resalisbury

"operational exhaust that AI labs now treat as premium training data." ha!

Is it a good idea to trust AI with this sort of thing? Well, if you've met a realtor the bar to be better than average is low!

no paywall link: https://archive.ph/YM7Sf

Reflecting on it recently since Chat GPT3 + GitHub copilot make it even more relevant.

Location's ability to trigger memories is why we say things like "In the first place". Roman senators used this trick to memorize lengthy orations by "bookmarking" key parts of their speech to physical locations and then would "walk" through it live.

The suggestion that renting is bad is wrong and insulting.

The US has made a series of poor choices to try to treat housing as a means wealth generation.

Housing can be affordable or a good investment it cannot be both. Ownership incentivize's NIMBYism, which has huge detrimental effects. Renting does not.

Every YIMBY has a NIMBY in their family...

This is not a well articulated or researched opinion piece, but it is interesting to see what some individuals initial reaction to Effective Altruism is. And in this case it is obviously negative.

Housing Policy Nirvana: 1. ban supply (1920s - today) 2. ban demand (today - future)

problem fixed!

Srsly, why can't we concentrate on policies that unlock supply. nothing else matters.

Apologies Austin! Noted, not sure how to correct at this point. a bit too enthusiastic here!

The new treatment entered Phase 1 trials in January 2020 with 60 participants and the earliest it would be in market is 2024.

You have to scroll through 20+ paragraphs before you get to the lede...

"Enter Mark Klempner. A physician and infectious-disease scientist at the University of Massachusetts, he’s embarked on an experiment that could upend the field of Lyme treatment. Klempner is the lead creator of a first-of-its-kind antibody shot for preventing Lyme infection."

And the most relevant update comes after around 50 paragraphs in the 3rd from last.

"In February, Klempner's phase-one trial kicked off with 60 participants. The goal of the trial is to determine the right dosage so that a person is protected for six to eight months. Lyme PREP will have to be administered annually, but it's a small price to pay in the minds of infectious- disease experts. If my forehead looks flat, it's because I have been banging my head on the wall for 35 years," says Telford. “We need as many tools as possible to prevent Lyme disease."

In just a few years, Lyme PREP could be available for commercial use. Klempner is eyeballing 2024, and maybe even sooner, depending on how the drug performs in clinical trials."

i read him, he's great! take it back ;)

"Amish people spend only a fifth as much as you do on health care, and their health is fine"

The Federal Reserve in the early 1900s is the earliest I came across in wikipedia, which inspired the question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire In the early 1900s, settlement of interbank payments was often done by the physical delivery of cash or gold. By 1915, The Federal Reserve Banks began to move funds electronically. In 1918, the Banks established a proprietary telecommunications system to process funds transfers, connecting all 12 Reserve Banks, the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury by telegraph using Morse code. Starting in the 1920s up until the 1970s, the system remained largely telegraphic; however as technology improved, they began to make the shift from telegraphy towards telex, then to computer operations and then to proprietary telecommunications networks.[5]

What is the evidence that this works? Do inuit communities have lower rates of domestic violence, violent crime etc? Are their other ways of measuring or defining "success"?

I'm reminded of the research for " Becoming a Man" (BAM) small groups of adolescents males get together and share stories about times they were angry. There have been several randomized controlled trials that show this reduces juvenile crime rates. And it's a cheap intervention to run. Seems like it shares characteristics around story telling, self reflection and acting like a grown up.

https://urbanlabs.uchicago.edu/projects/becoming-a-man

From the article: "It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying — which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him — and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but how much of a difference is there, really? Both elevate money over accomplishment."

The standard "correlation does not equal causation" rebuttal here might be "how do you know that ppl who are unemployed aren't just more likely to take more opioids?" The authors have attempted to address such a rebuttal thusly: "We also present evidence on reverse causality, finding that a short-term unemployment shock did not increase the share of people abusing prescription opioids."

A lot is wrong, but I appreciate than Ben gives credit where due.

”Let me reiterate a point I have made twice now: I appreciate Senator Warren raising these issues; they are indeed critical not only for the world today, but also the world we wish to create in the future."

