But also finding out that the Jesuits of La Fleche were not only responsible for introducing Hume to Buddhism which led to his questioning of God, but that Leibniz too found out about the I Ching through same monks back from Asia and went on to invent binary. In short, Wikipedia. https://t.co/WmnkkGIg1y

— Anna Gát ✨ (@TheAnnaGat) November 22, 2019

In a world without computers, if you wrote about one as myth no one would believe that such a thing were possible.

Everyone should understand how a computer boots because that is fucking magic…just that we can do anything like that, that it even works, that it’s even possible, is mind-boggling even though I understand exactly how the trick is done. Understanding the sorcery makes it even more fantastical.

As I’ve noted before, the world does have magic, and a lot of it, but the spells are just very hard to cast. But we are getting better at the incantations — slowly.

One reason I don’t think Baumol’s cost disease explains skyrocketing US healthcare costs is that plastic surgery isn’t behaving the same way. The avg breast augmentation in 1999 was $3.1k — $3.5-3.9k in 2009, $3.5-4k in 2018. Adjust for inflation & the price is actually dropping https://t.co/ryszrQOCqI

— Mason 🏃🏻✂️ (@webdevMason) November 24, 2019

I’d say Baumol’s explains 20% or less of rising medical costs. The rest is that we’ve allowed medical care to organize itself as a de facto criminal enterprise. Turns out you can charge a lot when you’re the only option, you only reveal pricing retroactively, and have state-sanctioned enforcement mechanisms for your criminal activities.

Is it any mystery under those conditions why prices skyrocket?

“It’s never aliens” is perhaps the most dangerous and destructive scientific orthodoxy in history.

— Geffen Avraham (@GeffenAvraham) November 23, 2019

I wouldn’t say the “most dangerous.” Yet, anyway, as there haven’t been any consequences.

I’d award this distinction of “most dangerous” currently to the field of economics. It’s harmed and killed more people than all our wars combined. However, I suspect we’ve already witnessed some large-scale alien engineering projects but just didn’t know that’s what we’re observing. This could have very grave consequences indeed one day.

“It’s never aliens” reminds me of the scientific orthodoxy of “animals can’t think” that was established thought until recently.