1. A guy who wants to pretend there is no danger in sex and attraction. It is nonetheless an interesting albeit highly flawed meditation on focal points and communication games.
2. The American places with surging crime are the same places with a surging middle class.
3. Noah nails the Stephen Williamson debate, many others got it wrong, badly wrong. By the way, here is Williamson’s response, and his response to Noah. Here is a good post by Scott on the debate.
4. Joe Weisenthal changes his mind about Bitcoin. Matt hasn’t.
5. Eli Dourado on the regulation of drones.
6. Daily Telegraph on Average is Over, click through to p.9.
Livejournal still exists?
Apparently, though it seems that the link is broken for me. If you really want to read a bunch of navel gazing, the google cache is http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ec9cRkkZu9YJ:squid314.livejournal.com/328528.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Also re #1, when is Tyler publishing his PUA book? What will he title it?
– An Economist Gets Laid
– Monogamy is Over
– The Great Dry Spell
or perhaps this is already covered in “Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist”?
Web 2.0 is deprecated, which means it will live on forever.
And in the future, your smart phone will be intelligent enough to tell you not to bother with it.
You do not need to be a PUA to understand this boy’s problem. He worries about the needs of others before he worries about his own and bends over backwards to cartwheel away from any possible personal boundary or social faux pas.
How do you young children learn where the boundaries are? Ah, yes, by testing them. This young man is literate. Socially, he is no smarter than my 2 year old niece.
To me it even reads like the deliberations of someone with social anxiety disorder with a (as is usual) comorbid helping of depression. That would make him omega, even.
Come to think of it, the whole point about asking to cuddle sounds aspie more than anything else.
The Greek Alphabet in this case is irrelevant. The key issue is that he is hyper-sensitive to social boundaries, and the social boundaries are not only ill-defined, they are contradictory, and not in his interest. The “conversation game” as Tyler put it, has no winning outcome for him. The interesting question is “why?” Who set up this game? To what end? Who enforces the penalties? Who reaps the rewards? Who is a true believer and who is just riding along? Are there any free-riders? Collusion attempts? There must always be danger, as Tyler said, but who is bearing the risk?
I believe the French word to describe someone like this is ‘mou, molle’.
I’ve used “let’s go cuddle” before, never a bad response, but only in the right situation
Anyway, it seems like the author missed the fact that the indirect approach is probably the best route
“eventually the conversation becomes one that couldn’t possibly happen by coincidence and you know he’s the other spy….
And okay, this is all super creepy, and I know that now, and I’m sorry for doing it, and I won’t do it again. ”
Essentially women are most annoyed that you don’t use an approach which gives them deniability. They don’t want to be approached directly because that will make them feel ‘easy’, and they don’t want a nice guy who asks permission because it’s just plain unattractive and they don’t want to be have to take the dominant position.
I think this is an overinterpretation. He’s just run into some false accusations and doesn’t like it. There is something that he does wrong and which causes some women to go hostile on him, but it just has little to do with what the women will say on it – they get upset and their instincts cause them to want to attack – and once you’ve decided to put someone in the bad guy category people aren’t always motivated to think clearly (let alone speak clearly) about the reasons why.
Tyler’s little comment seems to be recommending to this guy to accept the hostility as a natural hazard of the game, whereas he has the (unrealistic?? – for him anyway?) hope of only having to worry about being rejected.
It was always disconcerting to me how the PUA community used “Omega” to refer to the lowest of the low. To me, “Omega” always sounded cool. like “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”
squid314 is one of the smartest, most rational people I have ever interacted with, I had a lot to do with him on LessWrong.
That does not make a person socially adept. As is, perhaps, the takeaway of the essay.
Social adeptness is a specialized-brainware module that most people just naturally have. This guy is basically on the ultra-high end of the aspergers spectrum. And I think that is an interesting perspective, because from that perspective you can tease apart the actual rules of human social interaction.
Getting a “normal” person to explain the rules of flirting/dating/social status is like asking a fish to explain what water is; they can’t see it because it’s the invisible, ever-present background to life (from their point of view).
And when they do try to explain it, they get it hilariously wrong; if you asked a fish why you were suffocating when you came down to visit them, they would probably attribute it to some kind of invisible predatory fish; analogously, when squid314 gets advice from feminists it is hilariously bad, self-sabotaging advice like “don’t express a sexual interest!”, “don’t touch her without asking permission!” etc.
