All of jmh's Comments + Replies

I could be way off on this, but I cannot help but core here is less about complexity than it is about efficiency. The most efficient processes do all appear to be a bit simpler than they probably are. It's a bit like watching an every talented craftsman working and thinking "The looks easy." Then when you try you find out it was much more difficult and complicated than it appeared. The craftsman's efficiency in action (ability to handle/deal with the underlying complexity) masked the truth a bit.

I've had similar experiences where my intuition tells me to be cautious but I could not say why. When I've ignored those intuitions I've generally paid a price. So now I do give them consideration. 

In such situations it is probably good to take some time to sit back and try to identify some of the things that triggered the response. We are very good at pattern matching but also really good at filtering. Could be that intuitions like "getting bad vibes" is all about the interaction of the two.

But that is a pretty difficult task, we're asking our self to go back and review all the details we ignored and filtered. But I suspect it is a very good thing to try doing.

The desires-values schema reminds me of Hirshmann's The Passions and the Interests and the problem he (IIRC) sees Machiavelli dealing with. Machiavelli is advising kings who he sees as more driven by their passions but to be successful need to be driven more by their interests.

Anyone in the alignment space take a look at Machiavelli in the light of how to get some thing that is more powerful (king versus the advisor) better aligned? Probably need to stretch things a bit to see that type of alignment as being aligned with the general welfare of the kingdom but seems like he was dealing with a similar problem when looked at from certain angles.

I like the point about the need for some type of external competitive measure but as you say, they might not be a MMA gym where you need one.

Shifting the metaphor, I think your observation of the sucker punch fits well with the insight that for those with only a hammer, all problems look like nails. The gym would be someone with a screwdriver or riveter as well as the hammer. But even lacking the external check, we should always ask ourselves "Is this really a nail?" I might only have a hammer but if this isn't a nail while the results might be better than... (read more)

I agree with the view that punishment is not really a great deterrent as many crimes are not committed from a calculated cost-benefit perspective. I do think we need to apply that type of thinking towards what we might do with that insight/fact of things.

On that point, would like to see more on your claim that we would get better bang for the buck as it were from more investment in preventing crimes. In this regard I'm thinking about the contrast between western legal views and places like China as well as the estimates on the marginal pecuniary costs of p... (read more)

Agree. There is that old saying about even fools learning from their own mistakes but wise men learning from the mistakes of others. But if everyone is trying to hide their mistakes, that might limit how much learning the wise can do.

I had not really thought about this before, but after seeing your comment the question struck me if social/cultural norms about social status and "loosing face" don't impact scientific advancement.

Nice write up and putting some light on something I think I have intuitively been doing but not quite realizing it. Particularly the impact on growth of wealth. 

I was thinking that a big challenge for a lot of people is the estimated distribution - which is likely why so many non-technical rationales are given by many people. Trying to assess that is hard and requires a lot of information about a lot of things -- something the insurance companies can do (as suggested by another comment) but probably overwhelms most people who buy insurance.

With that t... (read more)

2Richard121
Indeed. In reality, the vast majority of people do not have sufficient information to make reasonable estimates of the probability of loss - and in many cases, even the size of the loss. Eg a landlord is required to rebuild the place and temporarily rehome the tenants while that's being done in the event of the house being destroyed by fire or flood. They're also liable for compensation and healthcare of affected third parties - and legal cost of determining those figures. They can probably calculate the rebuilding cost and a reasonable upper bound on temporary housing. But third party liability? So, it still comes back to vibes.

What is the price of the past? Kind of leading question but I've found myself wondering at times about the old saying about those who don't know the past are doom to repeat it. 

It's not that I don't think there is a good point to that view. However, when I look at the world around me I often see something that is vastly different from that view. I've come to summarize that as those who cannot let go of the past will never escape it. The implication is that not only those "clingy" people but also those around them will continue living whatever past it ... (read more)

Yes, all those conjectures are possible as we don't yet know what the reality will be -- it is currently all conjecture.

