Links for Later 6-25-14

1. Amartya Sen refutes the Just Desserts Theory of Distribution (via Brad DeLong)
2. David Friedberg of Climate Corporation gives an impressive interview to First Round Review. Pay attention to his strategic thinking. (via Tim Ferriss)
3. Amazon's maximalist bargaining position with Hachette. The POD terms are interesting.
4. All-in bargaining positions like Amazon's tend to win. Here's why you should never go for piecemeal bargaining.
5. Jon Gnarr and the Best Party won big in Iceland's elections a few years ago. They did it by not being serious.

 Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

-Bertrand Russell 

Links for Later 6-9-14

1. China's economy has some big challenges ahead (capacity utilization is at 60%, lots of bad credit on the market, etc.) (via Marginal Revolution)
2. Syllabus for Lynda Barry's drawing class.
3. "Really, Edwin..."
4. Bishop Synesius On Dreams (De Insomniis)
5. Academics getting fed up with the highly profitable academic publishing industry.

Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

Early alchemical manuscript, part of the Corpus Hermeticum

Isaac Newton's translation, per Wikipedia:

1. Tis true without lying, certain & most true.
2. That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing
3. And as all things have been & arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
4. The Sun is its father, the moon its mother, the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth is its nurse.
5. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.
6. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
7. Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.
8. It ascends from the earth to the heaven & again it descends to the earth & receives the force of things superior & inferior.
9. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world
10. & thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.
11. Its force is above all force. For it vanquishes every subtle thing & penetrates every solid thing.
12. So was the world created.
13. From this are & do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (or process) is here in this. Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world
14. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished & ended.

Book of the XXIV Philosophers

Translation in progress of 12th century manuscript (pseudo-Hermes Trismegistus?), as requested by Ted Hand. List of twenty four theses about God from various philosophers (Meister Eckhardt, Thomas Bradwardine, Nicholas da Cusa, etc.). Each of the 24 theses has accompanying commentary; further layers of commentary are available in the French and German translations, which I do not currently have before me. The Latin original can be found on Markus Vizent's blog (http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/2012/10/book-of-24-philosophers.html).

Book of the 24 Philosophers – Libri Viginti Quattuor Philosophorum

Only one question remained among the twenty four philosophers: what is God? Let us agree, granted by general consent, that each of us shall in turn define God by his own proposition, extract anything that we might agree upon, and decide [upon who has the best definition]:

 

I.                   GOD IS A MONAD GENERATING A MONAD, REFLECTING THE FIRE OF LOVE BACK UPON ITSELF.

II.                GOD IS AN INFINITE SPHERE, WHOSE CENTER IS EVERYWHERE, AND WHOSE CIRCUMFERENCE IS NOWHERE.

III.             GOD IS ALL IN EVERY PART.

IV.             GOD IS A MIND, GENERATING A WORD, PRESERVED CONTINUALLY.

V.                GOD IS THAT,  WHICH NOTHING BETTER CAN BE IMAGINED.

VI.             GOD IS THAT ONE, NEXT TO WHOM SUBSTANCE IS ACCIDENT, YET IS NO ACCIDENT.

VII.          GOD IS THE ORIGIN WITHOUT ORIGIN, THE PROCESS WITHOUT VARIATION, THE END WITHOUT END.

VIII.       GOD IS LOVE, MORE OBSCURE THAN AIR.

IX.             GOD IS WHATEVER IS PRESENT WHATEVER TIME IT IS.

X.                GOD IS THAT WHICH CANNOT BE NUMBERED, WHOSE EXISTENCE CANNOT BE CIRCUMSCRIBED, AND WHOSE GOODNESS IS WITHOUT END.

