adamlgerber

Google has significantly more data than merely what you're googling.

virtually every website transaction is observed by Google Analytics. nearly everywebsite has a google pixel installed. nearly every phyical location you visit and relationship you have is logged by Google.

even if you never use google search, they have you marked

everyone here is talking about eels but i prefer icktok

sure, call it entertainment rather than social. very fair comment, but that is not a distinction this paper is making. the paper is also talking about tiktok too which falls into the same entertainment category.

i feel like the underlying thesis of this is maybe wrong. someone closer to the methodology would know better but here is what i see:

(1) Meta and Google have seen their growth slow (not shrink) because they reach virtually the entirety of the online population, especially in the US. Meanwhile their time spent metrics continue to rise.

(2) Reddit is called out as a modest grower but its usage has more than doubled in the US since 2021 from 90M to 170M (according to emarketer).

Doenst mean the conclusions are wrong (i agree with it on polarization) but the growth measures seem to not reflect reality.

I just tried a few books that were not found or could not get the cover, even though they are both well known (over 50k reviews each on Goodreads).

The Physician https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4692.The_Physician

Soumission https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23929479-soumission

Is there something that might cause some popular books to not show?

mixed bags are our favorite thing to argue about

Building and growing a business of any size is probably one of the most intellectually stimulating lives possible. People work for years without any where close to his amount of engagement with the world.

I really admire Rob for his blog, life experience, and some truely unique and powerful perspectives.

This type of culture war bait is a little lame though. Its even more lame that he isnt welcome in certain bookstores for some reason. His book is still going to sell great and its those bookstores loss for not seeing his value.

your fact is incontestable, but labeling this as 'sad' is.

Scott Alexander is not for everyone (as I've learned by unsuccessfully foisting him on friends for years) but for people who are even remotely interested he is probably the greatest internet writer alive.

I'd love to hear alternative GOATs.

You might love Conversations with Tyler, the podcast hosted by Tyler Cowen. https://conversationswithtyler.com/

I used to enjoy Terry Gross and many other interviewers, but Tyler Cowen just blows past everyone by getting so much deeper so much faster than anyone else.

You can tell that the interviewers are often relieved to finally get asked real questions. Some people are put off by his style but I find it exhilarating.

Tyler Cowen: “I believe this is the first major work published in GPT-4, Claude 2, and some other services to come. I call it a generative book.”

i love this project. i feel like this is going to be a great source of interest and value over the next few years (and potentially immesurable value over longer time frames).

odd thing to be snarky about. organized religious practices coevolved with agricultural societies. I don't think this is that scandalous?

In 17th century was it better to be a religious Jew in Belgium or non-religious Jew in Belgium?

Because Long Covid is not a scientific term in the way most people use it.

I've had many family members refer to having long covid because they had a persistent stuffy nose for a few months. Prob virus related to some degree but the looseness of the language makes invites skepticism.

Also some people also love being very vocal about any possible pathology they might have as a political position. Just invites more skepticism.

Its not that I don't believe your general point but I would be interested in evidence that you're getting more than 1 in a row.

I am $50MM+/year spender on Meta ads and while I know that ad load is up I don't think its up that much where ads run alongside each other.

If you can show me evidence of this I will make a big fucking deal of this to Meta.

variations in the virus are predictable, but which ones really catch on and how are hard to predict.

I don't know how phizer/moderna/etc balance needs to develop different drugs against all possible variants but I expect that once a strong variant emerges they are well incentivized (financially and culturally) to scale up development against it.

The real surprise is how slowly our social and political institutions respond, not our pharma institutions.

2020 vaccines were made for 2020 variants. Summer 2021 brought new variants that are more contagious than the 2020 variants. Its not hard.

To me this is the most frustrating and frequent hot take I hear; "continue to show vaccines are less effective than we were all lead to believe"

I was sold a vaccine that limited hospitalization and death and we have three vaccines that all do this, frankly, miraculously.

I wasn't sold a prophylactic sunscreen that prevented infection of coming into my body. I was sold an immune response that made my body more resilient to it. I have not seen any evidence that this is waning over time.

Now, delta is a new variant of the disease that wasn’t the subject of the original vaccine study so why should this now old 2020 vaccine be as effective against this new 2021 variant? It shouldn’t be but considering the vaccines effectiveness at preventing hospitalization and death against the new variation that it wasn’t even built to combat its actually OVERDELIVERING against its goals. Another miracle

So maybe that requires adjustments to the vaccine, perhaps on an annual cadence like the flu vaccine. Frankly I am fine with that.

I am disappointed that the vaccines don’t do more to dampen the spread of the disease but considering how defeatable the worst cases are with now multiple vaccine options I am highly confident that our deservedly well paid scientists and pharma companies can keep the progress flowing here and continue to improve over time.

I think that each of those statements sound plausible but dont really have much to do with each other. In fact there is a lot of good news even within some of the bad news.

Stock prices reflect the fact that some elements of our economy are very resiliant, including demand, despite major disruptions. Would a crashing stock market have been better news?

Housing market is definitely a mess though but that has less to do with speculation and more to do with significant constraints in supply, especially in our largest and fastest growing cities. More people want to live in most of these cities (because cities are still generally well functioning and important labor markets) than they can house. We can and should build significantly more housing and make a major boom in more construction in our major cities and that would make the speculation in other parts of the market make more sense. Without building then we are walking down a difficult path.