And

"This is why I have called Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram The Greatest Regulatory Failure of the Past Decade, and called for an end to social networks being allowed to buy other social networks."

Airbnb disrupts travel by offering hotel rooms :)

Love the discussion of “Optimal Currency Areas”. However, some people argue that even the dollar has issues, since it unites a large area with very different economic realities at the local level.

Here’s a piece that blew my mind on the subject connecting quantitative easing & housing shortages with the idea of Optimal Currency Areas. Basically, the author, Yale Professor, David Schleicher argues that since housing supply is severely constrained in certain places like San Francisco and New York, the Federal Reserve is unable to satisfy the dual mandate of low inflation and low unemployment at the national level without causing inflationary pressures in places with tight housing markets (ie San Francisco).

Agree or disagree (and I tend to agree), it makes for a great read!

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

The idea of an "Optimal Currency Area" is a long standing area of economic research and shows clearly why having one currency is not ideal. Bitcoin is cool, but it doesn't change fundamental economic realities...

More accurate headline, "Google's CEO still has incredible employee support, despite year over year dip".

This is the key line "the fundamental tension [is] that Americans want housing to be both affordable and a good investment."

You can't have both! You cannot have your home be a good investment because prices keep rising and have homes be affordable. We have a national narrative that the best path to wealth accumulation is through home ownership. That is a terrible terrible narrative to promote. You can make it true, but only if you massively subsidize home ownership (which we do) and make in incredibly difficult to build homes in desirable locations like most of California (yup we do that too).

We need a new national narrative. Housing is not a tool for wealth accumulation. A home is a place to live. The cheaper that place is the more people will be able to live in one.

Here's and oversimplified way to thing about the housing problem. It's 90% a policy problem and 10% a technology problem. Todays technology allows you to build economy housing for $200 / sqft. That's pretty much no different from the 1960s when it also cost $200 / sqft. There has be no productivity growth in the construction industry [0]. But that's not the real problem! In San Francisco the median price per square foot is just over $1000 [1]. That's a gap of $800 /sqft between the raw production cost and the market value. That gap has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with policy (zoning, historical association, neighborhood review, environmental review, various other forms of NIMBYism). If we had a HUGE productivity boom in housing production, we could maybe knock 50% off the construction cost. That would save $100 per square foot. Only policy can help bring down the rest.

If you want to nerd out a bit, you can read Ed Glaeser who wrote a piece "The Economic Implications of Housing Supply" which seeks to calculate the Minimum Profitable Production Cost (MPPC) per square foot for every place in America. He then compares that to the actual price per square foot. Anytime there is a gap there is a huge public policy failure.

[0] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2017/08/17/the-constructio... [1] https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/ [2] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.32.1.3

If you forget to brush your teeth today, you will probably forget tomorrow. b/c gingavitis = Alzheimer's.

The headline is misleading on two accounts (though the content is fine). First, it's not that big cities don't deliver, they do. It's that the marginal improvments in wages do not make up for the cost of living increase. So a better headline would be that zoning is pricing ppl out of big cities. Second, some cities are still amazing at helping kids escape from poverty, even if the parents are no better off after moving there. The article itself cites that research. That's huge. A better headline would be "Some Cities help break intergenerational poverty."

Article is fine, but the conclusions you might draw from the headline are dead wrong.

Zoning is one of the big culprits for affordable housing. I'm curious if it would be productive for companies to target zoning laws or if it would create a counter productive backlash.

Here's how the money is being used (somewhat vague).

"Microsoft plans to lend $225 million at subsidized rates to preserve and build middle-income housing in six cities near its Redmond headquarters. It will put an additional $250 million into low-income housing across the region...the remaining $25 million will be grants to local organizations that work with the homeless, including legal aid for people fighting eviction."

Here's the projected impact (also somewhat vague).

"The Seattle Times reported Wednesday that if the $500 million were put into one project, it would create only about 1,000 units, so instead Microsoft will most likely put smaller amounts in many projects to help build “tens of thousands of units.”

Here's the need: "Seattle region needs 156,000 more affordable housing units [today].and will need 88,000 more by 2040 if the region’s growth continues."