The Zeitgeist Weekend Edition – 3.24.2019

Every morning, we run The Narrative Machine on the past 24 hours worth of financial media to find the most on-narrative (i.e. interconnected and central) stories. On the weekend, we leave finance to cover the last week or so in other shifting parts of the Zeitgeist – namely, politics and culture. It’s not a list of best articles or articles we think are most interesting … often far from it.

But these are articles that have struck a chord in narrative world. 


How AI Will Rewire Us [The Atlantic]

In a sea of insipid AI takes, I liked this one from Nicholas Christakis a lot. For obvious reasons, most AI takes focus on the machine-to-human nexus. It’s the angle that relates to selling products, for one, and is the one which guides how individual technologies will be developed. To some extent, we have waved our hands at the human-to-machine dimension with clunky ethical discussions, most of which take the inevitable detour into sex. But I think that it is true that the slow encroachment of AI (and even advanced software that falls rather short of AI) into more and more of our lives may have its richest and most perilous influence on our human-to-human interaction. A worthy angle for weekend contemplation.


Teacher pay raises, Hillary Clinton’s Dallas mayoral endorsement, Beto O’Rourke on the trail [Dallas Morning News]

Hard-hitting stuff!

Now, please consider why a Texas-based paper’s home-town puff piece on the Beto campaign was the most highly connected article discussing 2020 elections in the past week. It should be no surprise that sentiment of articles about both him and his campaign remain consistently higher than those of other candidates.


World Video Game Hall of Fame 2019 Finalists Announced [Variety]


I didn’t know this Hall of Fame existed until now, so of course I have very strong opinions about it. To fully form yours, visit the site itself to see what all has been inducted since the 2015 inauguration. What you will discover is that the “Video Game Hall of Fame” is really the “Video Game Console, Arcade and Mobile Hall of Fame.” PCs are sort of an afterthought in this alternate universe. Beyond that, I don’t have any issue with the inclusion of some nominees that are really more pop culture phenomena than quality games. Popular casual games still matter. Still for my money, there are a few pretty big omissions that are way ahead of most of this year’s nominees:

  • Command & Conquer – Yes, Dune 2 came first. Yes, Warcraft ended up having more legs and launched more E-Sports-friendly franchises, but it was really Warcraft II that established that franchise’s influence. And after its initial releases, a post-EA C&C repeatedly misfired with overproduced video cut-scene nonsense. For my money, though, it was C&C that made real-time strategy a thing. Plus it spawned a follow-on game with the best title music of any game ever and maybe the best cheesy cut-scene in video game history.
  • Sim City – Another genre-establishing game – and still completely playable. I agree with taking Civ first, but strategy is still woefully underrepresented in the existing list even after Civ glides past this vote.
  • NHL ’94 – It remains the best, most intuitive, most enjoyable sports game ever made. If you’re even considering NBA 2K before NHL ’94, you’re doing it wrong.
  • Quake – I get going with Doom and saying, “We’ve got to cover more genres and influences before we start going for also-rans.” Except Quake isn’t an also-ran. Doom didn’t really kick off the deathmatch format that has culminated in the weird modern Fortnite obsession. Quake did. I’m OK with getting Half-Life in first, just because its Counter-Strike mod was about as influential as you can get. To that end, any Hall of Fame that inducts Halo before Half-Life…well…
  • Ultima Online – WoW and all of its clones don’t exist without UO. RPGs don’t exist as we know them today without Lord British / Richard Garriott. Honestly, it doesn’t even have to be this one. But how about we get a damn Ultima game in before we start talking seriously about…Candy Crush.
  • Diablo – I’ve no problem with the RPGs they’ve included (although I would have taken Final Fantasy VI (III in the U.S.) over VII, which has a pretty special and iconic cut-scene itself, but there’s a whole genre of isometric, hack-and-slash style RPGs that were spawned by Diablo. It wasn’t the first of its kind, and it has been surpassed, but it was the catalyst for some of the greatest single-player experiences there are.

The secret to better cheese might be hip-hop, scientists say [CNET]

Abstractions everywhere!

Measuring the effects of bass reverberation and average volume on the development and maturation of cheese and calling it the effects of hip-hop vs. classical or rock music is good fun, and we’re all for good fun. We’re also all for getting super pedantic about people pretending that their preferred representation of their preferred abstraction is representative.

Next time don’t put Magic Flute up against the woody thump of A Tribe Called Quest’s iconic, pressing double-bass. Play your cheese some Stravinsky, cowards. Or better yet, play it some Prokofiev and sell it to your customers as Pagan Monster Cheese.


Northern Europe Dominates Happiness Rankings Once Again [Forbes]

Rusty’s First Law of Transmutation of Happiness: Every article about happiness is actually just an article someone wanted to write about how other countries should pursue Scandinavian social policies.

Here’s my proposal: Every time you write an article which seeks to draw conclusions about desirable fiscal or social policy from the experience in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland or Finland, you put a dollar in the jar, and we’ll use that to pay for your favorite Nordic social program. I love each of these countries. I have never met anyone I didn’t like from any! Not a single one. I also know that these countries produce rich data sets. I get it.

But come on.

The top ranking country in this study is Finland. Finland is the size of greater Boston. 90% of its people are of Finnish ancestry. Norway is the size of Greater Phoenix, 86% populated by people of Norwegian ancestry. Iceland is a country with the population of Rockford, Illinois, 2/3 of whom live in one city.

