Noah Smith on industrial policy; Scott Alexander on mental illness and physical illness; David Henderson on the latest Clark Medal winner; Paul Dobransky on friendship
Noah Smith is like an adult version of those teen TikTok influencers the Biden White House uses. He's completely partisan, banal and lockstep with the center left establishment, never having an opinion that would be out of place in the NYT or that would not get him called on at a WH press conference. And he aggressively censors dissenting views in his comments which is lame.
What Arnold calls mental illness, Thomas Szasz called "problems of living." The terminology matters.
Mental illness entails medical treatment. Problems of living may be addressed by traditional helpers; for example, friends, teachers, coaches, den mothers, priests or rabbis.
I would add that problems of living have multiplied with modernity. Here are some causes:
-- Technology shock (e.g., potent mind drugs, contraception, social media, fast food, digital pornography).
-- Rigid educational institutions (whence wildly high prevalence of "ADHD" among boys).
-- Increase in assortative mating by educational attainment.
-- Poorly designed welfare safety nets and tax schedules, which discourage work.
Green Energy makes electricity more expensive and less reliable, which undercuts the goal of reshoring manufacturing. If they really wanted domestic manufacturing to expand, they would remove regulatory barriers to use of fossil fuels and forget about industrial policy, but instead they are doing the opposite. At least Trump got that right. And the idea that the Democratic Party cares about the middle class is laughable -- look at my native state of California. I figure the California high-speed rail fiasco is the model for any type of industrial policy implemented under Democratic rule - tons of money frittered away on consultants and other grifters, but no choo-choo train at the end of the day. Just another inflationary vote-buying and fundraising mechanism.
The pre-war industrial policy of every WWII combatant was junk.
1) Everyone spent too much on worthless Battleships.
2) The US torpedoes didn't work, like at all.
3) The French didn't put radios in their tanks.
4) The German tanks actually weren't that good and their military buildup was unsustainable and not scalable.
5) The Japanese had little merchant marine despite wanting to protect a giant overseas empire. They also had no way to replace lost pilots.
6) The soviets didn't make enough support equipment or spare parts for the big ticket items that ended up breaking down during Barbarossa. They never really solved this, the US just lend leased them what they lacked.
The only thing people kind of got right is that the war in the air would be critical, but it turned out different then most thought in the end (the bomber will always get through).
If the combatants had poured more resources into things pre-war it probably would have turned out the same, lots of waste on dead ends.
Scott Alexander argues somewhat oddly in the comments about self-reported bisexuality versus "true" bisexuality, because it has rapidly changed from a few percent to 20-25%. See for yourselves. (I suspect, however, that all the data collected were self-reported, so now what?) There is also the appearance of "Long COVID" which really merits a deeper investigation in itself.
In a somewhat different setting, I expect SA would tear this to pieces in an article with parts I-VI.
Was it the peak of US conservative thought when free market capitalism was a central part of America's brand? The Washington Consensus has been criticized alot, but was it so wrong? Given the universal appeal of protectionism as an idea that sounds right, how was it rejected on a popular level for so long. How did the idea of international free trade make it to the top? And why has it vanished with little fanfare? Who stopped caring and thinking about it and why?
> Attitudes toward mental illness nowadays are weird. There are disorders that we can medicalize, like ADHD and depression. But otherwise, we seem to go out of our way to deny that treatment is appropriate.
Seems like this largely depends on what the costs of the "illness" or "disorder" are. ADHD and depression impose significant costs on the person who suffers from them. Homosexuality isn't sensible to me, but it doesn't impose any particular costs.
Things like hypochondria entail a large spectrum and it's probably not appropriate to always recommend treatment. I have a friend (a doctor!) who says she has long covid every once in a while. She doesn't seem at all affected by in a meaningful way to me. So, I think, fine, let her think what she wants. I'm not going to provoke an argument or suggest she wastes time and money curing her of a shallow belief that doesn't impose any costs on her. But someone who insists they can't leave their house or something, if medical science determines there's nothing wrong with them, they should probably see a psychiatrist.
Noah Smith is like an adult version of those teen TikTok influencers the Biden White House uses. He's completely partisan, banal and lockstep with the center left establishment, never having an opinion that would be out of place in the NYT or that would not get him called on at a WH press conference. And he aggressively censors dissenting views in his comments which is lame.
