Why I think the P factor is real and also why I am not so fond of it.
If you listen to Joseph Henrich he talks about intelligence being made up of a massive number of genes. And there is always the interplay with the environment that contributes greatly as well. Even the womb is an environmental factor. Similarly for the P factor and various personality disorders and mental illnesses it is likely a massive number of genes truly affecting things with environmental inputs still being significant. With the C factor Arnold mentioned previously one could likely spend decades researching and still end up finding the biggest contributors to the C factor being intelligence and impulsivity. This whole area comes across to me as similar to the study of defining cognition itself, which Robin Hanson described as an incredible sink of one's time because there are so many theories and rabbit holes that just consume endless research and thought time without going anywhere.
Also, when it comes to genes that continue to survive they are usually doing something beneficial while imposing costs in other areas with a constant fight between the tradeoffs and interplay with other genes. Like some number of genes that can have some contribution to homosexuality also having links to increased frequency and sexual partners in heterosexuals. Another example, there is no psychopath gene, but there is a gene linked to psychopathy that is also present in Chimpanzees and these Chimpanzees are more violent. This gene survived the Wrangham described self domestication down to humans in the present.
When it comes to schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder I suspect there are genes that contribute to greater creativity and intelligence that also contribute to these disorders. The genes continue to survive through a high risk/high reward strategy, which is why they are present, but not normative. I say all this coming from a place where I have a bi-polar sister, an inner life nearly as rich as Arnold's, and two sub-scales of my IQ that are 30 points higher than two other sub-scales of my IQ. Whatever genetic lottery winnings I have there is a good chance of them being the genetic lottery losses of my sibling. The view from where I sit with regard to Arnold's intelligence level, success, and creativity in life is linked with the bi-polar disorder you have disclosed. Maybe I am just telling myself stories, but I see exceptional tails of both ends of the distribution confounding any p and c factor story. The Scott Alexander piece is a good marginal step, but the end where he talks about a general factor for physical disease as well really hits with my overall story/view of things.
The only thing both wings of congress can agree upon is the military industrial complex, and little else.
What I want to see most from government is school choice and bigger child tax breaks.
Obviously one party won't endorse school choice under any circumstances, it's like a core value.
For child tax credits the block seems to be that Democrats only want them to go to poor people who don't have jobs, while Republicans want them to be broader based and have work requirements. I don't really value the Democratic version (dysgenic, probably excludes me). Also kids don't vote so it's hard to prioritize that use of funds versus like Medicare or Ukraine or something.
Basically, if I want any of what I want to pass, my only path is Republican supermajorities to win elections.
Re: "You usually hear about general factors in the context of IQ. All intellectual tasks are correlated; people who are skilled at math also tend to be skilled at reading, or chess, or solving analogies. After learning how good someone is at math, reading, chess, etc, you can do statistics and get a separate number representing how intelligent they are overall.
Recent research has suggested a similar 'general factor of psychopathology'. All mental illnesses are correlated; people with depression also tend to have more anxiety, psychosis, attention problems, etc. As with intelligence, the statistical structure doesn’t look like a bunch of pairwise correlations, it looks like a single underlying cause." — Scott Alexander, at link embedded in Arnold's post
If I happen to be good at, say, reading, then few persons would treat me in ways that would make me good at chess, too. If prowess at reading and prowess at chess are correlated, the two talents might well have a common cause: intelligence. Moreover, intelligence might be largely a natural endowment.
By contrast, if various "mental illnesses" are correlated, social feedback might be a common cause. For example, if I have anxiety, I might then avoid interactions with others. In turn, others might hesitate to befriend, enlist, enroll, or employ me. Isolation gets socially reinforced. I become depressed about my inability to pursue any opportunities. Experts prescribe drugs as treatment. I self-medicate with more pleasurable drugs. My social integration becomes tenuous, full of friction and encounters with law enforcement. Perhaps I become paranoid. Etc.