XI.             GOD IS BEYOND BEING, NECESSARY, ABIDING ALONE IN ABUNDANCE, SUFFICIENT.

XII.          GOD IS HE WHOSE DIVINE WILL, POWER AND WISDOM ARE EQUAL.

XIII.       GOD IS THE ETERNAL ACTIVE IN ITSELF, WITHOUT DIVISION OR SEPARATION.

XIV.       GOD IS THE OPPOSITE OF MEDIATED BEING.

XV.          GOD IS THE WAY OF LIFE, THE FORM OF TRUTH, THE UNITY OF GOODNESS.

XVI.       GOD IS THAT EXCELLENCE WHICH WORDS CANNOT TRULY TELL, NOR THE MIND RIGHTLY DESCRIBE ITS LIKE.

XVII.    GOD IS HE WHO UNDERSTANDS HIMSELF ALONE, NOT DEPENDENT ON ANY RECEIVER.

XVIII. GOD IS A SPHERE OF MANY CIRCUMFERENCES AND MANY POINTS.

XIX.       GOD IS PERPETUALLY MOVING THOUGH IMMOBILE.

XX.          GOD IS HE WHO LIVES ALONE IN HIS INTELLECT.

XXI.       GOD IS THE SHADOW IN THE SOUL AFTER ALL LIGHT HAS DEPARTED.

XXII.    GOD IS THAT WHICH HAS NO DIVISIONS WHATEVER, WHICH HAS NO VARIATIONS, AND WHICH HAS NOTHING COMMINGLED WITH IT.

XXIII.  GOD IS THAT WHICH CAN ONLY BE UNDERSTOOD THROUGH IGNORANCE.

XXIV. GOD IS THAT LIGHT WHOSE PARTS NEITHER INCREASE NOR PASS, BUT ARE GODLIKE FORMS IN THEMSELVES.

Dustin Lance Black's Creative Process

He has a very deep way of working with the index cards at the post-note pre-first-draft phase. It's worth thinking about all the annotation and grouping methods that you could use in your own work to deliver this level of richness at the stack-of-cards level. Two useful questions that sit behind everything in this clip: "Why the film...?" and "How the film...?"

Links for Later 3-21-14

1. Supertaskers: the ~5% of people who do better when multitasking.
2. Report from the Extreme Memory Tournament.
3. An extremely good interview with Rory Sutherland about behvioral economics, and also the difference between scientists and business people with regard to evidence.

Craig Chester and the Ghost of Montgomery Clift

Nicholas da Cusa - On Learned Ignorance

De Docta Ignorantia
II,3

“God enfolds all things, and so all things in Him are Himself; He unfolds all things, and so He is all things in themselves.”

II,4

“ Therefore, that which was written the Absolute Maximum in Book One, appropriate to the Maximum Absolute absolutely, all of this applies to the contracted maximum in a contracted way…God is the Absolute Maximum and Absolute Oneness, who preceeds and unifies all distance and difference,… an absolute which is everything, in which everything absolutely begins and ends, and in which it has its absolute being and in which all are without plurality in that same Absolute Maximum, most simple, indistinct, as are infinite lines in every figure. Similarly, the world or the universe is a contracted maximum or unity as opposed to one that preceeds contraction…existence is contracted, and includes all that begins and ends in contraction, exists in contraction, infinite contraction or contracted infinity, in which all pluralities are contained within this maximum contraction, with contracted simplicity and indistinguishability, as maximal lines are contracted by and contract all figures.” So that God is the absolute quiddity of the universe; the universe is that same quiddity, but contracted, that is, implemented (as that which is spoken is to the speaker, so to is the effect of existence to [God]). The absolute unity of God is free of every plurality “But a contracted unity such as a universe is a maximum unity even though contracted and not a greater absolute…this is a unity through the contraction of plurality, as infinitude from finitude…God, since He is immense is neither in the Sun nor in the Moon, though in them He is absolutely that which they are…Since the universe is a contracted quiddity, it is neither the Sun nor the Moon, but is neverthess when it is in the Sun it is the Sun, and when it is in the Moon it is the Moon; the identity of the universe is in diversity, as the unity of it is in plurality…So our universe, though it is neither Sun nor Moon, is yet the Sun in the Sun and the Moon in the Moon, where it is the Sun and the Moon without plurality and diversity.”