#1: I think at some point in the past Tyler decided he would never make a type II error, at the risk of making type I errors all the time. Case in point, I never in a thousand years would have known that Mirror Mirror is really about Indira Gandhi’s assassination were it not for Tyler, and yet I just cannot believe that Oblivion and World War Z are actually commentaries on Scientology or authoritarianism or whatever and not just very boilerplate sci-fi and zombie movies, respectively.
Type I errors are more interesting, no?
Good point. The error names are the other way around. Yes, it’s more interesting to make Type II errors.
Well I guess it could be Type I or Type II depending on how you want to define rejection, the null, success, or whatever. In English, what I mean to say is, if it’s there, I can always count on Tyler to notice it (as with Mirror Mirror), but sometimes in my opinion he sees things for which there’s no there there (like World War Z). So no false negatives (Type II) at the cost of more false positives (Type I).
But yes, I agree. That cultural spidey-sense keeps me coming back here even if I sometimes disagree with it, so I guess the Type I errors are more fun.
#2
Is crime increasing just a symbol of increased creative destruction in the society?
No, just destruction.
I now believe that the previous post (“Why Macroeconomics Is Not A Science”) was a set-up for #3 above.
Noah didn’t quite nail the Williamson vs. DeKrugRowe debate, although he injected doses of civility and soberness. He characterized the objections as the result of misunderstanding Williamson’s application of a different type of model. That may have been true. However, Krugman’s emphasis on “little arrows” showed that the objection was also about usage of models.
any man who’s worried about offending a woman he wants to meet has already failed.
Rather than read NOah, Delong, WIlliamson etc long unproductive discourse,i’ll just impart my own opinion on this matter based on common sense: unlike Japan, with or without QE the USA cannot deflate because prices are always rising by profit maximizing & colluding firms in order to extract every last penny out of consumer. It’s why tuition , healthcare etc costs has surged more in the USA than any other developed country. In Japan consumers are more elastic or companies are less inclined to habitually raise prices, and ‘leaving money on the table’ by not taking full advantage of in-elasticity consumer preference to certain goods.
I agree that Noah got it right on the Williamson mess. Pretty good for his debut return from his absence.
Noah Smith:
“Williamson’s model, if I’m not mistaken, predicts that QE will cause a short burst of slightly higher inflation, followed by a long period of lower inflation.”
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/does-qe-cause-deflation.html
Alas, I believe Noah Smith is mistaken.
On page 14 of Stephen Williamson’s paper, equation 40 states that the gross inflation rate is given by:
Mu=Beta*u’(x1)
Where Mu is the gross inflation rate, Beta is the discount factor bound between 0 and 1, x1 is the amount of currency and u is a a strictly increasing, strictly concave, and twice continuously differentiable function.
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~swilliam/papers/qe2.pdf
Thus an increase in the amount of currency strictly decreases the inflation rate. In my reading of his paper this appears to be true regardless of whether the central bank is operating a channel or a floor system, regardless of the maturity of the debt it purchases, and regardless of whether it is at or away from the zero lower bound.
On page 16, in the section on conventional open market operations in short-maturity debt, Williamson notes:
“Some of the effects here are unconventional. While the decline in nominal bond yields looks like the monetary easing associated with an open market purchase, the reduction in real bond yields that comes with this is permanent, and the inflation rate declines permanently. Conventionally-studied channels for monetary easing typically work through temporary declines in real interest rates and increases in the inflation rate. What is going on here? The change in monetary policy that occurs here is a permanent increase in the size of the central banks holdings of short-maturity government debt in real terms which must be financed by an increase in the real quantity of currency held by the public. To induce people to hold more currency, its return must rise, so the inflation rate must fall…”
Correct, I was mistaken.
@2,
As far as I could tell from the skimming the articles there wasn’t any distinction between whether overall crime or the crime rate itself was increasing. Of course in ND boom towns where the population doubles or more there’s going to be more crime. But is there actually more crime per capita? Even more relevantly is there more crime per male capita, since 95% of crime is from males?
A pattern I’ve noticed is the New York Times’ fear and loathing of prosperity in North Dakota. It’s quite weird. The normal human reaction to a cold, emptying-out place finally getting a lucky break would be, “Oh, that’s nice.” But to the NYT, North Dakota is an endless horrorshow of cashiers making $24 per hour and other atrocities.
The NYT seems to like market failures not market successes.
#2: Remote, boring boomtowns full of unattached young men and lots of alcohol somehow end up with a bit more crime than usual. I’m shocked!
If you want proof that macroeconomics isn’t a science, Noah’s post on Williamson is much better support.
