Month: March 2013

Cognitive Inequality

i wonder how the cognitive surplus from the internet is distributed. it could be as high as 20 IQ points (my guess) over the last 30 years. i suspect though that most of the gains went to people already on the right hand side of the distribution, perhaps with a cutoff point around 120 IQ points. this would support the idea expressed by Steve Jurvetson that perhaps the increasing returns to intelligence went primarily to the already intelligent, and the gap has increased? it is true that the flynn effect holds true for the entire spectrum of intelligence but perhaps this is a higher level effect than what is measured?

this is old but still very true.

the internet makes dumb people dumber and smart people smarter. If you don’t know how to use it, or don’t have the background to ask the right questions, you’ll end up with a head full of nonsense. But if you do know how to use it, it’s an endless wealth of information. The internet is now a major driver of the growth of cognitive inequality.

and the effect seems to be increasing:

In a large US-representative adolescent sample, a Flynn Effect was found for IQs ≥ 130, and a negative effect for IQs ≤ 70. IQ changes also differed substantially by age group. A negative Flynn Effect for those with low intellectual ability suggests widening disparities in cognitive ability

Europe

One of my favorite topics and in the end the reason why I left Europe.

One doesn’t have to have a US-centric view of privacy, competition policy, or free speech to notice the dissonance between European mores and the digital economy. One assumes Europeans want to enjoy the benefits of the Internet, but they also seem consumed with ensuring that nothing of the old order is changed—let alone destroyed—in the process. They are the continental incarnation of what Virginia Postrel calls stasis—they are unwilling to accept the tradeoffs that come with progress and instead hopelessly try to plan around all discomfort.

2013-04-10: Remember Quaero, the search engine just like real search engines, but with more european commission? Apparently someone forgot to shut the project down and they are proudly working on a human adventure
2013-04-11: Economies in Europe don’t have the flexibility to deal with the double challenge of globalization and automation, so they’ll shrink a lot.
2015-06-19: Why Europe can’t have nice things.

Americans tend to act in a more rational and less emotional way about the goods and services they consume, because it’s not tied up with their national and regional identities. In Europe, stability is prized. Europeans are conservative with a small c. They pretty much like things the way they are

2018-03-26: European protectionism

Using a new survey, we show that the dispersion of marginal products across firms in the European Union is 2x as large as that in the United States. Reducing it to the US level would increase EU GDP by more than 30%. Alternatively, removing barriers between industries and countries would raise EU GDP by at least 25%.

2018-07-20: European Commission really hates innovation.

The European Commission continues to be a bit too cavalier about denying companies — well, Google, mostly — the right to monetize the products they spend billions of dollars at significant risk to develop; this was my chief objection to last year’s Google Shopping case. I am concerned that the Commissions’ publicly released reasoning doesn’t seem to grasp exactly how Android has developed, the choices Google made, and why.

2021-03-04: Anemic GDP growth, or even shrinking

The average European is ~33% or more worse off than the average American, and it’s getting worse.


2021-03-05: More regulatory nonsense

What people making these calls — and these laws — need to be more honest about, though, is that they killing competition. If you want to ensure that Twitter wins in audio, or that Facebook wins everywhere else, then elevating privacy over everything else, ignoring both tradeoffs (like killing competition in social networks) and facts on the ground (like the reality that your contacts have long since ceased to be private), is an excellent way to accomplish exactly that. Look no further than ecommerce.
Shopify, 1 of the most exciting companies in tech and the seeming leader of The Anti-Amazon Alliance, effectively moving into Facebook’s garden, because the web is increasingly a barren wasteland for small businesses. The cause is Apple: its approach to cookies makes platform-based web storefronts increasingly difficult to monetize effectively (Shop Pay performed magic in this regard), and its attack on “tracking” — which goes far beyond the IDFA — makes it increasingly impossible to acquire users in 1 place and convert them in another. The solution is to do user acquisition and user conversion all in 1 app — i.e. on Facebook — which is why Shopify is helping merchants move off the web and onto Facebook.

