Category: One-handed!

I’ve known about Pump.fun [wikipedia] — a website where anyone can create a meme coin and then hope to profit from a “pump” in its price — for a few months, but I’ve never had any interest in visiting it (neither should you). But I already knew that it was full of “degens” trying to rip each other off in the most depraved — but transparently depraved — ways possible. (Trump’s meme coins are in the same basket of rip offs actually worse.)

What we’re talking about here is a competition to find the most novel ways to create something from nothing… and then try to find “bigger idiots” to pay you for it.

What’s sad is the number of people (mostly young men) who are spending so much time — and usually money — trying to rip each other off, and — as you know with men taking risks — it’s getting out of control.

Recently a guy shot himself on a life stream. He had failed to make money on Pump, but he said “if I die [playing Russian Roulette], then I hope someone makes a meme coin for me.”

Well he did and someone did and then people started speculating on the coin, trying to make money. Here’s a podcast describing the whole sordid affair.

Here I am worried about climate chaos, trying to become a better teacher, and worried about my dad’s long term care — and THIS is reality for so many people? Fuck. That. Shit.

Pivoting a little, there’s an interesting fight developing on whether AIs (or their creators) can be sued for lying or other nasty stuff. What’s interesting is that the AIs are trained on human data — a lot of it coming from social media companies that are protected (in the US) from lawsuits due to Section 230. Will AIs also be protected by §230? Or will they get sued for repeating the lies and filth of humans? (They ARE getting sued for training AIs on pirated books.) I really wonder when people will just walk away from all the “shit on social” and start talking with each other again. Social sites — and especially their “engagement for cash” algorithms are a plague.

Of course, that plague was created by humans — mostly tech-bros — so these developments debasements are related.

ME asks [edited a bit]:

How do the small rural communities still manage to exist with decent living conditions? Take for example any small rural village in a country such as Bulgaria or Croatia or South Africa with around 1,000 people. People there are working, have/self-supplied food, water, sanitation facilities, a means of transport/mobility, etc. I often think of cooking programmes where the host visits a small village in Croatia, Sardinia, or Portugal, where people “live off the land/sea” and seem content.

Contrast that life with life in a big city where people pursue economic growth, development, consumerism, and lots of services, using advanced infrastructure and technologies. They are always driving, pushing, competing for more and bigger.

How does the small rural community exist? How are those people content? It seems that people in cities — and national politicians — are never satisfied with their economic situation. They are always quoting economic growth figures, always afraid of recession?

I love this question, as it gets at so many important, but often ignored topics and features of life. Here are some of my thoughts, but they are hardly complete — and maybe not right in your experience — so please add your comments!

• A small community cannot have a large market. There’s just not enough customers for a lot of diversity. So you may have fewer, simpler products on the supply side bought by people who cannot afford much on the demand side. This “village equilibrium” exists at a lower output (~GDP) per person, just as a “city equilibrium” will have a higher output per person, which means more income and thus more spending power and consumption.
• Trade (and internet shopping) will immediately interfere with these two simple equilibria, but that’s been true for millennia, so I’ll ignore it for the moment, because it’s much more important to focus on the differences in culture between the village and city.
• Humans, as social creatures, are always comparing themselves to their neighbors. We call this “keeping up with the Joneses” in the US, but the same is true everywhere. People in the village may be content with a small house, local food and basic consumption of goods that are old, cheap and often repaired. That’s because they do not have that much income but also because their neighbors are the same. When something breaks, there are always people around to fix it, because that’s what they do. People in the cities, in contrast, compete to have the latest and greatest. They have more money to spend and no space for extra stuff, so they consume new things and discard old things at a faster rate. Nobody knows how to repair anything; they hire others to do that work or just toss stuff that breaks.
• In both cases, people may be spending 80-90% of their income on consumption, but that’s 80% of €4,000 in the village and 80% of €40,000 in the city. Both are saving 20% of their money but the “footprint” of their lifestyles differ by a factor of 10.
• Importantly, the people in the village may be happier than those in the city, as long as they feel “respectable” relative to the neighbors. Those in the city may be less happy, because there are some really rich “Joneses” nearby. Media — and now social media–  turbocharges relative comparisons everywhere, especially with younger people who do not have so much experience in life and happiness. That’s why they “flee with the circus” or seek the “bright lights, big city” life.
• Friendship and love are the most important things we “consume” and our levels of each depend on how long we live somewhere, how much time we have to “spend” on others, and norms of socializing. In a village where most people have grown up together and time is not so short, people can socialize for long periods of time without spending cash they don’t have. In cities, strangers try to meet via Apps, or while drinking in a bar. Maybe they have 15 minutes to talk, but then they need to go somewhere. Friends don’t just get together to play cards — you can do that ANYTIME– but to go to a show, or go shopping, etc. It’s expensive and inefficient. And just when you think you’ve got a good friend, they leave town for a higher paying job, or a new love.

