praestigiare

I am also not convinced by the inclusion of the R number in the list of examples - it is unlike the others in an important way. The problem with metrics usually arises when the metric is a proxy for the goal. For example, test scores are not the same as knowledge, and so using test scores as a metric can result in teaching to the test, such that the metric is no longer a good proxy for knowledge. But the R number is not a proxy - it is the actual thing we want to change. (Of course, there are many knock-on issues, such as how we measure that number, which do introduce proxies. Discussion of that would be a much more interesting article.)

Which actually points towards the real solution, which is not to simply rely on gut instinct, but to be aware of what you are measuring, and how it relates to what you want to know.

In the kitchen, from long practice, I do not have to think about prep, technique, or washing up. There are no decisions I need to make for those tasks. They take very little attention. This frees me to spend my focus on the more abstract goals of what I want to cook, and for me it is not a context switch to wash a bowl while an onion is sauteeing. I can certainly cook while keeping the kitchen clean more efficiently than I could cook and then clean it. But when I was first cooking, it was a context switch to go from chopping an onion to chopping a carrot. Both tasks required my attention and focus.

A theory that is more complex and fits the data worse is a less good theory because it is easier to get stuck in. If I have two new theories with this property, how do I choose between them? Imagining a situation where the less predictive theory is closer to the underlying reality does not change this - the fact that it is closer to the underlying reality is irrelevant until and unless we have measurements that allow us to distinguish those cases, at which point, we will have evidence for the (now) more predictive theory.

This article is actually arguing for a system that would result in more dogmatic acceptance and less critical testing.

The number of American citizens living overseas is somewhere between 6 and 9 million last I read. That is around 2% of the total population of Americans, and more than the populations of 15 states. If you are a regular employee, and do not own property, and do not own a business, you can mostly get by with some extra tax paperwork each year and filing FATCA. (Which you had better hope someone tells you about, because the penalties are extreme if you mess it up.) If you can get a local bank account, you can live a relatively normal life, and this is what I see being pointed to by people in this discussion as the usual case. It is not. Nearly everyone falls outside this case eventually, the penalties are harsh, compliance is difficult, and it is all unnecessary.

Some examples:

You get married, and you fail to disclose your new spouses retirement account in your FATCA filing. That could cost you five figures.

You make a bit of self employment income on the side, not realizing that self employment income is not covered under the foreign earned income exclusion, and now you owe all of your profit in taxes.

You start a small business, and really, you're just fucked. All profit earned by your foreign business each year is counted as personal income added to your AGI in the US, but not excludable under the foreign earned income exclusion. And if you don't file (a form which, by the way, says at the top that it takes an estimated 100 hours to complete), or file incorrectly, the penalty is 10k a day until the filing is corrected. But at least you are only fucked now - if you already owned a foreign business in 2018, you got super fucked with a 10 year retroactive tax on all your business profits for the past decade. If you think this is an edge case, read some expat news sites. This wiped out thousands of Americans life savings.

I am an expat. I know many expats. The usual case is to find yourself fucked by these rules. Best case is that you spend a lot of time staying informed, hire good accountants, and avoid penalties. But even then things like GILTI can come along and destroy everything you have built.

This does not follow. You could just as easily argue that this means you are bad at predicting billionaires. YC is 8 for 1000 in the billionaire prediction game. Maybe that is good enough to claim expertise, but I think you have to actually make that argument and not assume it.

If the key to becoming a billionaire — the defining feature of billionaires — was to exploit people, then I, as a professional billionaire scout, would surely realize this.

This does not follow. First, "if this was true, I would know" is not an argument. Second, if exploitation is necessary, but not sufficient, it might be essentially useless as a predictor while still being universal among billionaires.