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25d ago
No. You still have downside and weird exposures to volatility. A better move is to change your equity allocation to a lower amount. Retail quant investment strategies just work worse than holding a cheap index fund. It’s more trading in those vehicles and the funds themselves don’t have any alpha.
Now if you personally have a correct view on volatility they would outperform holding spy I guess, but if you have alpha in predicting volatility then you should be running a volatility fund and be quite wealthy. And you would generally be running your own trading execution at a smaller fund size then the retail products and avoid some slippage. There is nothing wrong with being a trader and many people make money doing the job but the retail products in general are going to be worse performing than a simpler asset allocation with lower fees and less slippage.
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25d ago
I mostly support older people being in politics. I think politics should be a 2nd or third career. You should need to be successful in something else before becoming a politician in most cases. Maybe 25% of politicians should be career politicians. You do need some young blood. And term limits are bad because you actually do need people with relationships and experience with running government. If the ideal political career starts at 55-60 then you are going to have a fair amount of old people.
I think people complaining about old people in politics are essentially just doing the grass is greener over there. We might be a too old now but I think the argument for the average politician should be well above the median age is fairly strong.
Biden was too old. Feinstein probably too. RBG should have retired. Personally I think people who say Trump is old could mostly not do his job at his energy level. I would say stupid things all the time if I were on camera and kept up his schedule. We may be on average 5-10 years too old for the average politician but they are not way too old in my opinion.
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29d ago
To some extent a modern state has to be less free and some definitions of Democracy. The Commons are much bigger today and there are a lot more regulations that need to happen to make society work. And everything happening all at once to. Relate a modern economy is more complicated than any one person can track at once to vote so you have to outsource a lot of decision making.
1-2% of GDP tax rates are a thing of the past. It’s likely much smaller than we have now but 1-2% of gdp to state capacity wouldn’t work at modern living standard. You actually do need a FAA. Though the TSA and the rest of the parasitic class attached to it probably not. Someone has to coordinate the commons.
Like one example today is the skascraper that had structural issues in NYC and maybe might collapse. I think they have $700 million in it. A libertarian world I don’t think can deal with that coordination. You can wipe out the builders money but if it collapses it’s probably 10-40 in damages and then the builders just bankrupt.
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29d ago
I always thought about working in a kitchen as a post-made enough money leisure job. It’s hard work but seems more fun than a lot of jobs. Big issue would be the pace of cooking and probably gets repetitive like any job. But cooking is essentially a leisure job for the wealthy.
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1mo ago
I think most people would prefer clean streets and nice things versus whatever freedom means.
Isn’t that what Heaven is suppose to be? Ruled by a dictator but nice things?
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1mo ago
I didn’t know Yudkowsky blogged there. So then it’s more of a direct seeding. I never see Hanson talked about here but was aware the marginal revolution blog was basically the right leaning pathway into the community.
I don’t believe this is true in all environments. It is better for European societies, but a lot of other areas seem better with other systems. The Monarchy has worked well for the Saudis. Africa hasn’t been great with Democracy or much of Latam.
It’s not the overwhelming thinv that Capitalism has had over communism.
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1mo ago
I have not looked into them closely. But Hanson did have a full model for probability of alien life and great filters so he’s clearly thought a lot about aliens and what seems possible in what we know about physics. His academic training in physics and Econ/social sciences is a good of background as anyone to think about these things. He is smarter than so I give his opinion some weight.
I also don’t think he’s at 100% it’s aliens but he does have a probability that’s what is going on.
I mostly posted him because I think he’s a solid thinker who was early on 2 themes (prediction markets/crypto). Someone who is early is often wrong. I’ve quit reading him because I’ve already internalized a lot of his models but probably should be read more.
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1mo ago
You are behind the times. Embracing aliens is within the Overton window now. Tyler Cowen jumped on board too. I still think it’s a long shot to be true but we do have a lot of military evidence of something going on.
If you start with a Bayesian view that aliens are retarted but then you keep getting new military grade video showing unexplainable crafts then at some point you need to move to a % that it’s real.
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1mo ago
Robin Hanson wrote an article recently on how his politics have drifted. For those not familiar with his he was one of the early rationalist adjacent that likely filters a lot of people here. As a GMU professor he blogged like the rest of their Econ department and marginal revolution which was much bigger for leading people to SSC. Also early intellectual promoter of prediction markets like in the ‘90s and use to co-blog with Hal Finney.
A few highlights: “ While it is okay to fiercely resist the immediate decline of a cherished value today, like say democracy or gender-equality, 3 top LLMs agree that is now taboo to explicitly work to help your culture persist, reproduce, and have continued influence centuries into the future.”
