“useful principles”

Here is an interesting blog post called “30 useful principles“. I would agree that the majority of them are useful. Anyway, here are a few ideas and phrases that caught my interest. I’ll try to be clear when I am quoting versus paraphrasing or adding my own interpretation.

  • “When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure.” Makes sense to me – measuring is necessary, but I have found that people who are actually doing things on the ground need an understanding of the fundamental goals, or else things will tend to drift over time and no longer be aimed at the fundamental goals.
  • “A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with 2 watches is never sure.” A good way to talk about the communication of uncertainty. Measuring and understanding uncertainty is critical in science and decision making, but how we communicate it requires a lot of careful thought to avoid unintended consequences. Decisions are often about playing the odds, and sometimes giving decision makers too much information on uncertainty leads to no decisions or delayed decisions, which are themselves a type of decision, and not the type that is likely to produce desirable results. Am I saying we should oversimplify and project an inflated sense of certainty when talking to the public and decision makers? and is this a form of manipulation? Well, sort of and sometimes yes to both these questions.
  • “Reading is the basis of thought.” Yes, this is certainly true for me, and it is even true that the writing process is an important part of thoroughly thinking something through. This is why we may be able to outsource the production of words to AI, but this will not be a substitute for humans thinking. And if we don’t exercise our thinking muscles, we will lose them over time and we will forget how to train the next generation to develop them. So if we are going to outsource thinking and problem solving to computers, let’s hope they will be better at it than we ever were. A better model would be computer-aided decision making, where the computers are giving humans accurate and timely information about the likely consequences of our decisions, but in the end we are still applying our judgment and values in making those decisions.
  • “punishing speech—whether by taking offence or by threatening censorship—is ultimately a request to be deceived.” It’s a good idea to create incentives for people to tell the truth and provide accurate information, even if it is information people in leadership positions don’t want to hear. Leaders get very out of touch if they don’t do this.
  • “Cynicism is not a sign of intelligence but a substitute for it, a way to shield oneself from betrayal & disappointment without having to do or think.” I don’t know that cynical or “realistic” people lack raw intelligence on average, but they certainly lack imagination and creativity. The more people have trouble imagining that things can change, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that things will not change.
  • “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” I’m as horrified by pictures of dying babies in a hospital in a war zone as anyone else, but it also raises my propaganda flag. Who is trying to manipulate me with these images and why? What else is going on at the same time that I might also want to pay attention to?

Taiwan’s 2024 election

There is an important election taking place in 2024 that affects people far beyond the borders of the country where it takes place. I’m talking, of course, about Taiwan. Well, the three (?) sides don’t even agree on what the borders of the country are, so we could start there.

Far be it from me to express any opinions about the politics of Taiwan. But it is worth watching because it affects relations between Taiwan and (Peoples Republic of) China, and this potentially affects everyone. The idea of a full-frontal invasion of Taiwan has always seemed far-fetched to me. It seems more likely to me that there would be some form of subversion, election interference (like we saw BOTH the U.S. and Russia do in Ukraine), confusion about who is in charge, shadowy paramilitary forces (Russia in Ukraine), etc.

I’ve always thought Taiwan must have the best counter-intelligence in the world. It must be a bit like Cold War Germany, where the two antagonist sides basically look identical and speak the same language. Only there is a lot of economic interaction, free information flow, at least some travel, and the two sides are not as far apart culturally as, say, Cold Water era Germany and today’s North and South Korea. (In the latter case, the two sides might look and speak similarly, the comparison ends there – certainly no free flow of information, travel, and very little economic interaction, so it is hard to imagine how North Korea could place spies effectively in South Korea). So how does Taiwan manage to secure its elections and keep its government from being a nest of spies? But somehow, they seem to manage this on an ongoing basis.

Project Censored Top 25

You should buy Project Censored’s new book or otherwise support them if you can. And having said that, they appear to have posted their top 25 “most censored” stories of 2023 on RSS. Here are a few that caught my eye:

  • #22: Agricultural industry’s continued heavy use of antibiotics linked antibiotic resistance concerns in humans
  • #21: A lot of homeless people actually do some sort of paid work.
  • #19: One study estimated economic costs of gun violence in the U.S. at $557 billion per year. It may seem callous to “put a price on human life” this way, but hard nosed cost-benefit analysis can sometimes help justify better policy decisions, as it has for seat belts and air pollution controls, for example.
  • #16: Sixteen municipalities in Puerto Rico are suing fossil fuel giants under racketeering statutes for intentionally misleading the public about the causes of climate change. And #14: And it’s not just oil and gas companies – the electric industry was also very much in on the lies and cover ups that have altered our biosphere beyond the point of return over the past half century.
  • #15: In the U.S., data show black people are wrongfully convicted of murder about seven times more often than white people.
  • #5: The idea of buying carbon offsets to offset travel or other emissions-producing activities seems very attractive, but unfortunately, the objective evidence does not show them to be anywhere near as effective as advertised.