Economics is not about money as much as happiness, and trying to get as much happiness as we can from our scarce resources (money and time). That’s why, if we take “the fullness of life” into account, it’s possible to understand how “poor” people living in “backwards” villages can be happier than the rich folks living in exciting cities 😉

I wrote this to my Applied Economics students, and it bears repeating in public, since so many “economists” have no clue about how real people make decisions…

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The textbook that we used for micro theory (a year-long course in my PhD program) is available pirated on archive. I just looked into the ToC and saw “decisions under uncertainty.”

As some of you well know, I make a STRONG point on the difference between risk (which can be described with probability) and uncertainty (which cannot) — see this this and this.

This book (“Mas-Collel”) does not, which leads to BAD ECONOMICS.

You can read that chapter here: https://archive.org/details/microeconomic-theory-mas-colell-whinston-green-1995/page/166/mode/2up

While you are looking around, you can also see how ridiculously math-intensive this “economics” book is.

My goal with this course is that you understand economic “intuition” which is sometimes easier to clarify with math. I consider intuition both a necessary AND sufficient condition for doing math (Adam Smith had it ⁠ ). Math, OTOH, is neither necessary OR sufficient to understand economics. Math, yes, but not economics.

But what do we see when the text — and the test — requires all that math? We see mathematicians prancing around as if they are economists. That’s not true, and that’s why we get the “autistic” economics that doesn’t work anywhere in the real world, but — and this is the sad part — is often FORCED onto the real world by certified professionals™. It’s a fucking disaster.

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Addendum (26 Feb): Listen to Michael Munger and Pete Boettke discussing the problems with “mainstream” (popular) economics — as opposed to “mainline” economics that allows for reality.

I am writing this post as a reflection for my 55-year old self, but also to highlight the impacts of various drugs in our lives. Your experience will almost surely be different, but it may rhyme. Feel free to share experiences or advice. (It was advice from someone who reads my newsletter that led me to think different about my cannabis consumption.)

So, here’s my journey with drugs of all sorts…

As a kid…

I was born in 1969, which means I was exposed to “peak lead” in the air from leaded gasoline. It seems that I am probably 5.9 IQ points short of someone not exposed to lead pollution. That’s not a great start.

(Even today in Amsterdam, it’s estimated that air pollution — of all sorts — reduces life expectancy by about a year [pdf]. Ouch.)

Is lead a drug? Well the Romans added it to wine, to sweeten it. I’m listing it here for the sake of completeness.

I also ate a lot of candy bars, which has led to $$$ dental bills, a lot of pain, and a not-as-good-as-they-coulda-been set of teeth. Sugar is a terrible drug (it’s addictive and added to products for that reason more than for taste).

As a teen…

I learned to binge drink (and throw up) when I was 16-17 years old. Alcohol is a widely known drug. Researchers more or less conclude there’s no positive benefit of alcohol, but I like a glass of wine (or 4) with meals and some whiskey and chocolate for dessert, so I’m not down 100%. I have recently cut down quite a bit — mostly by drinking water when I am thirsty (!), but also just by asking myself: “Really?” The good news is that 0% beer is finally drinkable. I doubt wine or liquor will ever be.

As an adult…

I was a vegan from 21-25 years old and then a vegetarian until I was around 38 years old. That saved me from mad cow disease, many infections and other bad shit. For the last 17 years, I have eaten meat, dairy and eggs on a regular basis, but (a) not that much (dairy daily, meat mostly as “bacon seasoning” but big chunks of meat a few times per month) and (b) usually organic. Industrial agriculture is not just cruel, but it’s bad for you in terms of additives, antibiotics (used to “help” animals gain weight more than keep them healthy) and so on (heavy meat consumption is associated with a number of diseases). I know bacon is really unhealthy, but that’s a risk I am prepared to take for now.