2022-12-14: A good summary why there’s no innovation in Europe

  • Talented people have a choice of careers. In Europe we steadfastly underpay technologists. Many people that really really want to get into engineering and programming continue to do so anyhow. A larger class however gets swayed by better paying jobs in financial engineering and other non-productive shenanigans. The response here to far higher US salaries for technical people is always that money is not the only factor. This is true. However, the OTHER factor of work is being appreciated and valued, and we also do not offer that! In Europe we outsource technology, as we don’t really consider it a core activity.
  • Not only do we not appreciate technologists, we also penalize founders. Banks, tax agencies and even family members distrust startups and will make life difficult for you.
  • For better or worse, here in Europe we are fond of business plans that somehow make sense. Blue sky “let’s launch this and I’m sure we’ll eventually find sufficient rent seeking or surveillance possibilities to one day make money” things don’t fly too well here.
    • Specifically, I’ve found that in the US it is quite acceptable to discuss plans that revolve around eventually screwing over your customers when they aren’t in a position to leave
    • In addition, European investors and entrepreneurs don’t tend to see their ventures as ’lottery tickets’ that might pay off. We like to see things costed with at least a theoretical path to profits
  • Related, it really is the case that (on average) US entrepreneurs are more ruthless and competitive than European ones. The flip side of this is that any nastiness hinders trust which makes it harder to build partnerships.

2023-07-17: Europeans are getting poorer.

The eurozone economy grew 6% over the past 15 years, compared with 82% for the US. That has left the average EU country poorer per head than every US state except Idaho and Mississippi. If the current trend continues, by 2035 the gap between economic output per capita in the US and EU will be as large as that between Japan and Ecuador today.
Spending on high-end groceries has collapsed. Germans consumed 52 kg of meat per person in 2022, 8% less than the previous year and the lowest level since calculations began in 1989.

Future is closer

our perceptions of time are grounded in our experiences of movement through space: We tend to feel closer to the future because we feel like we’re moving toward it. this orientation toward the future isn’t merely a perceptual quirk; it serves an important purpose. Humans haven’t yet mastered the art of time travel, so we can’t change the past. But we can prepare ourselves for the future; perceiving future events as closer may be a psychological mechanism that helps us to approach, avoid, or otherwise cope with the events we encounter.

No one saw this coming

The big news is just how much the middle of the predictability spectrum is growing. Smart people are finding clever new ways of generating better data, identifying and unpacking biases, and sharing information unimaginable 20 or even 10 years ago. The result: A growing range of human activity has moved from the world of “analysis-by-gut-check” to “analysis by evidence.”

predictions are getting better across the board, except in intelligence, due to secrecy and turf wars. this is excellent news as it will improve policy, economy and society.

Camera culture


i noticed this cameraphone stuff in 2001 in hong kong, and started a moblog startup in 2003: kaywa.com as usual, a few years too early, so not much became of it. so what is next?

How quickly are we moving toward the world of Augmented Reality (AR)? Compare these 2 images of Rome during the election of the last pope in 2005 and more recently in 2013. Then contrast the images to my descriptions of “tru-vu goggles” in EARTH (1989) and the gel-lens stalks people wear in 2048, portrayed in EXISTENCE.

Navigating awkardness

heh. it is still unclear if social networks have sharply increased the amount of awkward in the world (i suspect yes). here are some antidotes.

HOW TO… GET SOMEONE ON THE BUS TO TURN THEIR MUSIC DOWN
This is the same principle as trying to keep the seat next to you free. Don’t put your bag on it and stare at your feet, because people sense what you’re trying to do and it doesn’t work. Instead, you should smile at them as they approach and pat the seat invitingly. That guarantees it’s kept free, as no one wants to sit beside a nutter. Similarly, when someone’s playing their music loudly, don’t directly ask them to turn it down. Instead, catch their eye. Nod, smile — maybe even conduct along to the music they’re playing or go and sit down next to them. Generally act like you’re enjoying their awful din, which will promptly weird them out to the point that they will turn it off just to get you off their case.