-from Nicholas da Cusa

De Docta Ignorantia

On Learned Ignorance 

Links for Later 5-8-14

1. Josh Eidelson interviews Thomas Piketty at Salon.
2. Charlie Stross: The Snowden Leaks, a Meta-Narrative.
3. Tesla's plans for a "gigafactory": "Like an office park all under one roof"

Frank Quitely - What Do Artists Do All Day?

BBC Documentary

Links for Later 5-3-14

1. Kip Manley writes an open letter to John C. Wright.
2. Cat Valente writes an open letter to John C. Wright.
3. Hal Duncan and the Elders of Sodom write an open letter to John C. Wright.
4. John C. Wright takes his post down in response to a large number of open letters objecting to it.
5. Aaron Hedlund notes some issues with Piketty involving, among other things, questions about what variables are properly endogenous and exogenous to growth & production models. Interesting critique.
6. Noah Smith notes Tyler Cowen's anti-Piketty posts, their frequency & intensity, and the similarity of Cowen's predictions about inequality to Piketty's. So why the friction?
7. List of the "30 most influential living psychologists". Weirdly, I have heard of all of them except for their choice for #1.
8. How to write an essay.

Seth Roberts

Seth Roberts, psychologist and self-experimentation pioneer, died this week while hiking. Andrew Gellman has a good remembrance here. Nassim Taleb is organizing a scientific memorial this summer.

More on Piketty's Capital

Robert Solow presents a very clear explication of Piketty's arguments at New Republic. Capital in the 21st Century is, as Solow says, a serious book.

Brad DeLong rounds up the criticism of the book. I have been groping for a way to describe its reception among economists, which is that there are a number of criticisms with parts of it, but that no one I've read feels that it's in any way stupid or misguided. In other words, it is a serious  book. As Brad says, everyone agrees with about 70%, disagrees with 10-20% and isn't sure about another 10-20% but can't agree on which parts to agree or disagree with. There are several useful critiques, and several critiques which argue from derp, from which to choose.

Tyler Cowen is less laudatory and more critical, but still recommends reading the book. Suresh Naidu also has an interesting take.

From a cultural perspective, it's weird to see a dense tome on economic distribution and growth reach number one bestseller status. I haven't seen Piketty on any of the national talk shows yet. I dread that day.

Thomas Piketty - Capital in the 21st Century

Distributional effects of the current economic system have received growing interest as the distribution of income and wealth within the largest economies has grown steeper. It seems that this month, Capital in the 21st Century is on the bedside table of every economist I know, as Michael Lewis's book is on the table of every trader. And as with Flash Boys, everyone's has a problem or two with Piketty's theses, while the consensus is that it's an important book even after taking the flaws into account.

Brad DeLong's "Finger exercises" provide a simple model to play with, and begins with a discussion of four different possible return rates (r) that might relate to the growth rate (g) in Piketty's models. He then looks at the levels of r, g, and wealth to income (W/Y); the results of the model suggest that at least to some extent, the inverse relationship of return rates to capital and accumulation of wealth does in fact hold.

James K. Galbraith's review provides a number of interesting critiques, and finds that while the book contains good information on "flows of income, transfers of wealth and the distribution of financial resources in some of the world's wealthes countries," it does less well in proposing remedies appropriate to the times, and in clarifying the various meanings of "capital"; he also appears to muddle the precedents of the growth model he uses to drive his argument.

[T]he argument of the critics was not about Keynes, or fluctuations. It was about the concept of physical capital and whether profit can be derived from a production function. In desperate summary, the case was three-fold. First: one cannot add up the values of capital objects to get a common quantity without a prior rate of interest, which (since it is prior) must come from the financial and not the physical world. Second, if the actual interest rate is a financial variable, varying for financial reasons, the physical interpretation of a dollar-valued capital stock is meaningless. Third, a more subtle point: as the rate of interest falls, there is no systematic tendency to adopt a more “capital-intensive” technology, as the neoclassical model supposed. 