I traveled in a lot of poorer countries in my late 20s, so it was good that I was not eating meat, due to the risks of contamination. I was careful about water quality and was pretty healthy on the road. That said, I got sick a few times, so I am a huge fan of antibiotics (for cures) and vaccines (for prevention). Hepatitis sucks.

I also started to drink coffee when I was in my 20s. Coffee is ok in limited doses, but I get the shits, the shivers, and insomnia if I have too much. I stick to one cappuccino per day now.

I discovered cannabis when I was 25. It’s useful that I was already older, since cannabis can interfere with brain development. I didn’t smoke too often for the first ten years, but did so pretty often from 35 until recently (I just estimated my consumption at about 1g/week).

Speaking of smoking… cigarettes are bad for you because of the smoke, but people love them for the nicotine, which is as addictive as heroin, but far more widely used. I hate cigarettes (or tobacco rolled into joints), as they make me gag — and they make everything stink.

I really like weed, but I was smoking it without thinking too much, since “nobody has ever died from cannabis.” That’s true, but there are side effects. I am not sure if I am suffering the early effects of CHS (more here) — for me maybe cold feet, chilblains, poor sleep and occasional “stay on the couch all day nausea” — but I’ve decided to quit cold turkey for Feb 2025 to see if those symptoms disappear or get better [H/T to TJ for the pointer to CHS]. As I get older, I am more interested in better health and less interested in the partying. I am super interested to see if my memory — which has been shit for many years — improves with less cannabis. What’s funny (sad?) is that I often tried to bludgeon my racing mind into a coma with weed, which can’t be a good thing. Tricky.

Speaking of which: I’ve tried cocaine (yuck) and opium (nope) and have used LSD and XTC here and there. Those latter two are pretty cool, recreationally, but — now that I know their effects — I am not as excited about them as I was 10 years ago. (Don’t look to me for any drug advice — go visit Erowid, which is an amazing organization for clear and honest information on many many drugs.)

Anyways, my one-handed conclusion is that drugs offer an interesting — usually safe — way to alter your consciousness and mood. They are worth investigating, use caution, don’t overdo it*, and pay attention to what your body — and the people around you — are saying about you when you use.

*Try saying that to a teen with a bottle of vodka!

Addendum (19 Feb): Listen to Trevor Noah and Christiana Mbakwe-Medina interview Michael Pollan on psychedelics.

The title of this post comes from a meme about a video-playing son and his ever-supportive dad. I am borrowing that dad’s enthusiasm perspective in this post because I want to put “winning” into perspective.

First of all, let’s address the elephant in the room — the fact that a huge share of our “success” is predetermined by where we are born/the papers we carry. An American baby has massive advantages over a baby from [insert poorer country here] due to nothing more than “chosing the right parents” — also known as holding membership in the Lucky Sperm Club. I wrote about this two years ago.

Second, it’s important to put winning or success into contexts — relative, temporal, collective and material.

Relative success is “compared to what,” and it can be reasonable (“you’re doing better today than yesterday”) or not (“you’re not as rich as Bezos”). The most frustrating thing is seeking success relative to a moving target, i.e., keeping up with the Joneses or the Kardashians or one of the 1700+ billionaires. In fact, even billionaires have problems here — with “bigger” billionaires. Veblen warned about the conspicuous consumption of positional goods as an attempt to “get ahead” of others, and it’s a fools game. The only healthy way to engage with this kind of success is by comparing yourself to yourself, and even that can be counterproductive (blaming yourself without cause). It’s much more common to see overconsumption and waste as the result of pursuing this kind of “success.”

Temporal success comes with doing well for your time in life. Thus, it’s doing well in school, before doing well with work and family, then doing well with retirement and death. It ALSO means letting go of childhood when it’s time to be an adult and letting go of work (even family) when it’s time to get old and die. I personally have zero regrets about getting older. Although I have my doubts about death, I can sense my mind and emotions trying to deal with its inevitable arrival as I age, day by day. People who are unwilling to face changes in life, career, looks or health are fighting time, which is a classic example of a losing battle. Remember this riddle from the Hobbit?

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.

The answer is Time. Time doesn’t give any fucks.

Collective success comes from being on the right team (or avoiding the losing team). This success depends on you being a team player rather than an egoist or “leader of lessor people.” It requires humility as well as appreciation of those around you who may not be better than you (at all, at anything) but who are working towards the same goals. Collective success might be another of those elephants in the room, if one thinks of the importance of family, or a neighborhood, or the workers who enrich billionaires and the soldiers who battle for generals. You should, at a minimum, be thankful to your team members. More generally, you should do your best to support team and avoid undermining it.