“ I’m not especially into liberty, democracy, legal due-process, or immigration, beyond their instrumental values in achieving other things.”
A lot of comments on cultural drift and risks with that. The second comment strikes me because I feel like I’ve been thinking about those issues a lot lately. And I feel like I too am moving to a political philosophy of common goodism and the other ideas are just means to achieve the good. Perhaps this is just the standard libertarian to fascism pipeline but I do think a lot of people are questioning whether America is still on a workable path. It’s easy to be a liberal-libertarian when society is broadly good/stable but in harder times more pragmatic ideas emerge.
Then he just comments on things everyone else has noticed - parasitic classes in big cities (often unions) just crushing QOL for the non-rich.
I use to read Hanson a lot, but I only read him a few times a year now. Some of his early insights turned out coming true. It’s interesting to me how minds that shared a lot of common thinking patterns end up developing similar conclusions today. Democracy, Liberty, due-process, and immigration were likely things I viewed as very positive a decade ago. Now I would likely consider them unimportant.
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1mo ago
I would prefer to have health insurance. There are no free lunches. The costs of prep makes health insurance too expensive for normal people.
Your irrational fear and the gay union made health care too expensive for people.
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1mo ago
Maybe I am not using walkable in the vernacular in the US but basically do all functions of life within a 10 min walk. Gyms, bar, Church, grocery store, potentially work all without needing a car. Houston even if we just limit it to walkable neighborhoods I remember limited options.
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1mo ago
I did live in Houston for a month during Covid. I’ll be honest I not consider most of that video as highly walkable. And most would seem like you need to drive into a strip of things to do and not walk from him.
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1mo ago
I am not a microbiologists but I don’t think it’s possible for blood borne viruses to just mutate into an airborne disease. And my gut says that when it becomes airborne it would need to change its structure to an extent that would activate other immune defenses.
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1mo ago
I feel like a country should be able to be fairly rich just doing things that seem basic well. A country that adopts modern tech but doesn’t invent it. Has a good bureaucracy that doesn’t mess things up too much. Basically running a lot of constant costs businesses with limited moats. This feels like Australia to me. Which has mining instead of cattle. Especially if you do not have large amounts of minorities that are purely on welfare/cause crime. This is likely where Argentina should try to get to and become Australia of S America in terms of wealth.
Mexico is the opposite of this kind of economy as they have two better international cash crops (US trade/Drugs) which make the wealthier but always feels like a poor country because they have a lot of dysfunction.
He should be disqualified for not being American. Trump admin literally had their birth tourism case last week and he’s exactly what they and (me) are against. The only exposure he’s had of America is being born here for 2 months and leaving.
Edit: wanted to add I think it’s the right call reversing this red. All the post saying corruption or US bullying but honestly I think they just fixed a mistake. I don’t think he should be playing for US team because he’s not an American.
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1mo ago
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I did not self-deport. Overstating as I’m still in US half the time. As some of us have come to believe my self deportation is to one of two of the US allies. It’s aligned with building America.
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America being a creedal nation is false. It’s only creedal in how it’s a new Europe but the America story has always been fundamentally a European tribe. 80% maybe even more of humans could never be America. They can’t build or maintain institutions.
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1mo ago
It’s a lot more than that. Obamacare requires Prep. Which I believe is $20k per year. I believe 4% of men are gay so if they all took it that alone adds like $1k/year to what insurance needs to charge to break even. And lots of other required coverages
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1mo ago
But who does it make sense to have it? Especially when you can just sign up the following year. At 7k a year and cash discounts you need a significant injury to make it worth getting.
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1mo ago
That’s why I wasn’t sure if the posts was satire. I don’t have insurance as a single male. I groked what it would costs a month for a single 35 year old male and it’s 600 a month. Makes no sense to carry insurance in US unless employee sponsored. Better to just pay cash.
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1mo ago
Ok but that’s not $100 a month. It’s a hidden wage subsidy. Costs the employer way more.
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1mo ago
I think a lot more countries could field a team in basketball. The gap in basketball between US and #2 in baseball was huge. The gap between US in baseball to the 2,3,4 teams today are likely smaller.
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1mo ago
I think modern media has exposed that you can have multiple narratives on the news and the prior big 3 period was just the ability to maintain 1 narrative. Americans were all “ the channel for left-handed contact lens wearing model train enthusiasts in the south-west", but because the media was an oligopoly you could create Americans who were all the same thing.
Well yes your not suppose to contemplate and it’s for your own benefit. International Diplomacy kind of works like that sometimes. You, us, the government may not want to escalate things if he was actually killed by Russia/Iran.
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