In short, the Cambridge critique made meaningless the claim that richer countries got that way by using “more” capital. In fact, richer countries often use less apparent capital; they have a larger share of services in their output and of labor in their exports—the “Leontief paradox.” Instead, these countries became rich—as Pasinetti later argued—by learning, by improving technique, by installing infrastructure, with education, and—as I have argued—by implementing thoroughgoing regulation and social insurance. None of this has any necessary relation to Solow’s physical concept of capital, and still less to a measure of the capitalization of wealth in financial markets. 

There is no reason to think that financial capitalization bears any close relationship to economic development. Most of the Asian countries, including Korea, Japan, and China, did very well for decades without financialization; so did continental Europe in the postwar years, and for that matter so did the United States before 1970. 

And Solow’s model did not carry the day. In 1966 Samuelson conceded the Cambridge argument!

DeLong finds fault with Galbraith's critique, and Galbraith responds in the comments on DeLong's post. Chris Bertram reviews Rawls' Economic Justice in light of Piketty over on the Crooked Timber group blog. Paul Krugman has a laudatory review of the book up at the NYRB.

*

 



My own first impression is to think that it would be quite difficult to maintain a return on capital much in excess of the growth rate in cases where capital provides nearly all of the factor input of production, at least for the time periods we're talking about (50+ years). I could be mistaken, otherwise if r-g is large for any substantial length of time, then the quantity of capital would greatly exceed the entire output of the economy of which the capital is a part. Mathematically, these two growth rates have to converge as one becomes closer to another. Moreover, we would also expect that r would fall before that, due to diminishing returns. Piketty's exploding models, in which one factor totally predominates seems less appealing than some kind of pendulum model.

We are in a second Gilded Age, according to the evidence, and the question is what to do about it, and how bad might it get?Rather than raising the income tax to confiscatory levels as Piketty reommends, the most promising policy prescriptions available to us at this time seem to be to neutralize the favorable tax treatment of dividends and capital gains relative to wage income, to invest in public goods (both tangible and intangible), and to strengthen the social safety net.

Some questions I'm still thinking about: If wealth and income inequality are increasing in certain economies, but moderating globally, how much of the argument still holds? Has Piketty chosen the correct definition of r? Is Noah Smith correct in saying that this is just a restatement of the robots vs. globalization argument?

Giordano Bruno

For here is a philosophy that opens the senses, contents the spirit, glorifies the intellect, and produces the humane and true state of blessings that humanity desires, consists through balance, frees from care and pacifies sorrow, causes one to rejoice in the present and not to fear the future; for that Providence or fate or chance in life which determines our course through our particular vicissitudes neither wants nor permits us to know about one thing without ignorance of another, so that at first glance, we are always doubtful and perplexed. But, when we consider more profoundly the being and substance of the universe in which we immutably dwell, we see that neither we nor any real substance truly dies; for nothing is diminished in its substance, but all things that travel in infinite space change in aspect. And since we are all subject to the same Ultimate Efficient Cause, we should not believe, expect or hope otherwise than that, since everything comes from good, all is good, for the good and to the good; from good, through good, to good; anyone who believes the contrary apprehends nothing but what is present, as the goodness of a building is not manifest to one who sees only a tiny piece of it, like a stone affixed with a bit of cement to a garden wall, but which is visible  to one who sees the whole inside and out, who has the ability to see how each part converses with all the others. We have no fear that what has accumulated in this world could, through the vehemence of some errant spirit, or the wrath of Jove’s thunderbolt, be dispersed through this little sepulcher or cupola of the heavens, or shaken or scattered like dust throughout this starry mantle; and in no other way could nature be made to empty itself of subsistence, except when to our eyes it appears that air compressed within the concavity of a bubble vanishes on release, because there is nothing known in the world where one thing does not always succeed another, nor is there some ultimate deep of the world where being is finally dispersed into nonbeing by the Maker’s hand. There are no ends, boundaries, limits or walls which defraud or deprive us of the infinite multitude of things. Therefore, the earth and sea are fecund, therefore the sun burns forever, eternally supplying fuel for the voracious flames, as vapors feed diminished seas, therefore the infinite perpetually bears forth new material.

