A blog by a writer on housing policy, startups, institutions, and rationality, including San Francisco housing and media accuracy.
HN commenters argue over its claims on SF housing and displacement, and cite its post calling an MIT Technology Review GPT-3 article misleading.
Glad to see that my anecdotal experience with Google Maps and Waze turned out to be correct[0]. I've noticed, consistently, that Waze underestimates the drive time that it quotes and I've also had the sneaking suspicion that the routes weren't perfect (though I had no expectation that they would be; there's a lot that can go wrong on a 40-minute without traffic commute).
I think one of the reasons for Waze under-estimating route times has to do with it not properly correlating traffic speeds provided by its many users against the route selection. For instance, my route involves changing from a local highway that ends to an interstate where the left two lanes are the lanes you have to be in to get where I'm going. These lanes are often moving at around 5 MPH on average whereas the other side moves at around 60 MPH. Waze will indicate that the freeway is moving at an average of 40 MPH and will leave me on that road, rather than taking an easy, single-light traffic-free shorter route around the problem. I've never spent more than 5 minutes navigating the route-around, but I've had times where staying on has taken over 20 minutes (and 5 minutes would be fast most days). It rarely suggests the route-around (despite Waze having introduced it to me). It isn't intelligent enough to know that if I'm taking that exit, I'm the 5 MPH traffic, not the 60MPH traffic. It's either not taking into account that my route would result in slower traffic than average due to lane…
"It was renters living in the Mission who were (not incorrectly) terrified that new development means they will get evicted and displaced."
New development as the cause of displacement is just outright misinformation. There has been very little development in the Mission:
https://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/05/25/new-york-times-makes-up-facts-about-sf-housing/
There is an extremely strong negative correlation between development and housing prices across cities:
http://www.spur.org/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/asking.prices.png
This is an excellent writeup by Jason Furman, chief economic adviser to President Obama, which explains in detail how land use restrictions make cities expensive (and cause other problems besides):
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20151120_barriers_shared_growth_land_use_regulation_and_economic_rents.pdf
Yes. Contrary to popular belief, not a single housing unit (at any income level) has been torn down in the Mission, for any reason, since at least 2010 (as far back as online records go).
Source: http://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/05/25/new-york-times-makes-up-facts-about-sf-housing/
Also, I should note that, contrary to popular belief, there's not much new luxury housing in the Mission. In fact, there's not much new housing in the Mission at any economic level. In 2014 (the last year for which data is available), there were a grand total of 74 units built in the entire Mission. Not 74 buildings. 74 units.
Source: http://www.sf-planning.org/ftp/files/publications_reports/2014_housing_inventory.pdf
> This gives a rough ballpark for the amount of energy they are willing to invest into major strategic advancements.
I'd say, rather, that it gives a rough ballpark of how much the government was willing to invest in the 1940s, at the peak of its ability and willingness to take on projects of incredible scope. There was still a fair amount of this for a few decades after that, but not since the 70s. See https://rationalconspiracy.com/2012/06/03/why-doesnt-our-government-actually-do-anything/ for one person's take on this (though you don't have to go as far as she does, I think, to establish that applying Manhattan Project numbers to anything going on today will result in an overestimate).
Join the club! One useful phrase to keep in mind is "Chinese Robber Fallacy"[0] (edit: and for more than just spotting questionable uses of "whataboutism"[1]). It's "where you use a generic problem to attack a specific person or group, even though other groups have the problem just as much (or even more so)."
Of course if you engage in this sort of "fallacy fallacy!" argument style, you rapidly get far from the discussion on the actual topic. The best move is probably just not to play.
[0] https://rationalconspiracy.com/2015/03/08/the-chinese-robber-fallacy/
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/09/16/cardiologists-and-chinese-robbers/
>There are tons of other blogs out there (The Art of Ass Kicking, etc.), but I generally find the other options to be too 'commercialized' for my liking, and they're filled with those really short, hyped up kinda articles.
yeah, the same here. I usually prefer authors who write for the sake of writing: the content is more "pure".
I second your recommendation on Sebastian's site. I'd add:
- Skinner Layne http://skinnerlayne.com/blog/
- Games and Strategy http://gamesnstrategy.blogspot.com/ (about strategy, lifehacks, history etc)
- The Rationalist Conspiracy http://rationalconspiracy.com/ (For rationality stuff)