 1936 at least for Britain and the US. But there was a correction in the two decades after WWII that *partially* rolled back the authoritarianism. That correction later began to reverse once the Cold War was won.
Yeah, it *turned out* to be wrong, largely because Hitler underestimated Soviet tank output. (See Guderian's memoir.)
How do such facts refute the claim, that "Existing Liberalism is now just oligarch technocratic progressivism wearing liberal principles"?
Is Arnold expecting Bezos or Gates to similarly underestimate Putin's tank output, or to otherwise rip defeat from the jaws of (oligarchic) totalitarian victory?
We are not there with cheap storage and distribution. Cheap CO2 capture and sequestration may be the key technology. But optimism is more realistic the gloom.
The whole effort to guess which technologies (that is which combination of how of which technology) would be favored by a net emissions of CO2 tax plus regulatory reform is ultimately pretty useless for policy purposes.
The elites in our society are increasingly becoming liars to themselves. Not "stupidity" - dishonesty.
"Hopeful high school students lie about their commitment to social justice in a bid to gain admission, while the universities themselves lie about all the risk-taking, world-changing mavericks they’re looking to nurture. "
FBI agents lie to FISA court knowing the FISA court will pretend to believe the lies so as to illegally spy on the Trump campaign (2016)
FBI director lies about HR Clinton, her illegal email server, and her many illegal lies to the FBI (from 2008-2012).
Pres. W. Clinton lies, committing perjury under oath, about having (legal but immoral) sexual relations with Monica L. Is impeached by Congress but not convicted due to the votes of Democrats supporting perjury (1998).
Elisabeth Warren lies to Harvard about her "Native American" ancestry, is hired in 1993 and counted by Harvard in its diversity statistics.
Elite liars, not all Democrats, have been allowed to benefit from their lies.
Accepting lies and living a life of lies has been growing for decades since the 60s.
Tho the reality might be less actual dishonesty and more internal self-censorship:
"The sort of student who gets into Princeton has probably spent his or her teenage years in constant fear of slipping up in any way that might threaten his or her picture-perfect college application...
progressive ideals are mostly for show—as evidenced by the fact that the actual career paths of typical Princeton graduates are guided by a hunger for status and security, not social justice. "
Re: Princeton
This essay seems emblematic of Tyler Cowen’s Strivers/Enthusiasts dichotomy in the complacent class. The strivers are suffering under the weight of increasingly intense competition and a more vivid awareness of how many people are better than them. The pressure to excel in this environment makes them increasingly willing to lie and the end result is a hyper-conforming elite class.
Ed West explored just how far this behavior can go in a recent essay on the phenomenon of lying about your racial identity, which is apparently very common when the incentives are there.
“One study of 14 African states showed that, when a member of one ethnic group becomes president, it leads to an increase in people identifying with that group, since ‘citizens [who] perceive more ethnic favoritism see higher levels of ethnic switching.’”
https://edwest.substack.com/p/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being
> Cheap solar, cheap wind, and cheap storage
I think he meant to write "subsidized solar, subsidized wind and subsidized storage". Battery storage prices per kWh have stopped declining by double-digit percentages yearly because there is only so much one can squeeze out of Li-ion chemistry, and it's still the best we have despite decades of search. Fusion hype is simply preposterous. NIF numbers of energy output vs energy input traditionally don't include the wall plug efficiency of its lasers (around 1%). Tokamaks are much more advanced, and there's been a lot of private money flowing into fusion startups recently. This process seems to generate these hype pieces like the one in Bloomberg, drumming up valuations and investment from important people, but this does not necessarily indicate it's promising (think Theranos). It's hype not even so much because a reactor cannot be built, although recently discovered problems with turbulent transport limiting plasma performance in toroidal magnetic confinement systems are bad news, but because how capital-expensive a power fusion reactor would be even if the still unsolved materials science problems were worked out. A fusion reactor is much more complicated than a fission reactor, and there is not much one can do about it until we have room-temperature superconductors.
I don't know what planet Noah Smith is living on, but here, electricity prices are increasing, and forcing increased use of renewables is a big part of the reason. He completely ignores just how expensive battery storage is.
Electricity prices in renewables-intense Europe are now at all-time record levels, up 300% in the last two years, and they have doubled in most places in just the last six months. So much cheaper you can't afford it anymore.
Noah Smith is a fool if he really believes that excerpt.
This area is a great example of never believing any normal journalist or news outlet says unless they are willing to invest or bet to put their money where their mouth is. I'd be happy to play Ehrlich as Noah Smith plays Simon and bet a good 5 figure amount that prices won't come down anywhere near that much in anywhere near that time. Spoiler: he would never agree to that bet.
As a hobby I've been keeping track of the difference between news-hype claims about breathtaking price declines, and the actual reality of unsubsidized prices for standard quantities of solar panels and batteries, for nearly 20 years now.
Over that time, there has been some progress, sure, but it's been pretty slow and steady. But the gap between reality and typically reported claims (not even the obviously 'hype' ones) is literally at least an order of magnitude, which, if you are using those rates in the manner of compound interest and extrapolating into the future as the basis for """analysis""", you are going to end up not just a little off over the long run, but almost entirely wrong in the short run. If you have any influence at all and are seriously recommending that governments make tremendously costly and very risky policy decisions based on such conclusions as if they could confidently rely upon them despite this kind of ridiculously bad track record, then you are little more than a public menace.
I made a comment on that article. Actual prices in Australia paid by commercial entities for grid scale batteries in 2020 were around A$1000/kWh, US$700/kWh.
The eastern half of Australia uses 500GWh per day, so one day’s storage has a capital cost of US$350bn. For a 5-year life, that’s $70bn per year, around the cost of the entire health service.
Even economists often learn from spruikers, and journalists (but I repeat myself).
> But could you have written something similar [that nominal democracies are really authoritarian oligarchies] in 1936? And would that not have turned out to be wrong?
This would have been correct in the 1936 at least for Britain and the US. But there was a correction in the two decades after WWII that *partially* rolled back the authoritarianism. That correction later began to reverse once the Cold War was won.
Yeah, it *turned out* to be wrong, largely because Hitler underestimated Soviet tank output. (See Guderian's memoir.)
How do such facts refute the claim, that "Existing Liberalism is now just oligarch technocratic progressivism wearing liberal principles"?
Is Arnold expecting Bezos or Gates to similarly underestimate Putin's tank output, or to otherwise rip defeat from the jaws of (oligarchic) totalitarian victory?
We are not there with cheap storage and distribution. Cheap CO2 capture and sequestration may be the key technology. But optimism is more realistic the gloom.
The whole effort to guess which technologies (that is which combination of how of which technology) would be favored by a net emissions of CO2 tax plus regulatory reform is ultimately pretty useless for policy purposes.