The counter argument to yours I think is just what opportunities is the AI giving up to do whatever humans might be left to do? What is the marginal value of all the things this ASI might be able to be doing that we cannot yet even conceive of? 

I think the suggestion of a negative value is just out of scope here as it doesn't fit into theory of comparative advantage. That was kind of the point of the OP. It is fine to say comparative... (read more)

It is a lot of assumption and conjecture, that's true. But it is not all conjecture and assumptions. When comparative advantage applies despite one side having an absolute advantage, we know why it applies. We can point to which premises of the theory are load-bearing, and know what happens when we break those premises. We can point to examples within the range of scenarios that exist among humans, where it doesn't apply, without ever considering what other capabilities an ASI might have.

I will say I do think there's a bit of misdirection, not by you, but ... (read more)

2Sherrinford
I think I did not assume anything away. I pointed out that the theory of comparative advantage rests on assumptions, in particular autonomy. If someone can just force you to surrender your production (without a loss of production value), he will not trade with you (except maybe if he is nice).

I'm not sure that is the correct take in the context of Comparative Advantage.

It would not matter if the SI could produce more than humans in a direct comparison but what the opportunity cost for the SI might be. If the ASI is shifting efforts that would have produced more value to it than it gets from the $77 sunlight output AND that delta in value is greater than the lower productivity of the humans then the trade makes sense to the ASI.

Seems to me the questions here are about resource constraints and whether or not an ASI does or does not need to confront them in a meaningful way.

3AnthonyC
The traditional comparative advantage discussion also, as I understand it, does not account for entities that can readily duplicate themselves in order to perform more tasks in parallel, and does not account for the possibility of wildly different transaction costs between ASI and humans vs between ASI and its non-human robot bodies. Transaction costs in this scenario include monitoring, testing, reduced quality, longer lag times. It is possible that the value of using humans to do any task at all could actually be negative, not just low. Human analogy: you need to make dinner using $77 worth of ingredients. A toddler offers to do it instead. At what price should you take the deal? When does the toddler have comparative advantage?

You're touching on one of the questions that occurred to me. What do the current and post-Jones transportation flows look like? While I agree that the law must shift some from shipping to truck, rail or pipeline I'm not sure I would expect massive changes here. Do you have some data on that point?

1denkenberger
Since I couldn't find it quickly on the web, GPT o1 estimated that the labour hours per ton kilometer of trucking is about 100 times as much as ships, and rail is just about the same as ships (I would have thought rail would have been at least a few times higher than ships). So based on the historic US and current Europe, maybe water transport in the US would increase an order of magnitude if the Jones act were repealed. As Zvi points out, even though the US ship manufacturing jobs would be lost, there probably would be an increase overall shipping employment because of repairing ships and staffing ships. So let's say staffing the ships is 3 times as much as the current employment of manufacturing and staffing very few ships. I suspect that most of the lost inland transportation due to the shift from shipping would be rail, but even if 10% of it were trucking, that would mean the loss of jobs in trucking would be 10 times as much as the staffing of the additional ships, and 30 times as much as the employment constructing and staffing the current ships.[1] So if you had to compensate 30 times as many people, it would be much more difficult. Now it is true that the majority of total cost of rail and shipping is energy (it's about even between energy and labour for trucking), so the large overall economic savings of moving to shipping should be sufficient to compensate all those truckers, but it's just not nearly the slamdunk that it appeared to be when only looking at marine employment. 1. ^ Technically not all the freight that would be moved by ships is currently moved by truck/rail/pipeline because a smaller amount gets transported because of the higher cost. But using Zvi's example of $0.63 per barrel increase, since it is 42 gallons per barrel, that's 1.5 cents/gallon, or ~0.5% of the total cost, which wouldn't change quantity demanded very much, well within other uncertainties of this analysis.

