Commonplace Booking in the Digital Age
I’d like to first observe that, since we created an industrialized society, we have been trying to increase our productivity through planners, todo lists, task trackers, and various sundry mechanisms, each of which has its own style and tradeoffs. After highlighting some…
The Capitalist Religion
I was listening to Yuval Harari’s lecture series about his book Sapiens. He classified Capitalism as a religion and convinced me that I had already fully bought in. I’ve been practicing its creed without recognizing it as a religion. I…
Statistical Measures
In the stats book that I used at college, A First Course in Probability (sixth ed) by Sheldon Ross, I found two problems that seem paradoxical when juxtaposed. Can you explain the opposite results? Ch 2 Axioms of Probability, Self-Test Exercise #15….
Acer Swift 1
I decided to upgrade my laptop, and chose to get the Acer Swift 1 SF113-31-P6XP (the rose gold color). The Acer website indicated that this model would have a keyboard backlight, but it does not. It has 3 stuck pixels…
Debunking the Intrinsic Value Argument
I have to admit to having updated my mind about the “intrinsic value” argument that many people cite as a justification for treating gold as a money (vs paper currency). I’ve previously attempted to explain away this argument as a…
Cognitive Bias in Artificial Intelligence
I believe that artificial intelligence will suffer from cognitive biases, just as humans do. They might be altogether different kinds of bias, I won’t speculate about the details. I came to this conclusion by reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” by…
Your vote doesn’t count, but it does matter.
Under their current political system, the American chattel have a “civic duty” to voice their opinion about who they want as a representative. Every 4 years potential presidents spend billions on campaigns to excite the plebeians to “get out and…
Notes: Market Failure: An argument both for and against government (David Friedman)
I just attended the Young American’s for Liberty state convention yesterday in order to hear the venerable David Friedman speak. Below are my notes highlighting the main points of the talk. You may recognize some examples and positions if you’ve…
Notes: Problems with Libertarianism
David Friedman gave a talk Problems with Libertarianism: Hard Problems (and how to avoid them). What rights do you have against a criminal? If your only right is to re-claim the stolen property, then at-worst the thief breaks even. To…
Bidding to establish Terms of a Contract
As a preliminary, I feel obligated to mention that writing a contract only protects yourself on paper. The real world has such complexity, and with innumerate contingencies, that any contract will fail to enumerate them all. Establishing an explicit contract…