My point is that social mechanisms might cause additional "mental illnesses" to arise as complements to an initial psychological problem. My intuition is that this phenomenon is empirically important. It is a different mechanism than a general natural endowment at work across psychological problems.
Back to the comparison with intelligence. Of course, social feedback often may play some causal role in correlations among prowesses at reading, chess, and math. For example, prowess at math in middle school might earn an invitation to join a chess club. But my intuition is that social feedback mechanisms play a more pervasive, powerful role in correlations among psychological problems.
Of course, there might also be an underlying general cause. The causality might be partly general endowment, partly social feedback.
2) When we opened up people started spending it and inflation went up.
3) The fed should have started raising rates a year earlier than it did. It should have looked at the pops in housing and asset prices and seen it as a kind of stored up inflation pressure. But it uses OER and other backward looking data so it took them a whole year.
BTW, Lawrence Summers and others could see through the "transitory" narrative back in 2021 (which was pushed simply because we had a Democratic president), so the Fed should have been able to.
4) Having started a year late, maybe the Fed is behind the ball again and we already beat inflation but they will lower to slowly. Once again looking at house prices is a window into the future.
Arnold claims: "prices over the next year are likely to rise faster than the Fed’s 2 percent target.", but I believe that core cpi minus housing will not rise so much. Since energy is now more stabilized, except for gov't regulatory compliance increases, and most Covid/ China supply chain disruptions have been mostly market solved.
The monetary inflation will again be reflected housing and financial asset inflation; stock price increases are not considered "inflation" but do absorb gov't printed money.
“All mental illnesses are correlated; people with depression also tend to have more anxiety, psychosis, attention problems, etc. ... the statistical structure doesn’t look like a bunch of pairwise correlations, it looks like a single underlying cause.” That underlying cause being ‘free’, ‘democratic’ Government? And mental illness now afflicts probably 80% of the population - see Covid, climate change, war on plastics, war on meat and the lunatics still wearing masks.
I would agree most mental illness is correlated to various types of freedom and it seems it is made worse by many or all of these freedoms. That includes things like wealth and social disconnection that mostly aren't government, at least not directly.
I wasn't much interested in masks before vaccination and not at all after but that's me. If I were older, overweight, didn't exercise, or had one of any number of conditions like chemo for cancer OR I lived with someone with any of these conditions, I might feel differently. I'd be careful who you call a lunatic.
Correction - I voluntarily wore masks a couple times after vaccination when I had Covid.
"prices over the next year are likely to rise faster than the Fed’s 2 percent target."
Hey Arnold - how about a bet? If 2023 core inflation comes in over 3% I'll upgrade to founding, but if it comes in less than you give me a complementary subscription? Or less than 2%?
I actually think 2.5% is pretty likely, but while that would make you technically correct, the 'feeling' you give, but don't say, is that the Fed still needs to raise rates more to reduce inflation. Or maybe you think I who think 3% or less vs your 2% or more isn't worth betting or arguing about.
(Predictions are hard, especially about the future. Yet all investments are bets that your money grows faster in the investment than in the bank.)
"Hey Arnold - how about a bet? If 2023 core inflation comes in over 3% I'll upgrade to founding, but if it comes in less than you give me a complementary subscription? " you're on!
Re Scott Alexander “I’m now suspicious that factor analysis might be fake, sorry.”:
Related, on the limitations of the big five,
“The Big Five survey instrument doesn’t seem to measure the same changes from study to study, but this is taken as support for the results of the latest study. The underlying construct is not questioned. Simply measure the Big Five and report how they correlate with literally anything else, or even with themselves at different points in time, and you’ve performed socially valid science, regardless of your hypothesis and your results. Such is the power of the Big Five.”
Canalization - almost from the first word I thought it supported what you shared from Brayan Caplan a couple days ago. It makes it even harder for me to understand how Alexander is on the other side in that disagreement.
Why I think the P factor is real and also why I am not so fond of it.