“Our Megathreatened Age”

The “Megathreats” according to Nouriel Roubini are that “economic, monetary, and financial threats are rising and interacting in dangerous ways with various other social, political, geopolitical, environmental, health, and technological developments.”

This is a long article with a lot in it, but one thing I always like to puzzle over is how real-world phenomena translate to money and financial markets. One advantage of understanding this would be to find numbers provided by financial markets that translate back to the real world, and in an ideal case maybe these could even serve as early warnings when things are really about to go seriously wrong. Anyway, this article doesn’t have all the answers, only clues, but here are a few:

  • energy and food costs – this is fairly obvious, although short-term noise may obscure any useful predictive ability
  • labor costs – tells us something about demographics and population structure
  • public debt servicing costs – maybe a more useful thing to think about than just the size of the debt or deficit, because it tells us something about the size of the debt, interest rates, and inflation together, and it can be compared to tax revenues and/or a society’s overall productive capacity. This in turn tells us something about limits to (economic) growth and the ability of a society to weather potential shocks.
  • military spending on conventional and unconventional weapons – not exactly public information, but there are some sources out there, and this tells us something both about overall global risk and about government’s priorities and ability to solve other problems
  • climate change adaptation and mitigation spending, and gap between actual spending and what is needed to meet the agreed targets – not sure exactly how to measure this, but people must be trying. We could compare this spending with measured results to get some sense of efficiency, and again it tells us something about government priorities and ability to solve long-term problems. Roubini compares climate spending to reconstruction after a war, which I find interesting: “Though a surge of investment in reconstruction can produce an economic expansion, the country is still poorer for having lost a large share of its wealth. The same is true of climate investments. A significant share of the existing capital stock will have to be replaced, either because it has become obsolete or because it has been destroyed by climate-driven events.”
  • “unfunded implicit liabilities” to deal with pandemic preparedness. Again, seems hard to measure but people are undoubtedly trying.
  • “To prevent populist regimes from coming to power and pursuing reckless, unsustainable economic policies, liberal democracies will need to spend heavily to reinforce their social safety nets – as many are already doing.” Well, not the U.S. so much. At least we are not doubling down on this, and the political cost of advocating it seems high while opposing it seems to appeal to many voters.
  • Retirement pension and health care spending, actual and estimated gap with what is needed.
  • long-term government bond rates, and “risk premia on public bonds” – tells us something about perceived risk that a government can keep up with its obligations long-term
  • mix of foreign currency reserves held by governments – somewhat obscure, but again a measure of risk that governments can meet their obligations and solve their societal problems
  • We can always measure fun things like poverty, inequality, and migration, and of course “stagflation” which I would define as real GDP growth net of inflation.

Taken together, what all this suggests to me is an analysis of government budgets, financial markets, and some demographic/migration data to see where various governments’ priorities lie relative to what their priorities probably should be to successfully address long-term challenges, and their likely ability to bounce back from various types and magnitudes of shock. You could probably develop some kind of risk index at the national and global levels based on this. And then what would you do with it? If you were a rational government, you could choose policies that reduce it. Maybe you turn everything over to the AIs and ask them to figure it out.

air pollution kills

U.S. coal power plants have killed (i.e. caused premature deaths of) 460,000 people over 20 years, according to the Guardian. That is not going to include future premature deaths due to climate damage. Sure, even switching to natural gas is much better than this, but I can’t help comparing it to nuclear power. Deaths and risks due to nuclear power have been much exaggerated, in my view. I can imagine a world where nuclear power was implemented on a much larger scale, along with electric vehicles and electric HVAC in buildings, decades ago. It could have been the bridge fuel that got us to a more renewable future. Or maybe we would have even learned enough by doing to decide it was a good choice for the long haul. So the question now is whether to double down on nuclear research and implementation, or just throw all our eggs in other renewable baskets.

And as for air pollution, there are just so many reasons to make it a central issue, from the obvious health impacts of breathing particulate matter to the multiple benefits of spending more time outdoors getting around under our own muscle power in clean air. It could be a virtuous loop if we really made it a priority.

anti-immigrant riots in Ireland?

Ireland is not immune to the surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. Could there be shadowy anti-EU political actors fanning these flames? I recommend examining the photos carefully to see if Steve Bannon is lurking somewhere in the background, wearing an Emperor Palpatine hood with the ghost of Joseph Goebbels whispering in his ear.

best “urban planning” books of 2023

And the “best of” posts begin… I put urban planning in quotes because the field is broad and covers a lot of ground that may be of interest to engineers, natural and social scientists, economists, and many others. Here are a handful that caught my eye:

