But how do you explain people who intuitively understand things? Mathematicians, for example, intuitively understand math. Psychologists and experienced authors intuitively understand people. We gain intuition through education and experience, which in turn improve our understanding and sensitivity towards the truth. Expert mathematicians, for example, _can_ have a good sense of whether a theorem is true before they prove it. And in general, people who possess scientific knowledge can intuitively know things.

I do agree with your intent, though — we need to possess humility about the accuracy of our beliefs. The author can’t factually know what other people feel and think without asking them.

But we also owe some deference to wisdom. Being wise is like being an expert darts players: you’re better able to throw darts into the bulls-eye than most people. If we develop a wisdom worth trusting, we should trust it.

But most people aren’t investors, either. Typical people buy stock for their returns, not for their productive capacity. My point is that’s speculation.

Most people have a speculator’s mindset. They would be happy to make a windfall on the market. For example, who wouldn’t be happy to own a plot in downtown Detroit before an economic boom raised land prices? Or stock in a startup before an established company announced they would acquire it?

Although someone who puts money in the stock market for retirement may intend to save money, since a 401k seems like just any another asset, but it’s quite different from other assets: Bank accounts fund lending to companies for productive investments. Homes provide a residence. Bonds provide money to countries and companies for investment. But when individuals put money in the stock market, it’s because they hope the asset will appreciate.

> […G]ambling in financial markets often goes undetected […] because individuals confuse their actions [i.e., speculating] with investing.

The typical person speculates on the market — buying low during their working years, and hopefully selling high during their retired years.

(1) Industry. Why did the US government aggressively pursue a “post-industrial” economy? China was essentially given the keys to the world’s industries by US leaders in politics and businesses. It’s natural for China, as an industrial leader, to have a bigger role in the world.

(2) Key technologies. Why did the US pursue a laissez-faire approach to high-value technologies, such as solar and battery-powered vehicles? “Let things happen” is an unrealistic economic policy for areas of the market that are winner-takes-all. It’s natural for China, as a leader in key technologies, to have a bigger world stage.

(3) Public education. Why has the US allowed high-quality, regional newspapers to implode? The public is being whipped up to ever greater frenzies by increasingly poor media, which has led to increasingly low-quality leaders, for example, in the Republican Party. It’s natural for countries with more well-informed governments, such as China, to have a larger role in the world.

What happens to an object as it moves from a high rate-of-expansion region to a low rate-of-expansion region?

• Character. Is the public trusting? Are they anxious?

• Framing. Is the institution described compassionately, for example, as a national champion or underdog? Or is it described as a villain?

• Sectarianism. Are there motivated partisans who want to disparage the institution?

• Evidence. What particular evidence exists for unethical behavior?

• Ethics. What unethical behaviors have the institution done?

I am skeptical that institutions have become less ethical today compared to the past (e.g., today we would be appalled if a European country waged war against another state to sell narcotics, but Britain literally did that 150 years ago), so I have a hunch that other factors are the primary drivers for declining trust.

We frequently only posses recall for one direction of a fact. Why? One direction may be important (what is Tom Cruise’s favorite color?), but the other direction may not (whose favorite color is green?).

So if we inquire into whether LLMs actually possess intelligence, their asymmetric knowledge seems similar to human knowledge and hence seems consistent with intelligence, rather than problematic.

The forward relationship of a fact (What is Tom Cruise’s favorite color? Green) may be worth knowing, but the reverse relationship (Who’s favorite color is green? A billion people, including Tom Cruise) may not be worth knowing.

Sure, there’s some romance from hand-harvested ice, but you can’t beat the price and purity of ice from a freezer.

Aristotle called your topic “First Philosophy” because it studies the primary substance that underlies everything.

The core regions resemble the developed world, with similar levels of education, wealth, and political perspectives.

The peripheral regions are much worse off. Entire states, such as West Virginia, are peripheral. Think low wealth, low life expectancies, and entirely different politics from the rest of the developed world.

If you average values from both regions, you won’t really be characterizing either of them. The value will be too low for everyone in the core, and it will be too high for everyone in the periphery.

So when comparing the US to other countries, you’ll get a much more accurate picture by providing separate summary statistics for the core and periphery.

One of the Fed’s primary methods to control inflation is adjusting economic demand by making loans cheaper or more expensive.

In our current regime of fixed mortgages, new home buyers disproportionately bear the cost of the Fed’s effort to reduce inflation, since only they need to pay the higher costs. But if everyone had ARMs, the cost of reducing inflation would be spread out over everyone with a mortgage, so the pool of people affected would be significantly wider and the needed interest rate increases to fix inflation would be significantly lower.

Although Quintilian agreed that public schools can be a bad influence, he argued that parents were the worst influence on their own kids.

“If only we did not ourselves damage our children’s characters! We ruin their infancy by spoiling them from the start. That soft upbringing which we call indulgence destroys the sinews of mind and body. If a toddler crawls around in purple, what will he not want when he grows up? […] No wonder [why children have bad character]: it was we who taught them, they heard it all from us. They see our mistresses, our male lovers; every dinner party echoes with obscene songs; things are to be seen which it is shameful to name. […] The wretched children learn these things before they know they are wrong. This is what makes them dissolute and spineless: they do not get these vices from the schools, they import them [vices] into them [the schools].”

My company has multiple groups in different states including Colorado, and in anticipation of needing to post salary ranges for our open positions in Colorado, my group (with no positions in Colorado) preemptively bumped up everyone’s salaries to the midpoint of their pay bands to avoid anyone becoming frustrated if they learned they were in the bottom half. Despite the preemptive adjustments, a colleague of mine became angry and quit when they found out their salary wasn’t at the very top of their position’s pay range.

So pay transparency laws are having a big impact—not only in the obvious cases of candidates negotiating salaries in the states that passed the pay transparency laws, but also for average employees in other states who didn’t even need to do anything except learn how much their labor was worth.

In theory public media like PBS and NPR should address the gap, but those organizations tend to depend on donations from the wealthy, so their coverage skews towards their interests and conversational style.

I think the government should provide newspaper subscription vouchers to the poor.