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Only The Rich Are Poisoned: The Preference of Others | Medium

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Only The Rich Are Poisoned: The Preference of Others
The salesman is the boss — How to drink poison — Advertising and manipulation

Very few people understand their own choices, and end up being manipulated by those who want to sell them something. In that sense, impoverishment might be something desirable. Looking at Saudi Arabia which should progressively revert to the pre-oil level of poverty, I wonder if Vauvenargues would tell them that taking away some things from them –and the swarm of fawning foreigners coming to skin them –will make them better off.

To put it another way: if wealth is giving you fewer options instead of more (and more varied) options, you’re doing it wrong …

Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons | Medium

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Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons

Why? Simply the one who doesn’t look the part, conditional of having made a (sort of) successful career in his profession, had to have much to overcome in terms of perception. And if we are lucky enough to have people who do not look the part, it is thanks to the presence of some skin in the game, the contact with reality that filters out incompetence, as reality is blind to looks.

How economists should dress

An Expert Called Lindy | Medium

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An Expert Called Lindy

Lindy is a deli in New York, now a tourist trap, that proudly claims to be famous for its cheesecake, but in fact has been known for the fifty or so years of interpretation by physicists and mathematicians of the heuristic that developed there. Actors who hung out there gossiping about other actors discovered that Broadway shows that lasted, say one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy Effect.

Inequality vs Inequality | Medium

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Inequality vs Inequality

There is inequality and inequality.

The first is the inequality people tolerate, such as one’s understanding compared to that of people deemed heroes, say Einstein, Michelangelo, or the recluse mathematician Grisha Perelman, in comparison to whom one has no difficulty acknowledging a large surplus. This applies to entrepreneurs, artists, soldiers, heroes, the singer Bob Dylan, Socrates, the current local celebrity chef, some Roman Emperor of good repute, say Marcus Aurelius; in short those for whom one can naturally be a “fan”. You may like to imitate them, you may aspire to be like them; but you don’t resent them.

No, Jesus was not a “NonWhite” refugee who would have voted for … | Medium

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No, Jesus was not a “NonWhite” refugee who would have voted for …

The problem with identity politics is that they are fully ignorant of, among other things, history. And they must be as blind visually as they are intellectually. How did Judeans and Galileans look like at the time of Christ? Not according to your politically driven classifications; and not according to some BS in a 2001 article in Scientific American (based on “scientific” reconstruction of facial features and skin tone from … bones). And don’t assume that Jesus would have voted for neocon hawks, Salafi regime promoters, rent seeking “educated” bureaucrats and state-worshipping IYIs (intellectual yet idiots) — simply, Jesus wanted a separation of the holy and the profane, (see my article here).