I think one clear aspect of the stories here, yours and John's, relates to what I'll call asymmetric information flows. Basically, the times at which the information, that no one is trying to keep secret, become known to the relevant parties.

Of course understanding what a good update frequency is for various situations should be is a tricky thing itself.

If I'm reading this correctly, then generally we're seeing a rather flat payoff curve over most "do good opportunities" and the rare max should stand out like a sore thumb when taking a good look. So those really should be things do-gooders will jump on quickly. (Note, that doesn't mean they are done quickly or that additional assistance is not important.) 

While not as obvious, it probably also means that a lot of more mundane opportunities are getting ignored. That comes from an insight offered in one of my classes from years back asking why so much ... (read more)

One point I'm not sure about with the idea of neutrality is neutrality of process or of outcome. Or would that distinction not matter to your interests here?

5sarahconstantin
From the POV of this piece, whether you want process or outcome neutrality...depends. You're being "neutral" so you can enlist the trust and cooperation of a varied range of people, in order to pursue some purpose that all of you value. Do the relevant people care more about process or outcome?  Another way to look at it is that it's ultimately always a question of process. "Ensuring equality/neutrality of outcome" means "I propose a process that makes adjustments so that outcomes end up in a desirable "neutral" configuration." Then the questions are: a.) does that process result in that "neutral" configuration? b.) is that configuration of outcomes what we want? c.) is the process of adjustment itself objectionable? (e.g. "whether or not material equality is desirable, I don't believe in forced redistribution to equalize wealth"). When you are building an institution that aims at neutrality, ultimately you're proposing a set of processes, things the institution will do, and hoping that these processes engender trust. "I can't accept the likely outcome of this process" and "I can't accept the way this process works" are both ways trust can break down. 

Interesting but I've just skim so will need to come back. With that caveat made, I seem to have had a couple of thought that keep recurring for me that seem compatible or complementary with your thoughts.

First, where do we define the margin between public and private. It strikes me that a fair amount of social strife does revolve around a tension here. We live in a dynamic world so thinking that the sphere of private actions will remain static seem unlikely but as the world changed (knowledge, applied knowledge driving technology change, movement of people... (read more)

Years ago when I was hanging out with day traders there was a heuristic they all seemed to hold. If their trading model was producing winning trades two out of three times they thought the model was good and could be used. No one ever suggested why that particular rate was the shared meme/norm -- why not 4 out of 5 or 3 out of 5. I wonder if empirically (or just intuitively over time) they simply approximated the results in this post.

Or maybe just a coincidence, but generally when money is at stake I think the common practices will tend to reflect some fundamental fact of the environment. 

Could you clarify a bit here. Is Hanson talking about specific cultures or all of the instances of culture?

1Nutrition Capsule
Hanson seems to treat the global civilization as a cultural melting pot, but he does distinguish insular subcultures from that. I intuit he sees contemporary cultures on a gradient relative to global, hegemonic trends (which correlate with technological progress, increasing wealth and education) and thereby drifting pressures.

Thanks that does help clarify the challenges for me.

I was just scrolling through Metaculus and its predictions for the US Elections. I noticed that pretty much every case was a conditional If Trump wins/If doesn't win. Had two thought about the estimates for these. All seem to suggest the outcomes are worse under Trump. But that assessment of the outcome being worse is certainly subject to my own biases, values and preferences. (For example, for US voters is it really a bad outcome if the probability of China attacking Taiwan increases under Trump? I think so but other may well see the costs necessary to re... (read more)

Had something of a similar reaction but the note about far-UV not having the same problems as other UV serilization (i.e., also harmful to humans) I gather the point is about locality. UV in ducks will kill viri in the air system. But the spread of an airborn illness goes host-to-target before it passed through the air system.

As such seems that while the in-duct UV solution would help limit spread, it's not going to do much to clean the air in the room while people are in it exhailing, coughing or sneezing, talking.... 

I suspect it does little to prot... (read more)

Quick comment regarding research.

