Epsilon Theory

the dream. Ben Hunt over on https://www.epsilontheory.com/ used to have great anecdotes, but they've gone mostly paywalled since

I'd also add to this list the following for some great writing and analysis now and then (not consistently, but good enough to make the list). https://www.epsilontheory.com/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/ https://slatestarcodex.com/

The goal of my farm is kind of like a principle espoused by Ben Hunt of https://epsilontheory.com. He said we should create a tax regime based on the principle that 1000 millionaires is preferable to 1 billionaire. (The tax regime he recommended is quite interesting to, something along the lines of a progressive, lifetime capital gains tax, say 0% for the first $1mm, then 5% for the next $1mm, all the way up to, say, 95% for everything after $100mm.) Our regulatory environment encourages a small handful of very powerful and wealthy agribusinesses, with all the attendant horrors from absentee landlordism and contract farming and insanely-scaled slaughtering facilities. It could just as well encourage a distribution of small family farms (this is the case in much of the non-western world). Part of the way we're encouraging this outcome is building a platform to help small farmers directly market to customers, capturing vastly more of the value of their product. In any case, I thought your example was interesting with cars. Right now, we sell the equivalent of the Tesla Roadster version of chicken. High-end, pricey, targeted toward an upper-middle class customer. As we gain some small amount of scale, and as we encourage more competitors and build co-operative abattoirs, the prices will come down, and we'll never be cheaper than Tyson or whoever, but we might become not so expensive that it's a real reach.

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

I'm getting tired of these news outlets regurgitating stories. In this case all these other outlets are regurgitating that one article from Reuters. My Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [1] radar is beginning to make worrisome beeping sounds, also. I've seen so much far-reaching speculation over the last few days, I think the best thing I can do is intentionally focus on more interesting things (just learned about Lagrange Points [2] for example) and stop feeding the OpenAI hype machine. [1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ [2] https://science.nasa.gov/resource/what-is-a-lagrange-point/

I mean, obviously. Narratives are how markets work. Money itself is a simple narrative with complex dynamics. I rather like https://www.epsilontheory.com/ for exploring markets from this perspective.

> "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Before the had the internet, back when we still had newspapers, we had a similar phenomenon referred to as Gell-Mann Amnesia. > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

This is proving that NYT and most MSM aren't trustworthy, and hence my question. If you still trust the NYT for other kinds of news, then it means you have Gell-Mann amnesia. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

> “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

I am going to bookmark this article as a classic example of reporting so ill-informed that it confuses cause and effect, as described by Michael Crichton in characterizing “Gell-Mann Amnesia.” https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect

This is the greatest thing about Hacker News in my opinion. Obviously, there are limits on what I know so I depend on people here to help me out. Thank you! That said, I've learned that headlines are often not written by the authors of the article, but the magazine editor to drive clicks. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues.” Gell-Mann Amnesia https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

I would have also recommended the Economist until I experienced a Gell-Mann amnesiac effect [1] with regards to an article they wrote about South Africa, a country where I lived much of my life in, in which they so horrifically butchered the coverage I simply canceled my subscription for fear of how inaccurate everything else might have been. [1]: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Related article on the take that bitcoin is art, https://www.epsilontheory.com/in-praise-of-bitcoin/ I think it would be more accurate to compare it a monument or artifact, specifically because of the amount of real world energy that has gone into creating it. It's currently a half terabyte immutable linked list filled with a rich history of transactions and hidden messages/graffiti that can't be copied or changed without an commitment of energy and computation resources equal to the sum of what's gone into it for these 11 years. That's something that starts to rival the Great Pyramids (pun intended).

There's an important distinction to be made between fake news which is deliberately misleading and the concept of fiat news which is when information is passed along with no checks and balances in environments where people explicitly assume that there are checks and balances. We see this in the media but now also increasingly in academia as journals seem to be performing the review function less effectively than before. There's an article that I think explains the difference between these two problems that is worth reading: https://www.epsilontheory.com/fiat-money-fiat-news/

Another blog post that I love along very vaguely similar lines is https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/

His narrative pushing feels nefarious to me. I think he is using his new tech podcast (all-in) as a new platform to build a image of a pragmatic do-gooder billionare (to whomever who would buy that shtick), spin a new narrative and test out few ideas like (remove capital gains tax, he running for governorship) for approval. If GME debacle taught us (again?) anything, it's that markets are moved by narratives. And those raccoons who control the narrative can move the market towards their favour. Great post on epsilon theory on this https://www.epsilontheory.com/hunger-games/

> If they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t yet public. Yeah, it's definitely non-public that Apple's about to put best-in-class chips in their desktop machines. Totally secret. Don't tell anyone, Bloomberg! https://www.epsilontheory.com/why-am-i-reading-this-now/ Reminder: it was also Bloomberg who ran that very likely bogus and unsubstantiated story/psyop about the scary backdoor chips on the SuperMicro boards, and refused to retract it. When they do very obvious marketing fluff pieces like this, they lose even more credibility as a "legitimate news source" in my view, even if this ad they're running for Apple's upcoming hardware is 100% factually accurate.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) (edit: added link below) taken from: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

It ain't just science reporting. > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Along this line of thinking that "society is being forced into being average", I would reference this piece from Epsilon Theory: https://www.epsilontheory.com/the-elton-hootie-line/ TL;DR: In order to be "heard" or to achieve enough of a following to be economically/politically relevant, you must "dynamically range compress" everything to sound the same and appeal to the largest audience, which removes diversity.

> “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) Ref: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

In the follow-up video he goes through how to adjust the thermostat and spring tension. So maybe your toaster was just adjusted wrong? Maybe also just an example of something that's "too clever by half" [1] My own mini-rant: We got a KitchenAid mixer for our wedding and I think it's the worst mixer I've ever used. We had a Sunbeam growing up and it was superior in every way. [1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/

Even for the ones who didn't do anything illegal, they were certainly "let off the hook" in the sense that the massive bonuses they were paid for economically destructive decisions were never clawed back, and in fact the same fundamental structures of "no skin in the game" and "privatized gains, socialized losses" were preserved and even strengthened in the aftermath of the financial crisis. In the most egregious instance of this, firms which would have been nothing but smoking holes in the ground without public capital injections and backstops were allowed to pay out colossal bonuses to the same people who got them into that mess in the first place. However, it's also certainly not the case that there were no criminal acts of fraud committed by Wall St execs during the 2000s bubble. Dick Fuld's Repo 105 scam is a great example: https://www.epsilontheory.com/repo-105/

"All debates are bravery debates" from SSC is also brilliant. Really anything on there is going to be worth the read. Different vibe, but if you want another highly interesting take on political segregation, this is a favorite of mine: https://www.epsilontheory.com/things-fall-apart-pt-1/

To anyone who hasn’t been totally brainwashed yet one way or the other, a great piece of writing on MMT: https://www.epsilontheory.com/modern-monetary-theory-or-how-i-learned-…

Your post reminds me of this excellent post on metagames. https://www.epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/ The naive employee you mention who strives towards OKR completion wins the game, but loses the metagame of corporate ladder climbing.

That reminds me of this great "Too Clever By Half" essay. Seems that most revolutionary financial innovations tend to misplay the metagame. http://epsilontheory.com/too-clever-by-half/

> They’re excellent when answering questions on topics you know nothing about, and somehow embarrassingly wrong when you actually know the answer yourself I forgot the name of this phenomenon with humans, described it to o1 and it gave the correct answer - Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [1] "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know." – Michael Crichton (1942-2008) [1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

The way you stated this feeling remids me of Gell Mann Amnesia. https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)