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Cake day: July 15th, 2023

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  • That’s why we make a distinction between:

    • formal sciences (math, logic, statistics, etc.)
    • natural sciences (physics, chemistry, geology, etc.), and;
    • social sciences (econ, anthropology, archaeology, etc.)

    People in formal and social sciences don’t put “scientist” on their business card because the popular understanding of the term is a natural scientist in a lab coat doing controlled experiments. You don’t get a nice clean lab to do controlled experiments on societies, economies, or ancient ruins. When you study those things, your degree still usually says “Bachelor of Science” and not “Bachelor of Arts” because the terms “sciences” and “arts” are more expansive than the way we use them in every day conversation.


  • Economics filtered through politics and media can get silly but actual economists doing actual economics create rigorous models (like any science) and most don’t even necessarily make predictions about the future. A cross-discipline academic project on the effects of past coastal erosion might, for instance, have an ecologist, historian, and economist all write separate papers. That’s more common than pontificating on TV.

    Econ is also prone to being misrepresented by politicians because there’s almost always trade-offs in the real world. Like imagine a proposed tax on gas/petrol to fund public transportation. An economist would just predict who will benefit or be harmed but you probably already know exactly what the different political parties and media outlets in your country will focus on.


  • China has every incentive to switch since they’re an oil importer and a battery and solar panel exporter with major smog issues, especially in Beijing. Even without global warming, they’re better off electrifying as much as possible.

    Plus, we should probably all have a Plan B. How much oil is coming from countries at war, threatening war, or forced to ship their oil through tiny straights within rocket firing distance of a U.S./Iran proxy war? Even the Panama Canal (drought) is having issues.




  • Because those wars went so well. Iran has a population of almost 90 million compared to Iraq’s 2003 population of 27 million or so and Libya’s was like 6 million before that war. And those only created more instability. There’s not usually a winner in a war in the modern era.

    I’m an American and, emotionally, I obviously get the desire to retaliate for the attacks but a real war with Iran would be catastrophic. It would probably weaken America in the long run. As bad as these tit-for-tat strikes are, we’re better off supporting Iranian protesters than taking aggressive military action.










  • China’s claims are way more egregious. I’m not defending America’s claims but they’re at least plausibly based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas. They might not be winning legal arguments but they’re plausible enough to be legal arguments.

    Some of China’s claims in the South China Sea are so far from the UNCLOS that I’m surprised Rudy Giuliani isn’t involved. Like, they sometimes claim the same rights as archipelago nations. China, you may have noticed, is not shaped like the Seychelles.

    They also claim some islands based on arguments like “A Chinese guy saw that island first.” But that isn’t a thing. With all due respect to Zheng He (possibly the greatest mariner of all time), the UNCLOS isn’t based on who called dibs.