If you listen to Joseph Henrich he talks about intelligence being made up of a massive number of genes. And there is always the interplay with the environment that contributes greatly as well. Even the womb is an environmental factor. Similarly for the P factor and various personality disorders and mental illnesses it is likely a massive number of genes truly affecting things with environmental inputs still being significant. With the C factor Arnold mentioned previously one could likely spend decades researching and still end up finding the biggest contributors to the C factor being intelligence and impulsivity. This whole area comes across to me as similar to the study of defining cognition itself, which Robin Hanson described as an incredible sink of one's time because there are so many theories and rabbit holes that just consume endless research and thought time without going anywhere.
Also, when it comes to genes that continue to survive they are usually doing something beneficial while imposing costs in other areas with a constant fight between the tradeoffs and interplay with other genes. Like some number of genes that can have some contribution to homosexuality also having links to increased frequency and sexual partners in heterosexuals. Another example, there is no psychopath gene, but there is a gene linked to psychopathy that is also present in Chimpanzees and these Chimpanzees are more violent. This gene survived the Wrangham described self domestication down to humans in the present.
When it comes to schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder I suspect there are genes that contribute to greater creativity and intelligence that also contribute to these disorders. The genes continue to survive through a high risk/high reward strategy, which is why they are present, but not normative. I say all this coming from a place where I have a bi-polar sister, an inner life nearly as rich as Arnold's, and two sub-scales of my IQ that are 30 points higher than two other sub-scales of my IQ. Whatever genetic lottery winnings I have there is a good chance of them being the genetic lottery losses of my sibling. The view from where I sit with regard to Arnold's intelligence level, success, and creativity in life is linked with the bi-polar disorder you have disclosed. Maybe I am just telling myself stories, but I see exceptional tails of both ends of the distribution confounding any p and c factor story. The Scott Alexander piece is a good marginal step, but the end where he talks about a general factor for physical disease as well really hits with my overall story/view of things.
The only thing both wings of congress can agree upon is the military industrial complex, and little else.
What I want to see most from government is school choice and bigger child tax breaks.
Obviously one party won't endorse school choice under any circumstances, it's like a core value.
For child tax credits the block seems to be that Democrats only want them to go to poor people who don't have jobs, while Republicans want them to be broader based and have work requirements. I don't really value the Democratic version (dysgenic, probably excludes me). Also kids don't vote so it's hard to prioritize that use of funds versus like Medicare or Ukraine or something.
Basically, if I want any of what I want to pass, my only path is Republican supermajorities to win elections.
Re: "You usually hear about general factors in the context of IQ. All intellectual tasks are correlated; people who are skilled at math also tend to be skilled at reading, or chess, or solving analogies. After learning how good someone is at math, reading, chess, etc, you can do statistics and get a separate number representing how intelligent they are overall.
Recent research has suggested a similar 'general factor of psychopathology'. All mental illnesses are correlated; people with depression also tend to have more anxiety, psychosis, attention problems, etc. As with intelligence, the statistical structure doesn’t look like a bunch of pairwise correlations, it looks like a single underlying cause." — Scott Alexander, at link embedded in Arnold's post
If I happen to be good at, say, reading, then few persons would treat me in ways that would make me good at chess, too. If prowess at reading and prowess at chess are correlated, the two talents might well have a common cause: intelligence. Moreover, intelligence might be largely a natural endowment.
By contrast, if various "mental illnesses" are correlated, social feedback might be a common cause. For example, if I have anxiety, I might then avoid interactions with others. In turn, others might hesitate to befriend, enlist, enroll, or employ me. Isolation gets socially reinforced. I become depressed about my inability to pursue any opportunities. Experts prescribe drugs as treatment. I self-medicate with more pleasurable drugs. My social integration becomes tenuous, full of friction and encounters with law enforcement. Perhaps I become paranoid. Etc.
My point is that social mechanisms might cause additional "mental illnesses" to arise as complements to an initial psychological problem. My intuition is that this phenomenon is empirically important. It is a different mechanism than a general natural endowment at work across psychological problems.