Material success relates to money and stuff, the place you live and the goodies that you have. This one is more absolute than relative success, so it’s actually easier to achieve: Can you drink the water? Do you have a warm bed, adequate clothing and enough food? Can you work and play without too much stress? In many cases, you are doing “good enough” materially, but sometimes we are tempted to demand the higher standard of living suggested by advertisers. That road leads to ruin.

To wrap up, I’ll put a few more recurring ideas into context:

• Material consumption does not deliver happiness. The citizens of rich countries are not necessarily happier than those of poor countries. Happiness depends on your friends and family, your “relative improvements and prospects,” and your outlook on life.
• Some times, good enough is pretty good and perfect is a real problem. I’ve codified this as “90 percent is good enough,” which I say to myself when I run into diminishing returns. Life is too complex to “conquer” all the time, and we sometimes ask more of ourselves than anyone might expect, so don’t kill yourself for naught.
• Taking good health, relationships and work as given (and appreciated!),  I’ve been enjoying my 50s for two reasons. First, I’ve made it “over the hump” and thus have less ambition for goals and more appreciation for the little things that work. Second, I have more patience (or tolerance?) of the youngsters around me — some of them older than me! — who have not yet appreciated such satisfaction. What can I do with them except hope that they figure it out? Humanity would benefit.

What is your measure of success? Has it changed over time? How are you doing?

One of the greatest sources of corruption arises when politicians allocate mining rights for natural resources (NRs, e.g., oil, water, lithium, etc.) to their cronies. Such a system is corrupt due to the presence of “rents” — the arbitrary value associated with access or control of a scarce good.

In principle, the politician can sell access to the NRs in an open auction, where prices will get close to the rents that the winner gains access to.

Example: An oil field with 20 million barrels of oil of capacity and a cost of extraction of $300 million (fixed) and $10/bbl (variable). If oil is worth $100/bbl, then that field has an estimated revenue of $2 billion and costs of $300MM (fixed) + $200MM (variable), so a profit of $1.5 billion.

If the politicians give it to a friend for a “friend’s price” of $100MM, then the friend gets rents of $1.4 billion. Maybe that friend will thank the politician with a “gift” of a $100MM yacht or campaign contribution? Even still, fat profits.

An honest politician would have an open auction for the “exploitation rights” that might bring in $1.2 billion from the top bidder, meaning $300MM of profits to them (I’m ignoring risk and time, ofc.) and $1.1 billion MORE for the government — and the people.

And that where this post gets interesting. I think that politicians everywhere should directly pay citizens for their share of the value of the NRs that the politicians are managing on behalf of citizens. Alternatively, the politicians can give each citizen their share of the rights to the NRs, and citizens can decide to sell their share (getting paid) or not (leaving the oil in the ground or the trees standing) — both actions that are compatible with property rights.

The implications are clear: Higher prices and lower utilization would mean that NRs would cost more and last longer. Citizens would pay more attention if they were owners of NRs. Some may just take the money to live a better life, but others might say “you know, I don’t think I need $20 as much as I want to leave 200 trees intact.” (Forest concessions — in fact many NR concessions — cost very little!)

My one-handed conclusion is that citizens would better manage their NRs than the politicians who claim to work for them.

I assume the worst… in people, events and so on. I think I do this as a defensive mechanism, to avoid negative surprises (I am very risk averse?). I think that I adopted this perspective due to a series of disappointments from my childhood (fire, divorce, cancer, etc.). I don’t think there’s much I can do about my perspective, but (a) it’s useful to tell it like it is and (b) I can see how my outlook has been changing — slowly — throughout the years, so it’s good to have a baseline.

Relative to me, my dad is (and Elinor Ostrom was) an optimist.

I used to say I was a realist, then I said I was a pessimist, but I think I’ve gone on further — in terms of definitions — to get to misanthrope, which is a really loaded term.

