Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Did the media botch the Russia story? A conversation with Matt Taibbi.

  While the Vox interviewer tries to defend the liberal media, I think Matt Taibbi is right.

  Cable news was notably egregious. Rachel Maddow went all in, devoting an extraordinary amount of time to this story, constantly holding up all these glossy photos of shady Russians night after night, with wild graphics and dramatic monologues. It was all about pushing this web of connections and this concept of connecting the dots became a thing that infected the entire of audience of blue state America.

  According to Taibbi, the news that Robert Mueller won't be issuing any further indictments, along with the revelation that he found no compelling evidence for collusion, amounts to "a death-blow for the reputation of the American news media."

  For the complete Taibbi article see, It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD.

  "The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it."

• Real Reason Trump Wants to Ban Huawei: US Wants to Spy and China Won't Cooperate

  The UK, Germany, India, and the United Arab Emirates are among the countries resisting US pressure to Ban Huawei.

• Netanyahu's Holocaust Revisionism and the Racism Overtaking Israel

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that the Palestinian people were responsible for the Holocaust tells us not only what is wrong with the leader who made the statement, but reveals, twenty years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the racial hatred that is undergirding the occupation, Israeli politics and society.

• Ilhan Omar and the weaponisation of antisemitism

  Joshua Leifer

  Ilhan Omar's most recent comments have been stripped entirely of their context, their intentions twisted and reversed. During an event in Washington DC last week, she spoke sensitively about her commitment to human rights advocacy, her experiences of Islamophobia, and her compassion for her Jewish constituents. Then Omar said: "I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country ... I want to ask, why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil-fuel industries, or big pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy?"

  And instead of the media's coverage of what was said, watch and read (part of the transcript) for yourself at: In Defense of Ilhan Omar, Again

  The viral video clip in which Omar made the offending comment is nine minutes long. But people have been jumping on twenty of the words she uttered, in approximately ten seconds, taking them out of context, and treating those words as an attack on Jews when they are not an attack, and indeed do not mention Jews.
  ...
  I encourage everyone to watch the nine-minute video in its entirety. Far from a fire-breathing or hateful speech, Omar can be seen very carefully trying to parse her words in order to express her frustration, to defend herself, and to clarify her position on the rights of Palestinians. And while she does not fully succeed, she also tries to be careful to attend to the sensibilities of Jewish people, who she describes both as "constituents" and as "colleagues."

  And from Chris Hedges, journalist and Presbyterian minister: Israel's Stranglehold on American Politics.

• There Is No Campus Free Speech Crisis: A Close Look at the Evidence

  A contrarian rebuttal to what seems the prevailing view, but it's hard to tell who is right. IMO the truth is probably somewhere in between.

• Meritocracy doesn't exist, and believing it does is bad for you

  Despite the moral assurance and personal flattery that meritocracy offers to the successful, it ought to be abandoned both as a belief about how the world works and as a general social ideal. It's false, and believing in it encourages selfishness, discrimination, and indifference to the plight of the unfortunate.

• Reimagining Capitalism:

  How The Greatest System Ever Conceived (And Its Billionaires) Need To Change

  Virtually every billionaire I spoke with acknowledged that higher taxes on the billionaire set are inevitable; most even saw them as beneficial, if correctly applied. According to Gates, Buffett, Khosla and others, the correct way to levy taxes on the superrich is at a transaction point. Either an estate tax without the loopholes that currently render it useless or a higher capital gains tax applied only on extreme fortunes, to avoid suppressing growth.
  And better yet, the tax code can be refined to encourage growth and spread it around more evenly. The launch of opportunity zones, engineered by the Facebook and Spotify billionaire Sean Parker, has already been put in motion, offering tantalizing tax breaks in needy areas of all 50 states. Adjusting corporate tax rates based on jobs created-more jobs, lower taxes-is another worthy idea.
  

• Coders' Primal Urge to Kill Inefficiency - Everywhere

  Describe me pretty well.

