i think the actual optimal policy is "reform this" but i also understand the willingness of people to throw out the baby with the bathwater because they dont trust any reform to actually be implemented as intended
if you fuck people with a policy after lying about it they're not gonna trust you again and you may be unable to get a sensible compromise position during the backlash
further discussion re: h1b and reported entry level jobs shortages
the vital urge to say "ok, how is this wrong" starts to fade as you get older, because you've played that game so many times that it gets tiresome and you start to think you know what that room holds
usually you're right, but it's an easy way to get stuck
second issue is the cost of doing this sort of inquiry gets higher as you accumulate more committed beliefs or expectations
once more, you're usually more likely to be "correct" at any given moment, but updating gets very costly as your world model is built out and solidified
its been a long week so tonight please relax as i relate to you the tale of a great episode in american autism
our third president, thomas jefferson, was immensely autistic
he spent much of his time inventing questionably useful devices, getting hung up on and beefing over irrelevant abstractions, pursuing unwise relationships w subordinates, and recording data for no particular reason
he combined several of these hobbies in an extended incident in the court of france where he was serving as america's ambassador ("minister plenipotentiary") in the mid 1780s, succeeding a real scientist and charmer, benjamin franklin
pulled the entire 10 volume set of a 1964 children's reading collection from a used bookstore for $18
i regard this as a colossal win
the introduction is worth reading as a contrast to contemporary pedagogical philosophy. implicit here is a colossal cultural loss
i went to the bookstore to kill time between helping out with a medical emergency but found myself moved to buy these after recalling a trip to the library yesterday with my 4yo, when i noticed the entire children's section was Feelings slop
meanwhile, in 1964:
after my first find i wandered to my favorite bookstore in Minneapolis and found another children's anthology, this one first published in the 1920s (unfortunately incomplete)
~$15, BOGO
as with the other collection, the prefaces contain much ancient wisdom lost to our time
the reason that nerds are unhappy about trump firing federal reserve people isnt because they particularly like those specific people
issue is that it makes the fed look beholden to the executive and this is a very bad outcome for economic stability
the fed hasnt covered itself in glory lately for sure but the counterfactual where its progressively and openly politicized is pretty much just a world of hyperinflation and impoverishment because thats a side effect of how unstable governments use politicized central banks
i think a steelman for "end the fed" is that we've left this absurdly powerful yet nigh defenseless institution sitting in plain sight like a loaded gun during a period of immensely high trust and as that period comes to a close someone is gonna make a first grab at the pistol
ok finally discovered a kind of lore i want to know about in a non clickbait way:
what one-shotted you?
eg for me it was 90s movies about how having a career and a house in the burbs is the worst thing that can ever happen to someone
i didn't realize i'd been Had until my 30s
everyone will give boomers and millennials shit about the social justice and narcissism, and rightly so. but the motherfuckers who tricked me into nearly ruining my life are genx
for those of you not familiar getting one shotted is getting wrecked on first contact with something. classic deployment attached