So let’s break it down, via wikipedia:

Misanthropy is traditionally defined as hatred or dislike of humankind. The word originated in the 17th century and has its roots in the Greek words μῖσος mīsos ‘hatred’ and ἄνθρωπος ānthropos ‘man, human’. In contemporary philosophy, the term is usually understood in a wider sense as a negative evaluation of humanity as a whole based on humanity’s vices and flaws. This negative evaluation can express itself in various forms, hatred being only one of them. In this sense, misanthropy has a cognitive component based on a negative assessment of humanity and is not just a blind rejection. Misanthropy is usually contrasted with philanthropy, which refers to the love of humankind and is linked to efforts to increase human well-being, for example, through good will, charitable aid, and donations. Both terms have a range of meanings and do not necessarily contradict each other. In this regard, the same person may be a misanthrope in one sense and a philanthrope in another sense.

One central aspect of all forms of misanthropy is that their target is not local but ubiquitous. This means that the negative attitude is not just directed at some individual persons or groups but at humanity as a whole. In this regard, misanthropy is different from other forms of negative discriminatory attitudes directed at a particular group of people. This distinguishes it from the intolerance exemplified by misogynists, misandrists, and racists, which hold a negative attitude toward women, men, or certain races.

I can get behind this definition, as I have experience in these related cliches:

• “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton
• “One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That’s why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.” Ben Horowitz
• “You know what makes me happy? Watching my species destroy itself. I take it as a sport, as a kinda hobby, and I root for the complete destruction of this culture that we live in. I root for the underdogs. I root for Nature because on this planet at this time, Nature is the underdog.” — George Carlin

…and I particularly identify with the ecocide results of our mass behavior, our mass desire to consume more, for everyone to live above each other (a logical fallacy), to always and everywhere have more of everything. I will write more about these ideas in my review of Small is Beautiful, but I can safely say here that I really hate my species for destroying the miracles of Nature and evolution — the corals, the insects, the ecosystems and their many cycles of renewal, predator-prey, and other sustainable interactions.

…which leads to….

Human exceptionalism is the claim that human beings have unique importance and are exceptional compared to all other species. It is often based on the claim that they stand out because of their special capacities, like intelligence, rationality, and autonomy. In religious contexts, it is frequently explained in relation to a unique role that God foresaw for them or that they were created in God’s image. Human exceptionalism is usually combined with the claim that human well-being matters more than the well-being of other species. This line of thought can be used to draw various ethical conclusions. One is the claim that humans have the right to rule the planet and impose their will on other species. [I disagree, as humans broke the contract with God.] Another is that inflicting harm on other species may be morally acceptable if it is done with the purpose of promoting human well-being and excellence.

…[Misanthropes] hold that human beings are exceptional in a negative sense: given their destructive and harmful history, they are much worse than any other species.

Theorists in the field of deep ecology are also often critical of human exceptionalism and tend to favor a misanthropic perspective. Deep ecology is a philosophical and social movement that stresses the inherent value of nature and advocates a radical change in human behavior toward nature. 

These ideas are nearly identical to my own — I am totally upset and angry that we humans are not just destroying so many ecosystems and extincting so many species, but also that this destruction is (a) ruining so much of the beauty around us and (b) putting our own lives at risk (read this and this on climate chaos).

And I am not alone!

A core aspect of misanthropy is that its negative attitude toward humanity is based on human flaws. Various misanthropes have provided extensive lists of flaws, including cruelty, greed, selfishness, wastefulness, dogmatism, self-deception, and insensitivity to beauty… It is often held that moral flaws constitute the most serious case. 

Moral flaws are usually understood as tendencies to violate moral norms or as mistaken attitudes toward what is the good. They include cruelty, indifference to the suffering of others, selfishness, moral laziness, cowardice, injustice, greed, and ingratitude. The harm done because of these flaws can be divided into three categories: harm done directly to humans, harm done directly to other animals, and harm done indirectly to both humans and other animals by harming the environment. Examples of these categories include the Holocaust, factory farming of livestock, and pollution causing climate change. In this regard, it is not just relevant that human beings cause these forms of harm but also that they are morally responsible for them. This is based on the idea that they can understand the consequences of their actions and could act differently. However, they decide not to, for example, because they ignore the long-term well-being of others in order to get short-term personal benefits.

All of this is (a) pretty heavy stuff and (b) not exactly rocket science if you’ve been paying attention. (In my baby photo book, my mom helpfully pasted images of famous people who were shot in the year I was born — not the most enthusiastic endorsement, but my mom had a lot more to complain about in her, tragically short life.)