Giordano Bruno

On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds

Prefatory Epistle

Links for Later 3-20-14

1. Strategist Lawrence Freedman on the Ukraine crisis, and why making friends is often the best strategy. Exaggerates neither the dangers nor the ease of the current situation.
2. Strategist Edward Luttwak is less sanguine.
3. Hugh Howey on why every writer should self-publish.
4. The greatest juggler alive leaves to run a concrete business.
5. Cyberpunk tumblrs.
6. PTSD and moral injury.
7. Visiting Andre Linde, who proposed the inflationary model, on the occasion of the observation of gravity waves, supporting his theory.

Giordano Bruno - On the Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds

Prefatory Epistle

Written for the most illustrious

Signeur Michel de Castelnau

Signeur of Mauvissiere, Concressault and Joinville

Councilor of the Privy Council,

Captain of 50 men at arms,

And Ambassador to Her Serene Majesty of England.

O most illustrious Knight, if I had driven a plow, herded sheep, cultivated a garden, or trimmed a garment, then no one would have held me in much regard, few would have seen me, and even fewer chosen to deal with me, and then I could well try to please everyone. But, because I have tried to describe the field of nature, consider the disposition of the soul, partake of the life of the mind, and travel like a master artificer through the maze of the intellect, those who have regarded me have threatened me, those who have seen me have assailed me, those who have encountered me have tried to bite me, and those who have understood me have tried to destroy me; not just one, nor a few, but many, or virtually all. If you want to understand why this is so, I will tell you the reason: everyday people displease me, commoners are odious, the multitude discontent me, and only the singular one is my beloved: through her I have freedom in subjection, happiness in sorrow, wealth in poverty, and life in death; through her I escape envy of those who are servants in freedom, have pain even in pleasure, are poor despite their wealth, dead though living; for in their body is that chain that binds them, in their spirit is the hell that oppresses them, within their soul is the sin that sickens them, within their mind is the sloth that kills them; for they lack the magnanimity that grants resolve, the endurance for success, the splendor of the illustrious, and the knowledge that enlivens. Thus, I do not avoid the arduous path for want of energy, nor spare my arm from this work for laziness, nor in cowardice shrink from the enemy who confronts me, nor, dazzled, turn my eyes from the splendor of the divine; I am aware that I have a bit of a reputation as a sophist, more interested in seeming to be clever than in truly being wise, more ambitious to establish a new and false sect than to support that which is old and true; a bird catcher, trying to capture splendor and glory; an unquiet spirit, trying to undermine the foundations of good discipline by using siege engines of perversity.

Therefore, My Lord, let the saints disperse those who unjustly hate me, may I always do what is pleasing before my God, may I gain favor with the rulers of this world, may the stars grant me fertile land for my seed and abundant seed for my land, that I might harvest abundant fruit from my labors, that the spirits be awoken and the hearts be opened of all who suffer in darkness: for I certainly make no falsehood, if I err, it is by accident, and I do strive for love of victory itself (because empty success and hollow victory are enemies of God, vile and without honor, and such are not truly triumphs); rather, I suffer, torment and tire myself for love of true knowledge and true contemplation. All this shall I make manifest through demonstrative arguments, dependent on lively reasoning, supported by moderated senses, admitting no false particulars, rather arriving like true ambassadors of objective Nature, presenting themselves to the searcher, appearing to the observer, clear to those who would understand, plain to those who would comprehend. So here I present my contemplation of the infinite, the universe and the innumerable worlds.

---

[1] Literally: to do what Daedalus did.

Andy Othling - Daydream (Tycho cover)

Tycho's new album, Awake, comes out tomorrow in the US. Have you ordered your copy yet?

Bruce Sterling closing keynote at SXSW 2014

The chairman speaks.