What Arnold calls mental illness, Thomas Szasz called "problems of living." The terminology matters.
Mental illness entails medical treatment. Problems of living may be addressed by traditional helpers; for example, friends, teachers, coaches, den mothers, priests or rabbis.
I would add that problems of living have multiplied with modernity. Here are some causes:
-- Technology shock (e.g., potent mind drugs, contraception, social media, fast food, digital pornography).
-- Rigid educational institutions (whence wildly high prevalence of "ADHD" among boys).
-- Increase in assortative mating by educational attainment.
-- Poorly designed welfare safety nets and tax schedules, which discourage work.
Green Energy makes electricity more expensive and less reliable, which undercuts the goal of reshoring manufacturing. If they really wanted domestic manufacturing to expand, they would remove regulatory barriers to use of fossil fuels and forget about industrial policy, but instead they are doing the opposite. At least Trump got that right. And the idea that the Democratic Party cares about the middle class is laughable -- look at my native state of California. I figure the California high-speed rail fiasco is the model for any type of industrial policy implemented under Democratic rule - tons of money frittered away on consultants and other grifters, but no choo-choo train at the end of the day. Just another inflationary vote-buying and fundraising mechanism.
The pre-war industrial policy of every WWII combatant was junk.
1) Everyone spent too much on worthless Battleships.
2) The US torpedoes didn't work, like at all.
3) The French didn't put radios in their tanks.
4) The German tanks actually weren't that good and their military buildup was unsustainable and not scalable.
5) The Japanese had little merchant marine despite wanting to protect a giant overseas empire. They also had no way to replace lost pilots.
6) The soviets didn't make enough support equipment or spare parts for the big ticket items that ended up breaking down during Barbarossa. They never really solved this, the US just lend leased them what they lacked.
The only thing people kind of got right is that the war in the air would be critical, but it turned out different then most thought in the end (the bomber will always get through).
If the combatants had poured more resources into things pre-war it probably would have turned out the same, lots of waste on dead ends.
Scott Alexander argues somewhat oddly in the comments about self-reported bisexuality versus "true" bisexuality, because it has rapidly changed from a few percent to 20-25%. See for yourselves. (I suspect, however, that all the data collected were self-reported, so now what?) There is also the appearance of "Long COVID" which really merits a deeper investigation in itself.
In a somewhat different setting, I expect SA would tear this to pieces in an article with parts I-VI.
However that may be, not his strongest work.
Was it the peak of US conservative thought when free market capitalism was a central part of America's brand? The Washington Consensus has been criticized alot, but was it so wrong? Given the universal appeal of protectionism as an idea that sounds right, how was it rejected on a popular level for so long. How did the idea of international free trade make it to the top? And why has it vanished with little fanfare? Who stopped caring and thinking about it and why?
> Attitudes toward mental illness nowadays are weird. There are disorders that we can medicalize, like ADHD and depression. But otherwise, we seem to go out of our way to deny that treatment is appropriate.
Seems like this largely depends on what the costs of the "illness" or "disorder" are. ADHD and depression impose significant costs on the person who suffers from them. Homosexuality isn't sensible to me, but it doesn't impose any particular costs.
Things like hypochondria entail a large spectrum and it's probably not appropriate to always recommend treatment. I have a friend (a doctor!) who says she has long covid every once in a while. She doesn't seem at all affected by in a meaningful way to me. So, I think, fine, let her think what she wants. I'm not going to provoke an argument or suggest she wastes time and money curing her of a shallow belief that doesn't impose any costs on her. But someone who insists they can't leave their house or something, if medical science determines there's nothing wrong with them, they should probably see a psychiatrist.
Regarding the Clark Medal, academia these days is cheese throughout, from physics and all the way down, so I'm not really surprised.
Yes. Smith occasionally has odd views. Ridicule of taxing net CO2 emissions is another.
Haha. Totally agree with you take on Noah Smith.
i am not a fan of either Noah S or Zucman.
As an aside i wonder what Arnold things regarding reading too much and thinking too little? Where is a possible equilibrium?