If far-UV is really so great, and not that simple, I would assume that any company that would be selling and installing might not be some small Mom and Pop type operation. If that holds, why are the companies that want to promote and sell the systems using them and then collecting the data?

Or is would that type of investment be seen as too costly even for those with a direct interest in producing the results to bolster sales and increase the size of the network/ecosystem?

1Gavriel Kleinwaks
(Let me know if I misunderstood; I'm reading your second sentence as "why aren't the companies...") On company size: The industry is split between emitter companies and consumer product companies; the emitter companies sell the far-UV emitter (basically the lightbulb) to a different company that builds the housing for consumers. The emitter companies are usually a branch of a larger electronics/lighting company; the consumer product companies are usually very small.  Some companies have run their own studies, but most of their installations are much too small to be studies in themselves. One problem I've heard about in the case of at least one larger installation is that the customer who sought the installation wanted the data to remain confidential. Otherwise, large studies are indeed mostly too costly for these companies to self-fund entirely, but they may offer partial funding or provide their lamps at-cost or as donations to studies. 

I think perhaps a first one might be:

On what evidence do I conclude what I think is know is correct/factual/true and how strong is that evidence? To what extent have I verified that view and just how extensively should I verify the evidence?

After that might be a similar approach to the implications or outcomes of applying actions based on what one holds as truth/fact.

I tend to think of rationality as a process rather than endpoint. Which isn't to say that the destination is not important but clearly without the journey the destination is just a thought or dream. That first of a thousand steps thing.

1ZY
For this, aside from traditional paper reading from credible sources, one good approach in my opinion is to actively seek evidence/arguments from, or initiate conversations with people who have a different perspective with me (on both side of the spectrum if the conclusion space is continuous). 

What happens when Bob can be found in or out of the set of bald things at different times or in different situations, but we might not understand (or even be well aware) of the conditions that drive Bob's membership in the set when we're evaluating baldness and Bob?

Can membership in baldness turn out to be some type of quantum state thing?

That might be a basis for separating the concept of fuzzy language and fuzzy truth.But I would agree that if we can identify all possible cases where Bob is or is not in the set of baldness one might claim truth is no longer fuzzy but one needs to then prove that knowledge of all possible states has been established I think.

I really like the observation in your Further Thoughts point. I do think that is a problem people need to look at as I would guess many will view the government involvement from a acting in public interests view rather than acting in either self interest (as problematic as that migh be when the players keep changing) or from a special interest/public choice perspective.

Probably some great historical analysis already written about events in the past that might serve as indicators of the pros and cons here. Any historians in the group here?

4Ruby
Not an original observation but yeah, separate from whether it's desirable, I think we need to be planning for it.

Strong upvote based on the first sentence. I often wonder why people think an ASI/AGI will want anything that humans do or even see the same things that biological life sees as resources. But it seems like under the covers of many arguments here that is largely assumed true.

I am a bit confused on point 2. Other than trading or doing it your selfs what other ways are you thinking about getting something?

That is certainly a more directly related, non-obvious aspect for verification. Thanks.

I assumed John was pointing at verifying that perhaps the chemicals used in the production of the chair might have some really bad impact on the environmnet, start causing a problem with the food chain eco system and make food much scarcers for everyone -- including the person who bought the chair -- in the meaningfully near future. Something a long those lines. 

As you note, verifying the chair functions as you want -- as a place to sit that is comfortable -- is pretty easy. Most of us probably do that without even really thinking about it. But will t... (read more)

3Mark Xu
I agree that there are some properties of objects that are hard to verify. But that doesn't mean generation is as hard as verification in general. The central property of a chair (that you can sit on it) is easy to verify.

I assumed John was pointing at verifying that perhaps the chemicals used in the production of the chair might have some really bad impact on the environmnet, start causing a problem with the food chain eco system and make food much scarcers for everyone -- including the person who bought the chair -- in the meaningfully near future.