  Coders might have different backgrounds and political opinions, but nearly every one I've ever met found deep, almost soulful pleasure in taking something inefficient - even just a little bit slow - and tightening it up a notch. Removing the friction from a system is an aesthetic joy; coders' eyes blaze when they talk about making something run faster or how they eliminated some bothersome human effort from a process.

  Some more details about the book at: Coders:The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

• Scientists find genetic mutation that makes woman feel no pain

  In a case report published on Thursday in the British Journal of Anaesthesia the UCL team describe how they delved into Cameron's DNA to see what makes her so unusual. They found two notable mutations. Together, they suppress pain and anxiety, while boosting happiness and, apparently, forgetfulness and wound healing.

• Measles vaccine doesn't cause autism, even in high-risk kids

  In the current study, researchers examined data on 657,461 children. During this time, 6,517 kids were diagnosed with autism.
  Kids who got the MMR vaccine were seven percent less likely to develop autism than children who didn't get vaccinated, researchers report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
  

• Missing Out On Deep Sleep Causes Alzheimer's Plaques to Build Up

  Getting enough deep sleep might be the key to preventing dementia. In a series of recent experiments on mice, researchers discovered that deep sleep helps the brain clear out potentially toxic waste.

  More at Deep, non-REM sleep is optimal for our brains to wash away waste.

• Mind-Body Problems

  Online and e-book by John Horgan

  My book is about the central mystery of existence, the mind-body problem. In a narrow, technical sense, the mind-body problem asks how matter generates mind, but it's really about what we are, can be and should be, individually and as a species. For thousands of years, prophets, poets and philosophers have told us stories about who we really are, but these stories are all over the place, they conflict with each other, and we have no way to decide which one is true, it just comes down to personal preference, or taste. I like Christianity, you're into neo-Platonism. Now science is converging on a definitive, objectively true solution to the mind-body problem, backed up by hard empirical evidence, or so some science enthusiasts claim. I argue that they're wrong. Science has told us a lot about our minds and bodies, but in the end it's just giving us more stories that we choose for subjective reasons, because we find them consoling, or beautiful, or meaningful. Science will never discover an objectively true solution to the mind-body problem, which tells all of us once and for all who we are and should be, because that solution doesn't exist.

My email exchange with Alex Tabarrok about the Seattle Minimum Wage.

On October 29 2018 I emailed economist Alex Tabarrok about his blog post at Marginal Revolution concerning the Seattle minimum wage study:

    I think you need to update your post:
	The Seattle Minimum Wage Study
	https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/06/seattle-minimum-wage-study.html
    For information and links to the latest information:
	What Minimum-Wage Foes Got Wrong About Seattle
	https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/what-minimum-wage-foes-got-wrong-about-seattle
    Although I'm guessing you'll find reasons why your original beliefs
    are still correct :-).

Within 24 hours (showing he does read his email quickly) I got an email reply:

    Thanks. I will check out!
    Alex

After more than two months passed without any evidence via email or an online post that he did anything, I emailed him again on January 5 2019:

    It's been more than 2 months since I emailed you about:
	What Minimum-Wage Foes Got Wrong About Seattle
	https://www.bloombergquint.com/view/what-minimum-wage-foes-got-wrong-about-seattle
    in response to your post:
	The Seattle Minimum Wage Study
	https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2017/06/seattle-minimum-wage-study.html
    And I cannot find any evidence online that you checked it out
    as you said you would.  If I missed it please let me know.
    I was reminded of this when I ran across:
	A non-technical guide to the dueling Seattle minimum wage studies
	http://chrisauld.com/2017/07/03/a-non-technical-guide-to-the-dueling-seattle-minimum-wage-studies
    which unlike your post I thought was a fair and balanced picture
    by someone without an economic/philosophical/political bias.
    What do you think?  Will you modify your original beliefs and
    if not, why not?

Unlike for my first email which he replied to quickly, there's been no response this time. And it's now been another three months and after searching the WWW I cannot find any evidence that he wants to defend himself or admit his mistake. Alex, or anyone else out there for that matter, if I am missing something please let me know. But my guess is it's just too easy and comfortable to find data that confirms ones biases and ignore data that contradicts ones beliefs.