The author of #1 has multiple girlfriends (he may not have at the time he wrote that, but I don’t get the impression he would strongly disagree with any of that now). He is not trying to appeal to the median woman. I’m surprised people here are so hostile to that concept and think that warrants implying mental illness.
Forget the median woman, it seems unlikely that he would appeal even to 8th decile women with THAT approach
To whom is he trying to appeal? The median man-hating feminist?
What girl-friends does he have? Ones around which he must walk on eggshells in a state of abject terror, because any development of romantic feelings will “terminate” the relationship?
This is not a friend, this a something-that-rhymes-with “punt”
Or, perhaps, “friend with (her) benefits”
I only know of one of them–she seems totally reasonable and talks about gender issues in a very sane way. Who knows, it probably makes sense to assume she secretly is terrible. Whatever.
I ask in an honest fashion. This could be some sort of internet-famous person that I am unfamiliar with. The way he describes that one particular friend, a BEST friend no less, makes me think he did not pick his friendships very well. But that is based on little information. I could be totally wrong.
This is his current blog. IMHO, it is one of the best blogs in the whole Internet.
Wait. So this is the exact same guy Mencius Moldbug ranted against this week? It’s a small teh interwebs after all.
Thank you Alejandro
I enjoy his references to the Evil Overlord List
I get the impression that he’s mostly solved the problems he describes in that post, but it struck a nerve with lots of people (including me) because lots and lots of men have had exactly that problem.
Mother Goose:
“Needles and pins!
Needles and pins!
When a man marries
His trouible begins.”
#2
This story is as old as the extractive industries. Oil boomtowns are always like this, look at the history of gold rushes. I am sure this trend was known in Roman times, it certainly occurred in medieval China. Heck look at those very same towns when they were building the railroad. Didn’t the Times give good reviews to both Deadwood and Hell on Wheels.
As to the middle class, I work in the extractive industries, but I started out middle class. You can make a good living in them but following booms around the continent is not a good bet unless you are already a specialized and well educated worker. They do however provide the prudent semi skilled worker with the chance to gain a sizable nut and move on to better things. I have seen this a lot.
Having read the piece, it seems to me, at any rate, that we’re not talking crimes committed by “prudent semi skilled workers” but by probably marginally employable but violent scum who drift into places they’ve heard about.
I’m not sure it’s possible to have read him any more wrong.
By the way, who’s sending you the Scott Alexander links?
I wonder if it bothers TC that his comments sections are increasingly filled up with neo-social-dawnists of the racist and sexist variety?
Sleep with Roissy/PUA/Steve Sailer, pick up fleas.
Cover your ears and go “la-la-la-la”….that way the bad men can’t hurt you.
I thought liberals liked Darwinism. Or do they only like the kind that happens to non-humans?
It definitely bugs him that they aren’t more Straussian.
Yeah the increase in crime is totally related to a surging middle class, and not the fact that rootless young men are pouring into town.
The guy who wrote the entry in the first link took the entry down, and all the previous installments of that series.
Drat — he did it as I was working my through the previous installments and getting to the one that Tyler linked to. Click on the link now to see the reason he gave for taking it down.
1. This guy is retarded. Ask a woman for a drink; if she bites/slaps/pepper sprays you, she’s the rapist, and you can take a pic of her and shame her online.
3. It’s insanity.
Let’s imagine the Fed decides it wants 10% inflation and starts buying up assets like mad — QE on steroids. Given that a CB can buy every asset in existence, who thinks they couldn’t achieve the target? Surely no one believes that could be deflationary!
Imagine you’re a 22 yr old coil tube operator assistant/helper in the Eagle Ford. You’ve got nothing to do but work and you’ve just cashed your first 2-week paycheck since being promoted from Laborer. The teller counts out 30 hundred dollar bills plus change (maybe 80 if you’ve gotten another bonus). As you step outside a silicone-enhanced beauty from Dallas or Houston says you’re the kinda guy she likes to party with – for $500. Guess what happens next.
It happens in the field and it happens in the VIP rooms when big deals get celebrated. Pimps, dealers and prostitutes, and the parasites who swim in their wake, flock to men celebrating victory. They always do. Eventually though the wives start to show up and ruin all the fun. Then growth begins.
“2. The American places with surging crime are the same places with a surging middle class.”
In modern USA being middle class is not so much about how much money one makes but how one spends it and how one acts. Remember the guy living in San Fransisco on $7000/year, he is middle class. Some people if they make more money will drink more and make more mayhem.
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