Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Studies of Brain Activity Aren't as Useful as Scientists Thought

  Duke researcher questions 15 years of his own work with a reexamination of functional MRI data

  The problem is that the level of activity for any given person probably won't be the same twice, and a measure that changes every time it is collected cannot be applied to predict anyone's future mental health or behavior.
  ...
  Connectivity mapping - seeing how areas of the brain are connected to address a task more than just what areas are active - is going to be the way forward, Poldrack predicted. Hariri agreed that identifying patterns of activity throughout the brain rather than in one or two areas may improve reliability.

• The Intellectual Fraud of Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility"

  But while people's desire for valuable insight about race-related issues is laudable, White Fragility cannot satisfy that need. The book does not offer profound insight into the souls of white people. Rather, White Fragility is religion masquerading as knowledge. DiAngelo's conception of white fragility isn't hard won wisdom. It's an unprovable and unfalsifiable theory, deceptively framed to convince readers of their own guilt. DiAngelo relies on rhetorical tricks and skewed interpretations of ambiguous events to deceive readers, in the same way a zealot tries to gain converts.
  ...
  In other words, if DiAngelo accuses you of fragility and you disagree with her in any way-through argument, silence, or withdrawal-your reaction is considered proof of your fragility. DiAngelo leaves white readers with only two options. Either acknowledge your fragility, which proves DiAngelo's theory, or deny your fragility, which according to DiAngelo, also proves her theory. This is a logical fallacy known as a Kafkatrap.

• Tim O'Reilly makes a persuasive case for why venture capital is starting to do more harm than good

  The way he sees it, the venture industry is no longer as focused on finding small companies that might one day change the world but more on creating financial instruments for the wealthy - and that shift has real consequences.

• The Cool Kid's Philosopher

  Ben Shapiro's fans apparently think he is very smart. It is not clear why.

  Let me tell you why Ben Shapiro actually aggravates me. It is not his voice or demeanor, though I understand why others find these characteristics grating. Nor is it the way he inserts references to first-year law school doctrines even when they aren't actually relevant. It is, rather, that Ben Shapiro is lying to his audience, by telling them that he is just a person concerned with the Truth, when the only thing he actually cares about is destroying the left. "Facts don't care about your feelings" is a fine mantra, albeit kind of a dickish one. But it's worthless if you're going to interpret every last fact in the way most favorable to your own preconceptions, if you're going to ignore evidence contrary to your position, and refuse to try to understand what your opponents actually believe. The New York Times actually quoted a sensible-sounding ex-Shapiro fan, who said he realized over time that Shapiro was just concerned with convincing other people he was right, rather than actually being right. Shapiro is annoying because he claims to love speech and discourse, to believe you should "get to know people... get to know their views...discuss," but if you're an Arab he's already convinced you're a secret anti-Semite, and if you're a poor black person he doesn't need to know you to know that you're culturally dysfunctional.

• Investigating the Health Consequences for White Americans Who Believe White Americans Are Wealthy

  Poor White Americans report feeling "worse off" than poor Black Americans despite the persistent negative effects of racism on Black Americans. Additionally, some health issues are rising among White but not Black Americans. Across two representative samples, we test whether White = wealthy stereotypes lead White Americans to feel relatively worse off than their racial group and whether these perceptions have health consequences. ...

• What Trait Affects Income the Most?

  Neoclassical economics preaches that all is fair with the distribution of income. Income differences, the theory claims, stem from differences in productivity. As long as markets are competitive, people earn their 'marginal product'. And so there's no reason to redistribute income.

  The reality is quite different. Income, I believe, is determined not by productivity, but instead largely by rank within a hierarchy. In other words, power begets income. The role of economics is to deny this uncomfortable reality. Economists reinforce hierarchies by denying their existence.

• Incompetence and Errors in Reasoning Around Face Covering

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  1. missing the compounding effects of masks,
  2. missing the nonlinearity of the probability of infection to viral exposures,
  3. missing absence of evidence (of benefits of mask wearing) for evidence of absence (of benefits of mask wearing),
  4. missing the point that people do not need governments to produce facial covering: they can make their own,
  5. missing the compounding effects of statistical signals,
  6. ignoring the Non-Aggression Principle by pseudolibertarians (masks are also to protect others from you; it's a multiplicative process: every person you infect will infect others).
• Why is the NYPD So Powerful?