They are beautiful, their people are wonderful, you should definitely visit them, and you should stop using them as case studies unless you really think it’s a topic that isn’t likely to be unduly biased by the unique traits of these countries. If you must pretend that your social science benefits from pseudo-empiricism, at least find some new data sets that deal with the unavoidable complications of big, multi-regional countries diversified by religion, class, socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity.


Warren Calls for End of Electoral College and Removal of Confederate Statues [NPR]

I don’t have much more to say about Confederate statues that Ben and I haven’t covered in some depth already. Frankly, I don’t have much to say about Senator Warren’s remarks at all, which probably represent her heart-felt views, and which at any rate were pretty standard campaign trail fare. Anti-confederate monument and anti-electoral college rhetoric don’t bear much risk from a national electoral perspective – Warren would be lucky to pull 40% of Mississippi in a good election year.

But for the New York Times, the line between Analysis and News coverage continues to veer in a perilously gray direction. “Ms. Warren also sought to present new ideas” and “Ms. Warren also used the forum to present herself as a candidate who understands racial inequities” are brutal examples of Fiat News. Question begging, affected language – the whole article, brief as it is, reads like a press release. I am being honest when I tell you that I am not sure whether the Times intended this to be read as analysis of news or news.

As Ben has said about some other great US institutions, I worry that our greatest news publications are “not even pretending any more.”

Comments

  1. Centipede and Myst!
    Now that any semblance of mainstream media legitimacy has been quasi-permanently destroyed by Taibbi, Greenwald, et al, I worry that your rather brilliant narrative expose tool will drift from insight to infotainment. Maybe you could offer a way to input a custom set of ‘sources’ and then compile the various indexes?

  2. Not that there’s anything wrong with a little infotainment! Still, working on exactly that. To my shame, my coding skills rate about a 1.5 on a scale of 1 to 10. Slow going. We’ll get there.

  3. If you ever want a free hand in coding…reach out…mine are probably a 5 out of 10 (I am old and rusty…haha…obvious pun intended…obviously :wink: but I will definitely be worth the price (zero) and won’t charge extra for the witticisms. Serious offer.

  4. Love the take on Nordic happiness surveys. Take about looking at baseline assumptions before reaching conclusions. Well said!

  5. Rusty’s is the stronger argument for why the analogy to the Scandinavian countries isn’t powerful, but there’s also this: we’ve had over a hundred years of watching two models be (always) imperfectly employed - sometimes in reasonably lab-like conditions as in East and West Germany or North and South Korea or China and Taiwan - and if the totality of that evidence doesn’t argue for a strong lean toward individual freedom under a capitalist system, then we should stop using history.

    Note, I said “lean,” meaning not a Randian model of arrant capitalism, but a bred-in-the-body-politic’s-bone bias toward greater individual freedom and market-based solutions and always a hesitancy and humility when going in the other direction.

Continue the discussion at the Epsilon Theory Forum

Participants

Avatar for rguinn Avatar for Mkahn22 Avatar for Zenzei Avatar for Victor_K

The Daily Zeitgeist

ET Zeitgeist: Raccoons Never Sleep

By Ben Hunt | May 28, 2021 | 5 Comments

Lemonade (LMND) isn’t just an insurance company. No, no … they’re an AI Company! ™.

Plus Chamath is up to his old tricks.

I hate raccoons.

Inflation as Ad Campaign

By Ben Hunt | May 24, 2021 | 0 Comments

An ET Pack member sent me this. Anyone else come across ads that directly call out inflation expectations? Would love to collect more screenshots like…

Many People Are Saying … Bitcoin is Art

By Ben Hunt | May 24, 2021 | 0 Comments

The Bitcoin Is Art thesis that I put out back in 2015 (The Effete Rebellion of Bitcoin) and recently put forward again (In Praise of…

Why Am I Reading This Now?

By Ben Hunt | May 24, 2021 | 1 Comment

Pack member Rob H. brought this up at last week’s Office Hours, and it deserves its own thread (as well as some attention from The…

Homeschooling Resources on ET Forum?

By Ben Hunt | May 24, 2021 | 0 Comments

I think a homeschooling VMPT is a natural for the ET Forum! On last week’s Office Hours conversation, ET Pack member Dan W. brought this…

ET Zeitgeist: With Enemies Like This

By Ben Hunt | May 21, 2021 | 9 Comments

This has been a bad week for Bitcoin and Bitcoin! TM alike. There’s no getting around that.

But whenever Paul Krugman and the Wall Street Journal agree on something … I want to be on the other side of that trade!

DISCLOSURES
This commentary is being provided to you as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice. The opinions expressed in these materials represent the personal views of the author(s). It is not investment research or a research recommendation, as it does not constitute substantive research or analysis. Any action that you take as a result of information contained in this document is ultimately your responsibility. Epsilon Theory will not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation to any loss of profit, which may arise directly or indirectly from use of or reliance on such information. Consult your investment advisor before making any investment decisions. It must be noted, that no one can accurately predict the future of the market with certainty or guarantee future investment performance. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.

Statements in this communication are forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements and other views expressed herein are as of the date of this publication. Actual future results or occurrences may differ significantly from those anticipated in any forward-looking statements, and there is no guarantee that any predictions will come to pass. The views expressed herein are subject to change at any time, due to numerous market and other factors. Epsilon Theory disclaims any obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or views expressed herein. This information is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of any offer to buy any securities. This commentary has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. Epsilon Theory recommends that investors independently evaluate particular investments and strategies, and encourages investors to seek the advice of a financial advisor. The appropriateness of a particular investment or strategy will depend on an investor’s individual circumstances and objectives.