What I had in mind is more like: many times over the years I've been sitting at a desk and noticed my neck getting sore. Then when I move around a bit, I realize that the chair/desk/screen are positioned such that my neck is at ... (read more)

In terms of the hard to verify aspect, while it's true that any one person will face any number of challenges do we live in a world where one person does anything on their own?

How would the open-source model influence outcomes? When pretty much anyone can take a look, and persumable many do, does the level of verifcation, or ease of verification, improve in your model?

Kind of speculative on my part and nothing I've tried to research for the comment. I am wondering is the tort version of reasonableness is a good model for new, poorly understood technologies. Somewhat thinking about the picture in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CZQYP7BBY4r9bdxtY/the-best-lay-argument-is-not-a-simple-english-yud-essay distinguising between narrow AI and AGI.

Tort law reasonableness seems okay for narrow AI. I am not so sure about the AGI setting though. 

So I wonder if a stronger liability model would not be better until we have a good... (read more)

I find this rather exciting -- and clearly the cryonics implications are positive. But beyond that, and yes, this is really scifi down the road thinking here, the implications for education/learning and treatment of things like PTSD seems huge. Assuming we can figure out how to control these. Of course I'm ignoring some of the real down sides like manipulation of memory for bad reasons or an Orwellean application. I am not sure those types of risks at that large in most open societies.

Thanks. Just took a quick glance as the abstract but looks interesting. Will have something to read while waiting at the airport for a flight tomorrow.

Is that thought one that is generally shared for those working in the field of memory or more something that is new/cutting edge? It's a very interesting statement so if you have some pointers to a (not too difficult) a paper on how that works, or just had the time to write something up, I for one would be interested and greatful.

6Adele Lopez
I have no idea, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's a mainstream position. My thinking is that long-term memory requires long-term preservation of information, and evolution "prefers" to repurpose things rather than starting from scratch. And what do you know, there's this robust and effective infrastructure for storing and replicating information just sitting there in the middle of each neuron! The main problem is writing new information. But apparently, there's a protein evolved from a retrotransposon (those things which viruses use to insert their own RNA into their host's DNA) which is important to long term memory! And I've since learned of an experiment with snails which also suggests this possibility. Based on that article, it looks like this is maybe a relatively new line of thinking. It's good news for cryonics if this is the primary way long term memories are stored, since we "freeze" sperm and eggs all the time, and they still work.
5Andy_McKenzie
I can't speak for Adele, but here is one somewhat recent article by neuroscientists discussing memory storage mechanisms: https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-016-0261-6 DNA is discussed as one possible storage mechanism in the context of epigenetic alterations to neurons. See the section by Andrii Rudenko and Li-Huei Tsai.

Actually checking those hypotheses statistically would be a pretty involved project; subtle details of accounting tend to end up relevant to this sort of thing, and the causality checks are nontrivial. But it's the sort of thing economists have tools to test.

 

Yes, it would be a challenge statistically, and measurment a challenge as well. It's not really about subtle accounting details but the economic costs -- opportunity costs, subjective costs, expected costs. Additionally, economics has been trying to explain the existance, size and nature of the f... (read more)

First, I have to note this is way more than I can wrap my head around in one reading (in fact it was more than I could read in one sitting so really have not completed reading it) but thank you for posting this as it presents a very complicated subject in a framework I find more accessible that prior discussings here (or anywhere else I've looked at). But then I'm just a curious outsider to this issue who occasionally explores the discussion so information overload is normal I think.

I particularly like the chart and how it laid out the various states/outcomes.

I think it would be more correct to say that is a part of the literature related to the theory of the firm. The theory of the firm covers a lot of ground and in some ways various branches have somewhat challenging relationships with their internal logic and approaches.

jmh3113

I don't find this as convincing as others for a number or reasons. Caveat: I did a rather shallow read of the post and have not done deep thinking about the resonse below.  