Back to the comparison with intelligence. Of course, social feedback often may play some causal role in correlations among prowesses at reading, chess, and math. For example, prowess at math in middle school might earn an invitation to join a chess club. But my intuition is that social feedback mechanisms play a more pervasive, powerful role in correlations among psychological problems.
Of course, there might also be an underlying general cause. The causality might be partly general endowment, partly social feedback.
Kevin,
1) Congress spent a bunch of money during COVID.
2) When we opened up people started spending it and inflation went up.
3) The fed should have started raising rates a year earlier than it did. It should have looked at the pops in housing and asset prices and seen it as a kind of stored up inflation pressure. But it uses OER and other backward looking data so it took them a whole year.
BTW, Lawrence Summers and others could see through the "transitory" narrative back in 2021 (which was pushed simply because we had a Democratic president), so the Fed should have been able to.
4) Having started a year late, maybe the Fed is behind the ball again and we already beat inflation but they will lower to slowly. Once again looking at house prices is a window into the future.
Arnold claims: "prices over the next year are likely to rise faster than the Fed’s 2 percent target.", but I believe that core cpi minus housing will not rise so much. Since energy is now more stabilized, except for gov't regulatory compliance increases, and most Covid/ China supply chain disruptions have been mostly market solved.
The monetary inflation will again be reflected housing and financial asset inflation; stock price increases are not considered "inflation" but do absorb gov't printed money.
“All mental illnesses are correlated; people with depression also tend to have more anxiety, psychosis, attention problems, etc. ... the statistical structure doesn’t look like a bunch of pairwise correlations, it looks like a single underlying cause.” That underlying cause being ‘free’, ‘democratic’ Government? And mental illness now afflicts probably 80% of the population - see Covid, climate change, war on plastics, war on meat and the lunatics still wearing masks.
I would agree most mental illness is correlated to various types of freedom and it seems it is made worse by many or all of these freedoms. That includes things like wealth and social disconnection that mostly aren't government, at least not directly.
I wasn't much interested in masks before vaccination and not at all after but that's me. If I were older, overweight, didn't exercise, or had one of any number of conditions like chemo for cancer OR I lived with someone with any of these conditions, I might feel differently. I'd be careful who you call a lunatic.
Correction - I voluntarily wore masks a couple times after vaccination when I had Covid.
"prices over the next year are likely to rise faster than the Fed’s 2 percent target."
Hey Arnold - how about a bet? If 2023 core inflation comes in over 3% I'll upgrade to founding, but if it comes in less than you give me a complementary subscription? Or less than 2%?
I actually think 2.5% is pretty likely, but while that would make you technically correct, the 'feeling' you give, but don't say, is that the Fed still needs to raise rates more to reduce inflation. Or maybe you think I who think 3% or less vs your 2% or more isn't worth betting or arguing about.
(Predictions are hard, especially about the future. Yet all investments are bets that your money grows faster in the investment than in the bank.)
"Hey Arnold - how about a bet? If 2023 core inflation comes in over 3% I'll upgrade to founding, but if it comes in less than you give me a complementary subscription? " you're on!
I don't recall anyone using core cpi ex housing in 2021 when it was running at 15% annualized.
Re Scott Alexander “I’m now suspicious that factor analysis might be fake, sorry.”:
Related, on the limitations of the big five,
“The Big Five survey instrument doesn’t seem to measure the same changes from study to study, but this is taken as support for the results of the latest study. The underlying construct is not questioned. Simply measure the Big Five and report how they correlate with literally anything else, or even with themselves at different points in time, and you’ve performed socially valid science, regardless of your hypothesis and your results. Such is the power of the Big Five.”
https://carcinisation.com/2020/07/04/the-ongoing-accomplishment-of-the-big-five/
Canalization - almost from the first word I thought it supported what you shared from Brayan Caplan a couple days ago. It makes it even harder for me to understand how Alexander is on the other side in that disagreement.