David Perell

"The outspoken investor likened environmental, social and governance policies to the Chinese Communist Party"

Interesting choice "Chinese communist party". I mean really?

How does [ESG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental,_social_and_corporate_governance), what on earth has that to do with the communist party. Well known for their social and corporate governance?

Also from Thiel

* His vindictive taking down of [Gawker](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/)

* Billionaire Republican donor Peter Thiel is bankrolling election conspiracists and primary challengers against Republicans [more](https://www.salon.com/2021/10/15/peter-thiel-bets-on-the-far-right-tech-tycoon-spending-millions-to-bankroll-trump-wing-of/)

* [Funding Trump](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/technology/republican-trump-peter-thiel.html?referringSource=articleShare)

* Leaving Facebook to concentrate on [Trump support/funding](https://newrepublic.com/article/165404/peter-thiel-china-midterms-2022).

* Some more about leaving [meta](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-07/peter-thiel-to-leave-meta-board-to-pursue-trump-political-agenda)

* An article about his ['philosophy'](https://perell.com/essay/peter-thiel/)

I mean it doesn't even make any sense for a gay man. Hasn't he noticed Trumps, and more recent GOP LGBTQ take? Is it the ends justify the means? Is it, it only applies to the small people? Who knows.

Thiel is a 'libertarian'…

I found David Perell's podcast interview with Robert Cottrell a fascinating discussion of the economics of journalism:

https://www.perell.com/podcast/robert-cottrell

On a different topic, why don't I subscribe? Lots of reasons, I suppose, including other priorities for my income combined with a horrible value/dollar ratio. But that's not really it. Before I'd even consider paying for journalism, I'd need to trust that I'm learning things that are true.

A couple of recent examples of sloppiness that make it not worth subscribing, from my area of expertise (chosen to avoid anything controversial). There was an article in the NY Times about problems in the economics profession, focused on academic economists and similar non-academics like Fed economists. To make their point, the authors tossed in a comment by Larry Kudlow that was widely viewed as horrible. Why is that sloppy? Because Larry Kudlow is not an economist and has no connection to the economics profession. He got an undergrad degree in history, worked on Wall Street, worked in politics, and got a job as a TV commentator. Less than a minute of research would have found this. What are you paying for if they don't even do the easy fact checking?

A second example occurred in the aftermath of the first labor market report after the pandemic hit in the US. Economists were trying to resolve the numbers on the unemployment report with the unemployment claims data. A prominent individual from CNN was quick to question the…

Boeing has "culture" problems like a mangy stray dog has a flea problem. The dog and Boeing also have in common that both are blissfully unaware of their problems. However unlike Boeing, the dog does not blame imaginary ghosts of the past for its fleas.

There is a notion that Boeing is (was) a company with an insanely great engineering culture. Their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of building amazing products while always putting public safety first. This great culture suffered under the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3]. This narrative further says that McDonnell had a mercenary profits at all cost management culture which infected the management of the combined entity. However Boeing's engineers tried to preserve their engineering ethos while living under this oppressive regime and continued building great and safe products.

This argument is frequently put forth by ex-Boeing engineers. This is a naked apologia for Boeing's behavior which killed 346 people and endangered the lives of 1000s more and destroyed jobs/wealth around the world.

So strong is the apologists conviction in the purity of Boeing's engineering culture that they ignore the fact that thousands of engineers worked on the 737 Max. Not a single engineer raised issues with the engineering of the aircraft. Not a single engineer wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing or quit in protest. They were all held in thrall, paralyzed and forced to go against their ethics, professionalism,…

> This leads to a fracturing of consensus.

But is it necessarily a bad thing? I think whether the outcomes are good or bad is going to be highly subjective and debated ad infinitum. I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlord.

There are two interesting articles on this topic, I strongly recommend everyone to read them. Gwern's article has interesting observations about politics, subculture, Unicode, and programming languages. David Perell examines the effect of the Internet in a bigger framework of world's politics, education, and commerce.

* The Melancholy of Subculture Society, by gwern

https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society

* What the Hell is Going On?, by David Perell (has a playful foreword, if it annoys you, ignore it and continue reading).

https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on
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My perspective of the issue is, under the previous centralized system, the entire nation is subject to the identical propaganda. The effect of the system can already be seen from the extensive propaganda during Mexican–American War of the 1840s - nearly 200 years ago.

> You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war.

And during the World War II, and later the Cold War, the power of state propaganda reached its height, and I'd say this system is responsible for the massive thought manipulation and greatest violence in the human history. But there are good sides as well - information authority, good writings, and strong consensus.

> We have…

Disclaimer: AB + BC may be longer than AC

It's the opposite ! The triangle inequality doesn't always hold when it comes to learning (unless you meant longer = you learn more, here I meant longer = you spend more time / efforts on it)

This begs the question, when we learn new knowledge “efficiently” and “quickly”. How much knowledge did we really acquire?

Good question. Sometimes a real breakthrough can also happen without working really hard, it's just not very common. And some of the knowledge you got can be useful quite quickly in your daily life or profession, so there are definitely /some/ benefits in learning efficiently.

Ee'll always need to simplify some past discoveries / knowledge and focus our time / energy on more complex problems. Our children will get access to much more knowledge than us anyway, it's all about explicitly deciding where our efforts should be focused on. Some people might loose, some might win. I think it's related to your last link https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/ in abundance, the ultra smart will rise, the median people will fall behind.

For now, I would like to produce more high quality learning material. But if I had to mentor someone to learn stuff, I wouldn't always recommend to constantly look for a ready-made answer online for example.

I personally do not care about Problem 1. I mostly use Twitter in a passive way -- following people that are experts on the topics that I'm interested in. I assume if you want to get a reasonable following you need to put quite the effort in it.

Problem 2 appears but I've noticed that muting works well enough to avoid it.

Problem 3 does not seem to be Twitter-specific but again blocking and muting seems to work for me as well.

My personal take is that something brings value to you or not depending on how you use it. Here is a quote from (https://perell.com/note/the-paradox-of-abundance/) that resonates with me:
"The Explore Tab on Twitter is the most important newspaper in the world. It’s littered with celebrity gossip and exaggerated political drama — both of which yield a wide reach but incentivize empty content. And yet, as the Paradox of Abundance predicts, Twitter is also one of the world’s top intellectual communities. It’s the bedrock of my social and intellectual life. It’s a place to make friends, raise your ambitions, and connect directly with people at the top of their fields. And yet, most people use Twitter to consume information with no nutritional value."