Outcomes for vaccine booster cohort are worse than for unboosted

IM Doc’s review of his patient reports

An essay on liberalism

What is now obvious failure of liberalism

yet remains the dominant paradigm especially for the PMC ( professional and managerial class, aka the top 10% but not the 1%…)

Lots of references and links to books and papers both new and old.

Ostensibly a book review but ultimately much more 

our focus today, Not Thinking Like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss, who is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cambridge.  The first book of his that I have read is his recent A Philosopher Looks at Work, which has been published in a series of “little” books already on my shelf in which A Philosopher Looks at Human Beings (Michael Ruse, whose work on evolution is essential), Sports (Stephen Mumford) and Architecture (Paul Guyer).  A most remarkable thing to me about Professor Geuss is that he has a thoroughly working-class background.  This is rare for an academic of any discipline, and my hope that this would make a difference was confirmed in both A Philosopher Looks at Work and our subject for today.  I readily confess that because I come from a working-class background, I have also not thought like a liberal for a very long time.

Like many such good “little” books, Not Thinking Like a Liberal is substantially autobiographical.  The story is told from the perspective of a student in a boarding school outside of Philadelphia run by Hungarian priests of the Order of the Pious Schools (Piarists).  Geuss later attended Columbia, where he also received his PhD, and then became a Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, where he is now Professor Emeritus [4].  His teachers were profound, both in their work and in their teaching, and the journey is instructive.  We all have teachers, if we are willing to pay them the attention they deserve.  If we choose well those teachers we can, the outcomes are likely to be rewarding.  In my view, Professor Geuss has gifted us with a very good book for our time.

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DIY air cleaner

with step by step instructions

Are you a “non playing character”?

A casual taxonomy

It’s getting ever harder to distinguish humans from bots, not just because bots are becoming more humanlike, but also because humans are becoming more botlike.

As knowledge of human psychology evolves, algorithms become better at shaping human behavior. Step onto social media and you’ll see the same groups of people getting outraged by the same kinds of things every single day, like clockwork.

The rise of botlike behavior over the past decade has led to the creation of a meme: the NPC, or Non-Player Character. Originally a term to describe video game characters whose behavior is completely computer-controlled, it now also refers to real world humans who behave as predictably as video game NPCs, giving scripted responses and engaging in seemingly mindless, automated behaviors.

Economics and narratives

Flim flam from economists

the sleight of hand neoclassical economists and their legal allies performed in getting courts to buy off on a definition of “efficiency” for the purposes of evaluating mergers that is not seen as valid in the economics discipline generally.

Numerous economists have noticed the dramatic increase in monopoly profits accruing to US firms since 1980. As one example, a recent review of this literature and an updated measure of wealth generated from market power in the United States from 1870 to 2010 can be found in the new book by Mordecai Kurz. The impact of unchecked market power has contributed to an increase in inequality, has helped reduce investment and growth, and is a factor in harming democracy. Joseph Stiglitz makes the case for how rising market power and concentration have contributed to income inequality. Thomas Phillipon shows how rising market power has undermined investment and growth. Robert Landehas recently argued that the rise of powerful firms is a factor in undermining democracy. As Louis Brandeis reportedly quipped: “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in a few hands, but we can’t have both.”