  • How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between. Interesting to me because, in general, neither the United States nor my specific state or city seems able to get big things done. I think this is largely a failure of imagination and priorities, but I also listened to this Freakonomics podcast recently on how construction productivity in the U.S. has just gone nowhere over the last 50 years while productivity in other sectors has grown by leaps and bounds. They rule out lack of capital investment and excessive monopoly power. Some evidence seems to point toward regulation (whether health, safety, and environmental protections are “excessive” is in the eyes of the beholder, but this also includes misguided/outdated local land use policies like minimum lot sizes and parking requirements), citizen input/resistance (but in my city, legitimate public input takes place alongside some shady politician/developer horse trading and the two can be hard to distinguish, and of course, existing homeowners have a rational but unhelpful interest in resisting new construction and new residents, and this can also be tinged with racial bias). Nobody thinks better construction management and risk management would be a bad thing, and this is an area I think computers and automation (call it artificial intelligence if you want) might make a difference. Make a digital model of exactly what is supposed to be built where and when, then monitor the hell out of it during the construction process to try to anticipate and correct deviations from the plan before they occur. There is always interest in prefabrication and making construction look a lot more like manufacturing, which it superficially resembles except for taking place in the real world of weather, traffic, surprise underground conditions etc. And then (not really covered in the podcast) there is the high-tech stuff like drones, robots, and advances in materials science. Being in the engineering industry myself, I know it is fiercely competitive and yet relatively risk adverse and slow to adopt new technology.
  • Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond. I’m not sure I want to be depressed enough to read this, but certainly an important topic. To solve poverty, you can give people money in the short term (which you have to take from other people/entities who have more than they need, although they won’t see it that way), and/or you have to give them education, skills, and job prospects in the longer term. That’s really the whole story – now go forth and prosper, everyone.
  • Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. Well, before reading this everyone should read the classic The High Cost of Free Parking. But I have gotten jaded trying to change minds on this by providing accurate and rational information to the parking-entitled crowd, which is almost everyone.
  • Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of our Planet by Ben Goldfarb. “Road ecology” almost sounds like an oxymoron to me. Then again, it is really eye opening when you realize how much of the urban surface is made up of roads, streets, driveways, and parking lots. So if there really are ways to reduce the impact, it is worth thinking about.
  • Urban Jungle: The History and Future of Nature in the City and The End of Eden: Wild Nature in the Age of Climate Breakdown. Important topics, given that there is less and less land not altered by humans out there.
  • Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: Learning to Thrive Without Growth. This covers population shrinkage in developed countries today, and possibility eventually in most countries. But developed countries will need to deal with increasing migration pressure in the medium term, so I am not sure how soon we will have the luxury of thinking about reducing our city sizes. Then again, maybe we should be letting some cities shrink while densifying others and making them as vibrant and human as possible.
  • The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. Okay yes, densify and improve the cities in good places.
  • A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? and The First City on Mars: An Urban Planner’s Guide to Settling the Red Planet. Fun to think about, because we need to have some imagination and practice thinking big even as we are solving all those tricky little problems close to home.

November 2023 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: An economic model that underlies a lot of climate policy may be too conservative. I don’t think this matters much because the world is doing too little, too late even according to the conservative model. Meanwhile, the ice shelves holding back Greenland are in worse shape than previously thought.

Most hopeful story: Small modular nuclear reactors have been permitted for the first time in the United States, although it looks like the specific project that was permitted will not go through. Meanwhile construction of new nuclear weapons is accelerating (sorry, not hopeful, but I couldn’t help pointing out the contrast…)

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: India somehow manages to maintain diplomatic relations with Palestine (which they recognize as a state along with 138 other UN members), Israel, and Iran at the same time.

migration

In the U.S., it’s “secure the border”. In the UK, it’s “bring down net migration“. In the Netherlands, it’s the possible rise to power of an openly anti-Islam party. As I happen to be reading one of the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr (A Quiet Flame, 2008) set partially in 1930s Berlin with the Nazis on the cusp of power, I find all this thought-provoking and concerning. In most countries, we’ve come far enough that openly advocating discrimination against a group already in the country is not an acceptable mainstream position. But expressing open anti-immigrant nationalist views is the next best option.

There is some rational fear of job loss and wage suppression that all this feeds on. But inequality between richer and poorer countries is somewhat clearly the root driver of migration, and climate change driven disasters and droughts are adding fuel to the fire. Add in some old-fashioned geopolitical conflict and you have a very volatile mix. The irony is that the policies needed to counteract these forces – economic and technological aid from richer to poorer countries, education, trade, reasonable guest worker programs, arms control and peace negotiations, serious emissions reduction and climate change adaptation investments to name a few – are anathema to anti-immigrant nationalist politics. So you have a feedback loop where the migration pressure drives the anti-migration political rhetoric, and the political rhetoric drives politicians and policies that increase the migration pressure.

Rationally explaining all this to enough voters to elect politicians who would break these feedback loops does not seem to be a viable option. It’s a tough one, and if I come up with the answers that have eluded a lot of smarter people than me up until now, I will let you know.

automatic speed regulators

Automatic speed regulators on private vehicles – YES PLEASE. This is an idea that will save lives, and its time has come. Won’t somebody please think of the children?

The article suggests limiting speeds to 100 mph, but come on! Why not limit them to the local posted limit? Or if saving lives that way is too interventionist for “‘Merica”, then install the technology and let insurance companies massively penalize people who choose to turn it off. This could be a middle ground between self-driving cars and people who insist on the preventable mass murder of letting human beings continue operating deadly highway vehicles on city streets, once it is no longer necessary.