SSC's posts on Amish healthcare (and the problems of employer-provided insurance)
Related, Vinad Prasad on cancer and medical ethics. Various interesting things: most cancer drugs don't pass a cost-benefit analysis, lots of cancer drugs get through the FDA with shoddy trials (And probably don't work at all), and this is all driven by the fact that Medicare will pay whatever the drug maker asks for (With social pressure being the only limit!), and likewise insurance companies will insulate people from the co…
It's time to build, writes Marc Andreessen. The piece is framed in the context of the Covid pandemic. The first part of the essay is about preparation for pandemics,
Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t do in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to build.
There is one more that can be added, besides failing to plan or build: failing to maintain…
Moore's law is relentless - Jim Keller
In its original formulation, Moore's law1 was about cramming more transistors in ever decreasing surfaces; by that metric Moore's law continues unabated. However that's not the most interesting thing. As much of a feat of engineering it is, most people are interested in the end-product of the semiconductor world: performance.
Before moving onto that, here are some charts that show progress in the original Moore's law sense (ht Sam Zeloof for the data). Of note here i…
Scott Alexander on high fat diets
Tyler Cowen contra Tyler Cowen on Stubborn Attachments
Common ownership maybe is fine
Remember those old studies saying that gum disease was linked to Alzheimer's? Now a link has also been suggested for stroke and atherosclerosis.
Guide to DIY biology
Why conventional wisdom on education reform is wrong
How did early american investors fund their ventures?
How much does it cost to develop a drug? 1.3 billion USD, study claims. (Including the cost of failed research)
A few r…
Growth and the case against randomista development
How local control can accelerate housing
One year, 1 lab, 16 spinouts (On the Church Lab)
Fireside chat with Tyler Cowen and Tom Kalil
Glial brain cells do more than thought decades ago
You don't agree with Karl Popper (See also the comments)
Scott reviews a review of Little Soldiers, a book on chinese preschool
Fedophilia: Economists love for central banks
The US is starved for talent: Paper finds very large effect (Perhaps implausibly so) on hiring an H…
You might remember a post I wrote in 2016, No Great Technological Stagnation where I argued various things that are worth repeating and valid today: Technology is not the same as productivity growth, and there is no great stagnation in technology; rather there are localized slowdowns, accelerations, and stagnations1, and of course TFP is more than technology. Also last year I wrote on whether WWII was good for growth, and I linked to some evidence that the rate of growth of population could be behind a stag…