
What the Hell Is Going On? Effects of Information Abundance - tosh
https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on
======
axaxs
For anyone just skimming comments - this is a very well written, well
researched, thoughtful, and objective piece. That's pretty rare in today's
climate. Definitely worth the read.

It's the first time I can remember signing up for a newsletter voluntarily,
despite my general distaste for those types of popovers.

~~~
jjoonathan
The introduction's tacky and condescending tone lost me. Does it get better?

~~~
abvdasker
Came here to say this. The intro seemed to think it was much more clever than
it really is. It's very easy to pick descriptive language vague enough that it
applies to multiple subjects. I had to stop reading after that.

------
rossdavidh
On the one hand, some very good points. I think a survey of 20th century
history strongly supports the idea that Big Media helped determine what kinds
of leadership we got, and so it must be the case that 21st century internet
media are doing the same. The comparisons of similar trends in education and
commerce are worth reading (if over-long).

On the other hand, the underlying assumption is that the revolt against elite
policy preferences, not only in the U.S. but in Europe and elsewhere, is
entirely devoid of rational motivation. It discounts without comment the
possibility that the pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems
which the working class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to
the bottom in manufacturing wages).

Surely the new methods of information access and distribution are having an
impact. But it's not the only, or even necessarily the most important, driver.

~~~
pjc50
> pre-internet style of governance had substantive problems which the working
> class didn't like (e.g. globalization leading to a race to the bottom in
> manufacturing wages).

"Observing a problem", "diagnosing causes", and "presenting workable
solutions" are three completely different things though.

Wage stagnation leading to quality-of-life declines is the first of these -
people can notice this immediately in their life. Diganosing "globalisation"
as the problem is harder and more complicated (would the US really have been
better off trying to be a manufacturing autarky for the second half of the
20th century?). And the proposed solutions .. well, this is where it gets
really bad.

The existing elite have done a very good job of suppressing the peaceful,
workable solutions; various sorts of social inclusion and redistibution. That
leaves only the unworkable and disastrous solutions out there.

~~~
xyzzyz
> Wage stagnation leading to quality-of-life declines is the first of these -
> people can notice this immediately in their life.

Despite popular graphs making rounds, there has been little if any wage
stagnation. Moreover, people are also really bad at noticing it: a median and
an average Americans now have better housing situation than 50 years ago, in
terms of actual living space available for them, fewer roommates, better
quality of housing, and yet the sentiment is the opposite.

~~~
rossdavidh
I would say the best analysis of this is by Peter Turchin:
[http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/population-
immiseration...](http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/population-immiseration-
in-america/)

~~~
kbutler
Notice Turchin's exclusions and his analysis:

Wage stagnation primarily for unskilled men (women's wages have risen a lot,
skilled labor has risen as well).

The reason? "The TL;DR answer is that it was a combination of immigration,
loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, massive entry of women into the labor
force"

So a drastically increased supply of labor depresses prices of labor.

He also avoids "household income" because households are smaller (fewer
children, divorce) and because of two earners, but those very things increase
economic "quality of life" measurements for individuals in those households ($
per capita).

He also focuses on pre-tax/pre-transfer income, avoiding the net effect of our
progressive taxation/transfer regime. If we include those effects, we get a
different picture: [https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-trend-toward-
inequali...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-trend-toward-inequality-
has-slowed-but-so-has-income-growth/)

------
rapht
As some others have said, a well-thought-out article on the larger scale
impacts of the Internet as a new medium of communication - just get past the
intro.

In the end, it's interesting because it puts together a number of intuitions
you may already have about the upcoming western social-democratic crisis
stemming from the loss of authoritative sources of information.

What is missing is actually ideas about what system we should collectively aim
for in order to restore trust in actual truths and distrust in actual
falsehoods - because of course, you can't have a society without a shared
framework for that.

~~~
stdcli
I think the core issue here is the elephant in the room in tech that noone
wants to talk about. The tech industry has put most of it's money making eggs
in the ads basket. This means companies selling ads are promoting the kind of
mass information spread that is sensationalist because it gets their ads the
most views, and the tech community makes money off of this.

How well do ads actually work? I really don't know. Is there any objective
data to measure this? There are three main companies who sell ad spaces on a
real time market and it is a very interesting market that I feel like most
people know little about, especially people in tech.

Regardless of how well or not well this works, it's what floats companies like
Google and Facebook.

I would say the tech companies are the ones fueling this because it is the
their multibillion dollar business models that rely on sensationalist news to
sell ads. period. To shift the blame to politicians or to even journalists
trying to compete with other sensationalist news blogs or companies who make
money from selling ads, is shifting the source and the root cause of the
issue, from us, the tech community.

To act like as a tech community we are severely concerned about mass
information, the spread misinformation etc etc but also not address how we can
fundamentally move away from a market in tech that makes money off of anything
besides selling ads to people, or selling peoples information to ad companies
(and god knows who else, I mean, only the big tech three know who else), is
delusional and self serving, at best.

Despite this, I rarely hear anyone in the tech community willing to openly
talk about these problems, much less come up with alternative business
solutions.

I would love for there to be more conversation around moving away from a tech
market that preys on harvesting user data and ads to solutions that solve
people's problems instead of activist posturing from people in tech who talk
alot about being concerned about politics etc but work for the companies that
fuel this spread of misinformation.