But I do think it’s good to “put a finger on” what you might see or feel about yourself and the world. I am doing that for myself here, and you should also be looking for ways to understand how your subjective views compare to those of your friends and family and the masses. Know thyself* is a good place to start if you want to reconcile your feelings with the people around you.**

Now, two more things. First, I want to compare my misanthropy (for all of humans, not excluding myself) with that of the play that made the idea so famous…

Molière’s play, “The Misanthrope or the Cantankerous Lover” was first performed in 1666. I read it while preparing this post, and it’s painful to “watch” Alceste (le misanthrope, himself) critiques every one except himself. He turns away those who would love him while he waits for another, but she is not interested because his ego demands that she follow him rather than engage in any sort of partnership. I can see how this play — even as it called attention to the terrible, mean games of the nobility — gave the term such a negative connotation, but I do not identify with Alceste.

Indeed, who would want to be called a “pessimist” or “misanthrope” when much nicer labels — “optimist” and “philanthrope” — exist? I am willing to take on these pejorative words — maybe to normalize them a bit — because I understand their meaning and how to apply them to oneself.***

Second, Terry Prachett created a perfect character for me to emulate while quoting Carlin: The librarian who was turned into an Orang-Utan, and decided that was just fine. From Sourcery (1988):

…but most of all he liked the way all the big questions of existence had suddenly resolved themselves into a vague interest in where his next banana was coming from. It wasn’t that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned you could stuff it.

My one handed conclusion is that it’s better to pay more attention to bananas and less attention to human self-destruction.

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* Here’s where I always quote Feynman’s response: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.”

** I’m very aware of the value and magic of group cooperation, but I tend to keep to myself when it comes to sports (swimming) or hobbies (woodworking). That said, I enjoy cooperating with other wood workers and sailors for now. In the future, I think I will go walkabout.

*** I’m also an “agnostic” (God’s existence is not worth discussing) and “migrant” (someone like me who intends to stay) — labels that are less popular than “believer” and “patriot”.

I recently received my Senior Teaching Qualification (SKO in Dutch), which “supports” the idea that I (a) know how to teach pretty well and (b) can help others improve their teaching.

This post is about ideas for improvement, which begins — IMO — with listening to others, i.e.,

• Listen to how they discuss ideas and teaching methods (peers)
• Listen to where they are confused, and thus where to put more time (students)
• Listen to feedback on how to improve and/or what’s confusion (self-correction)

In all these modes, I am suggesting that you (or “one”) stops with what you know and starts with what others are saying. That’s not because they know better than you but because the essence of communication is the delivery of an idea rather than the sending of that idea.

One of my favorite sayings is “only connect.” This essay puts it into context, but I am taking my own meaning, i.e., that connection requires that the recipient understands the sender’s message (or meaning) as the sender would want to be understood. This dynamic is tricky because we often assume that people understand us when in fact they do not — at all or with 100 percent fidelity.

For example, you can watch this video, in which I react to what students (anonymously) said of me and my teaching. It provides a useful example of how important it is to “connect” a comment with a reply, one on one.

Connection is not easy, but it’s impossible if one is not listening!

I could end here, with good intentions, but I’d like to give an example that’s been on my mind for some time, e.g., the difference between traveling in the 1990s (when I was on the road for 5 years) and these days. The main difference is that travelers these days are connected tied to home and the internet by their phones. Which results in…

• Less spontaneity because people are always making reservations and coordinating with others who are not in the room. It’s hard to get someone to go to a new place or stay longer if they “need to get somewhere.”
• Fewer new friends and novel conversations because people are still mentally at home with friends and family, rather than talking to the people in front of them. Then they are able to “chat” with like-minded others on internet forums rather than engage with the diverse opinions of the people right in front of them. Obviously, you can put your phone down to make yourself available, but it’s not easy if everyone else is on their phone!
• Less discovery because everyone is rushing towards the latest IG-hot spot and/or following the mass of reviews rather than (a) the advice for travelers right in front of them and/or (b) the idiosyncratic recommendations of locals, books and/or message boards.

The overall impact, which makes me sad, is that a traveler today has a harder time socializing on the road, which was the MOST exciting part of my travels in the 1990s. These days, I am not a solo traveler staying in hostels, so I am missing whatever scene is there now, so it may be better than I fear, but I am skeptical that it’s as good as in the old days. [Here’s a related discussion on Reddit]

That’s because people are not listening to each other as much as listening to whatever “the feed” is telling them :-\

I was surprised a few weeks back by a student’s “AI disclosure” that crossed a few red lines. That led me to have a chat with ALL my students, to explain that AIs are (a) not a good way to learn and (b) very much an insult to me, if they want me to take any time to read and comment on “their” work.