First, most of the managers I've worked with, and how I was as a manager, don't act like the dominance seekers you're describing. Not a claim that it doesn't exist, just that in my personal experience it doesn't seem to be something that seems to have been a big driver within the companies. 

Second, I think the assumption of economic inefficiency exists therefore these big comp... (read more)

And then we also have the whole moral hazzard problem with those types of incentives. Could I put myself at a little risk of some AI damages that might be claimed to have much broader potential?

That touches on a view I've been holding for a while now. One often hears the phrase, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it (or close to that). But it struck me one that that many seem to hold on to the past, never letting it go and so dooming themselves and everyone else to continued living in that past. When we're never getting past the injustices of the past we keep them in the present and keep living them. I think this might be part of why we see many of the existing conflicts in the world -- from the racial issues in the USA, the wars and... (read more)

2zhukeepa
I really like the directions that both of you are thinking in.  I agree. I think of it more as like "We suffered and we forgave and found inner peace in doing so, and you can too, as unthinkable as that may seem to you".  I think the turbo-charged version is "We suffered and we forgave, and we were ultimately grateful for the opportunity to do so, because it just so deeply nourishes our souls to know that we can inspire hope and inner peace in others going through what we had to go through." I think Jesus alludes to this in the Sermon on the Mount: 

Still reading and thanks for the write up. Much better than I could do myself and have been thinking it's time to revisit and see where things stand.

But think this is an obvious type so wanted to mention it for your edit. "In other words, if your biological age is lower than your biological age, you’re doing great." I assum you mean lower than your chronoloical age there.

So was farther along than I thought. Quick question on the reprogramming aspect. Certainly tissue complexity is a problem when the reaction rates are different and we probably really need ... (read more)

1Abhishaike Mahajan
Great catch, dumb mistake on my part, fixed!  As for the latter question, I looked into this, and I think the 2 day 'on' of YF expression is literally just the max time it can be expressed without deleterious effects. I think people haven't investigated the 'off' cycle time as much. I suspect people are on the 'the more reprogramming I can do, the better' train up until recently, so that level of optimization likely is higher handing fruit.  From here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-46020-5 "The currently optimized method of partial reprogramming is the maturation phase partial reprogramming, which necessitates 13 days of continuous expression of Yamanaka factors in vitro...However, this optimized in vitro method may be highly damaging in in vivo models, as a continuous expression of Yamanaka factors for more than 2 days may have lethal effects in mice8,67. In vivo studies now focus on cyclic partial reprogramming...."

I do agree with your point but think you are creating a bit of a strawman here. I think the OP goal was to present situations in which we need to consider AI liability and two of those situations would be where Coasean barganing is possible and where it fails do the the (relatively) Judgement Proof actor. I'd also note that legal trends have tended to be to always look for the entity with the deepest pockets that you have some chance of blaming.

So while the example of the gun is a really poor case to apply Coase for I'm not sure that really detracts from t... (read more)

Puting this in a bad way, or provocative way, but underlying your description of love seems to be a "what's in it for me" attitude. In other words, what I hear you saying about love is about you rather than about what you're offering the other.

I agree with your presentation about true versus false and if we're smitten by some image we've created in our own head, or bought into, that's not likely to last or be all that healthy. But we also probably go through a stage in every relationship where the image in our head is not completely accurate and, in cases ... (read more)

Yeah, I was a bit less clear in my statement than I could have been.

2romeostevensit
I think it's on me, you lead with a clear thesis statement.
Answer by jmh50
  • You might take a look at things like

Bucannan & Tullock The Caclulus of Consent

Sam Peltzmans Towards a more General Theory of Regulation

There was also an old political economy paper published lin the late 19th century I think, in a French journal. The English title is "The Chairman's Problem", IIRC -- I never read it but it was mentioned by one of my professors. Basically discussing the challenges of voting cycles and agenda setting. It might be something you can find and was written by someone that was actually living with and dealing with a real polit... (read more)

2adamShimi
Thanks! After checking them, it feels like most of your links are focused on an economic lens to politics and governance, or at least an economic bent. Does that seem correct? Yeah, ideally I would prefer to read an overview and model of these, but I agree that if it doesn't exist, then reading the docs and charts is probably the simplest alternative. I would guess that there are probably gears level model of how the governments actually work. Whether these are exactly the models provided in rules and guidelines, I'm not sure, but assuming not.