  If police don't do their jobs, a mainstream Democratic politician would tell you, the city could spiral into chaos. Crime would skyrocket. Property value would decline. The real estate and investor class would lose confidence in New York and stop investing their capital. Any pivot toward a model of social democratic urban planning-or even, at the minimum, a reduction in the NYPD's near $6 billion budget-would trigger this unraveling. De Blasio's appointment of Bratton, the Giuliani-era police commissioner, can be understood in this context. Bratton was a liberal mayor's concession to a business and real estate establishment he believed needed to be placated. It was a signal that his administration, no matter its reputation, would never veer too far left. De Blasio is of the belief that any progressive reform can't happen without police to maintain New York's low crime rate. Any spike will sap political capital for his projects.

Various recent links related to problems with the current state of capitalism.

• Ray Dalio: We must reform capitalism, not abandon it

  While this profit-making capitalism has worked well in this way, it has also been intolerably imperfect in providing equal opportunity. It has failed to deliver people equal opportunities to be productive if they can be and to take care of the basic needs of people who can't be. It also doesn't create limits on how bad people's living conditions can be or on how decadent spending can be. To me, most tragically, it allows vast numbers of children to grow up in environments of violent squalor, which is both economically and socially bad. It is economically bad because the costs of having large numbers of unproductive people are enormous compared to the benefits of having productive people. And it is socially bad because a system that doesn't provide equal opportunity can't be considered fair - and unfair systems eventually lead to disruptive social conflicts.
  ...
  To make society work better, the new system must both increase the size of the pie and divide it well. Our ability to consume is dependent on our ability to produce, not the amount of money we get in the mail. You can't eat money. Somebody must get paid to produce and deliver what we consume. And we can't raise our living standards by just giving people money - they need to be incentivized to produce, and that must be done cost-effectively through some system that is not administered from the top. Most fundamentally, that system must strive to provide 1) equal opportunity to all those who have the potential to produce (because that is both most fair and most productive) and 2) basic needs to those who are unable to (because that is humane and what is fundamentally needed to have a good community).

• How to Fix Globalization-for Detroit, Not Davos

  American Interest interview with Larry Summers

  Someone put it to me this way: First, we said that you are going to lose your job, but it was okay because when you got your new one, you were going to have higher wages thanks to lower prices because of international trade. Then we said that your company was going to move your job overseas, but it was really necessary because if we didn't do that, then your company was going to be less competitive. Now we're saying that we have to cut the taxes on those companies and cut the calculus class from your kid's high school, because otherwise we won't be able to attract companies to the United States, and you have to pay higher taxes and live with fewer services. At a certain point, people say, "This whole global thing doesn't work for me," and they have a point.
  ...
  So the case for regulation is not to be anti-business. Regulation needs to be supported because it enables the vast majority of businesses who want to do right by society to do so and still be able to compete. That's how the case for regulation needs to be framed. We should not be waging jihad against business. We should be waging jihad against those who put profit ahead of every other value in the society.We should not be waging jihad against business. We should be waging jihad against those who put profit ahead of every other value in the society. And that's where in the emphasis on profit, we have gone a bit awry.

• Through No Fault of Their Own

  Ben Hunt, Epsilon Theory

  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Big 4 airlines will be accessing tens of billions of dollars in cash grants and easy 10-year loans, all explicitly designed to support entrenched management and equity shareholders. But hey, fret not, concerned citizen! Management will be prevented from making more stock buybacks until Sept. 30, 2021. That's a whole eighteen months of no stock buybacks, so don't tell me that Wall Street doesn't understand shared sacrifice. And yikes! Management will also have to get by on their current salaries for the next three years, as hard as it may be to imagine the privation and human misery that will entail.

• Author of Bailout Nation Gets Bailout

  Count Ritholtz Wealth Management among the $1bn-plus RIAs which have taken out government-backed coronavirus relief loans.

• How Markets Shape Values and Political Preferences: A Field Experiment

  Results show that investment in stocks led to a more right‐leaning outlook on issues such as merit and deservingness, personal responsibility, and equality. Subjects also shifted to the right on policy questions. These results appear to be driven by growing familiarity with, and decreasing distrust of markets. The spread of financial markets thus has important and underappreciated political ramifications.