I also collected some data, which gives an interesting (but not perfect!) view  of how they are using AIs:

Here’s how I interpreted the results to them (“you”):

The categories marked in RED are a no-go. You should do this work on your own, as an essential part of learning.

For the YELLOW instances, the idea here is caution. Yes, it’s possible to get some help from an AI on these tasks, but it’s also possible that the AI will give you wrong or biased information. Thus, it’s better to avoid AI or — at a minimum — double check everything the AI gives you AND do your own work (e.g., using google scholar or talking with other humans)

The only GREEN is “understanding concepts,” where I am interpreting the AI as a kind of tutor that can help answer your questions and — if you use it right — ASK YOU questions that you should be able to understand or focus on learning. AI-as-tutor is a really promising use of this tech.

None of this is official and only some of this is still unsettled to me, but I wanted to give you this feedback to help you avoid unethical and/or prohibited behavior.

As we all know, it’s hard for anyone to know that students are using AIs, so we — you and me and all the other members of LUC’s academic community — need to understand why “the hard way” is the only way to learn.

As I said in class, there’s a big difference between the use of AIs in school (learning) vs work (getting shit done), especially when you realize that the only way to use it wisely (giving good prompts) is AFTER you’ve learned enough about the topic.

If you’re on reddit, then check out the [190!] comments from r/professors on a thread I started.

My one-handed conclusion is that students and teachers need to talk about the ethics and proper use of AIs. What’s sad is that they will enable cheaters and “I just want the diploma” types… Maybe time to get rid of grades [PDF]?

Addendum: Paul Graham says that AIs are going to lead us to divide into  “writes and write-nots,” which is concerning when you remember that one must write in order to think.

We spent two weeks in Tokyo in October. (We had “seen the country” in 2017, so this stay was more about this mega-metropolis.)

Here are four takeaways:

First, Japan is not a country of zen-aesthetics. Marie Kondo first got famous inside Japan because they have so much clutter. This article explains how Edo-era Japan* was so “circular” (reusing and repairing everything) because they had so few resources and were not trading (more below). When Japan opened to the world, and caught up, and got rich, then the Japanese indulged themselves as much as Americans would with consumption. The only reason they don’t consume even more is — as in the Netherlands — a lack of cheap space. Read more here.

Second, I was confused about how the Americans forced Japan to open up to trade — via the Black ships of 1853 — when trade is supposed to be a voluntary, “win-win” proposition. This summary from Perplexity explains that the Americans gave itself favorable terms of trade, etc., which is why the Japanese did not benefit as much as they would have with (really) free trade. What’s a bit ironic (or karmic) is how the American navy bullied Japan in 1853 and the Japanese navy returned the favor in 1941 (but without ultimate success). Now that all of that history is “under the bridge” (in terms of political rhetoric — see Xi’s ongoing complains about “the century of humiliation” for a counterpoint), Japan and the US are best buds.

Third, the Japanese are very risk averse, perhaps due to a history of natural disasters, perhaps due to a history of getting your head cut off for making a mistake. The result, culturally, is extreme planning (more than even the Dutch!) to ensure that everything is mapped out and discussed ahead of time. So the bullet trains have never had an accident, but that’s also a sign of taking too few chances. This risk-averse culture also explains how the Japanese public get very upset when the government screws up — e.g., taking 13 years to admit to the Minamata poisoning or the badly-handled Fukushima accident (more people died from the evacuation than the radiation). I’m not saying that government’s should be happy about mistakes, but they should be a little more humble about errors.

Fourth, the Japanese are almost as enthusiastic about cars as Americans, but they also avoid over-doing it. So cars are ubiquitous, and roads are designed for cars rather than bikes. We enjoyed the freedom of biking, but (a) had to fight with Google maps, which kept directing us off calm streets and towards major roads and (b) constantly needed to go around cars and trucks double parked in bike lanes. Watch this video for the pros and cons of Tokyo’s urban design.

Bottom line: Japan’s culture and history need time to understand and appreciate.

H/T to SC

*Bonus: I was really surprised to learn that daytime hours – the actual length of an hour — in Edo-Japan were longer in summer and shorter in winter, since daylight was evenly allocated among the same number of hours. This clock face shows how the “duration” of an hour was adjusted as the season progressed. The Meiji Restoration (more like a revolution!) brought 60 minute hours… and Seiko watches!