Could you perhaps expand on how conflating cash flow and  expected net worth at future time t relates to accurate measurement of current and past inflation in housing or shelter costs?

2AnthonyC
I think this is the point. If rent for the house you own is going up faster than your cost of ownership, then the difference is in some sense untaxed capital gains from your home equity. As a homeowner, your income (in terms of buying power) is higher than your salary. To put it another way: If you had instead taken the equity you've built in your home and bought stocks (or whatever you see as the next best investment after homeownership), then devoted the returns from those stocks into paying rent, would you be better or worse off? And how would that answer change over time? Similarly: if you were a retiree living on returns from your investments made over the course of your working life, whether you own or rent makes a significant difference to your standard of living. If you own and your home is paid off, you don't owe rent. Let's say you have one retiree A with a $500k home (fully paid off) and $2M in investments, and another B with $2.5M in investments. Both use the common advice that they can spend 4% of their principle a year. Person A probably owes a few hundred dollars a month on taxes and a few hundred more on upkeep, then has $80k/year to spend on other things. Person B owes rent but has $100k annual income. That gives person B $20k/year to spend on rent. That's about a third of what it would cost to rent the home person A owns. So, we can treat person A's buying power as being equivalent to almost $140k/yr. The difference between A and B is a result of housing inflation since A bought their home being higher than inflation in the economy overall.  (Note: in reality if these hypothetical retirees had the same working life history, we'd have to also ask whether person B was able to put away more money in investments back when housing costs were lower and whether the compound growth would give them much more net worth now. I have not attempted to account for that, and I'm not sure if or how that affects the question of estimating inflation. I think my ex

I agree it creates a confusion. The increase costs should not be labled inflaiton because you're making apples to organges comparisons regarding the good class one claims to be pricing/indexing

Owner equivalent rent seem a bit of a misdirect for tracking inflation. I own and I can tell you that I don't pay anything close to what someone renting a similar house pays.

The other thing that kind of jumps out at me here is the hourly wages. Have to dig a bit more to be sure but in general it seems that non-hourly wage incomes have been growing faster than hourly wage incomes. Inflation is suppose to tell us something about real prices. But the real prices most people care about is what their income is buying. It would be interesting to use that hourly ... (read more)

2romeostevensit
Most people conflate cash flow and expected net worth at future time t. Implicit rents are useful for measuring the actual delta.

Interesting point about the medical assessment aspect. Where are you located by the way?

I did some quick searching just to find out a bit about combantrin. This and this have some good information about just what you would be taking. (Side note, I'm in the US and both these are US based sources but my initial search got hits primarily from Australia so might be other people would be more comfortable with or even that provide additional aspects for consideration.)

While might go without saying here, I'll say it anyhow, there are some indicated risks but that... (read more)

4lemonhope
Yeah albendazole might be better if you're not a baby or otherwise medically high-risk. I think it's probably good enough that you can give up on parasites being the root cause after trying it for a week. (Rather than being stuck on an endless journey of trying everything like the SIBO, candida, etc self-diagnoses.) The farm where I worked when my symptoms started was in Central Valley in California. The doctors I saw were at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.

I'm not quite sure what to make of "adequately tuned" here. If that means tuned well enough that 99% of the audiance cannot tell the difference between that and a better tuned piano then I'm not sure how they then rate the performance lower than the alternative performance with a better tuned piano.

I do agree that there is likely to be a range in which those like me might actually hear the difference but not be able to articulate, even to ourselves, the source of the sense something is not quite right. Perhaps that's the area you're thinking of. If so then... (read more)

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