~~~
nostrademons
"Is there any objective data to measure this?"

Pretty much every digital marketer's job description consists of measuring and
optimizing this. All the major digital ad platforms let you put tracking
beacons throughout your page's sales flow so you can measure conversion rates
directly and know _exactly_ which ad campaign led to a sale; that's one of the
major advantages of digital over print or TV.

You can certainly debate the ethics of advertising in general, and whether
it's ethical to psychologically manipulate people into buying products they
don't need and wouldn't have bought otherwise. I personally don't really want
to first because I hold opinions on both sides and second because nothing's
going to get resolved by such a debate on HN - it's a debate that's been going
on for 120 years, though the media hegemony described in the article silenced
it for many years. But as an objective fact, there's little room for debating
the _effectiveness_ of advertising. Ads work, even if they might be evil.

~~~
stdcli
HN has been here for 120 years? I thought I was new to the game. I'm not sure
ads work, or what data digital marketers use "digital marketer's job
description consists of measuring and optimizing this" other than the demand
price which is a real time price that fluctuates way more than the 500 index
stock market which, to justify their prices is still something that is of high
debate much less a more voltatile market. I would say there is an overall
input and an output, and if the financial output is multiple times that of the
input the digital marketers can say theyve done their job, but they have very
little data to show the objective intermediaries of linear data measurements
for the flow of this information, which is why big data kafka and spark shops
currently pitch over $300k/yr to anyone who can make sense of this data to a
digital marketer in any consumable format on a monthly not even a weekly
basis, mind you.

I'm not debating the ethics, just the reality of what granularity of data they
can actually sign their id signature hash next to and say they verify this
data, as opposed it to it being a roll your own analytics shop to meet
whatever objective analytics data you are looking to meet for that quarter. I
think we have all learned from the news on both sides in recent years that you
can spin a story or a set of data however you want to, so I am not nearly as
concerned with the anecdotal motives of any particular digital advertiser in
the first place as much as I am with how not only your response but the entire
industry in general shuns the idea that there is any alternative to this
whatsoever and justifies all movements to the counter as "the only way" or the
only logical ways and evil as such. I understand saying something is evil and
those are the only companies who pay me six figures, and so therefore its okay
for me, is very easy for most engineers to say now, but it's not something I'm
willing to say.

I think if you want to justify this statement in general, you should explain
to everyone how bidder as a service works, how its not a monopolized industry
when it comes to ad spaces on websites ranked by domain popularity (3 players
in the market 2 of the CEOs from Google SEO team) and how it correlates with
rationale decisions from a digital marketers perspective and have measureable
outputs other than "the extremely volatile price of this adspot which varies
every 6 seconds was worth it based on the outcome this time, based on how
targeted this ad campaign was, which was targeted based only on harvesting
user data the user would not be ok with if they knew we were using this data".
Honestly, justify your case here....and make sure you include the consent
forms included in the onboarding process of every 12 yr old who has to click
yes to create a facebook profile and what the implications are for the default
oks in this case are...

------
weeksie
This is a long, well thought out just-so story with graphs that ends
concluding that the world is in chaos because there are more media channels
than there used to be. Which is maybe true for some value of "true", but this
is largely an empty essay.

The book that he references a few times, Revolt of The Public is pretty good
though.

~~~
barry-cotter
This is a long, well thought out [theory] with graphs that ends concluding
that the world is in chaos because there are more [is more communication than
before, among more people, in more detail].

Note that changes in medium of communication have lead to political upheaval
every time they’ve happened, whether we’re talking manuscripts to printed
books (the Reformation), the rise of periodicals (nationalism), radio
(fascism, socialism, the New Deal), cable tv (the first fracture in the post
WWII US liberal consensus, as the ruling class had forgotten that amiable
mostly non-partisan politics was an abnormal state of affairs that had been
engineered) and now the internet (suddenly everyone realises there are large
parts of “their” society that genuinely, non-ironically hates them and what
they value).

If you go earlier every leap in communication technology makes more efficient
bureaucracies possible, so you get larger states that are better at warfare.

~~~
weeksie
Theory is too kind a word for this stuff. It's theory like critical theory is
theory.

Sure, there have been massive changes in social organization that have
accompanied changes in media. That doesn't say much though. Those changes
compound and interact in unpredictable, chaotic ways. We like seeing patterns
so we come up with stories about how we're either reverting to some imagined
mean or how we're converging on another.

------
martythemaniak
One thing that I find interesting is how none of the great dystopian works of
the 20th century featured celebrities as the ruling class. The antagonists are
like Bond villains, smart, sophisticated, rational, cruel. A worthy adversary
you could respect and feel good about struggling against. Our reality is that
we've made our lives so advanced and comfortable, that our fantasies can try
to become our reality.

I guess Farenheight 451 and Brave New World come close with their focus on
people immersing themselves in media, but even they had this smart, rational
cunning clique running the show. Even in Idiocracy was based on the quaint
idea that the ruling class was aware of its shortcomings and wanted to use
rational methods to achieve objective goals.

~~~
tsunamifury
Have you considered that the rational bond villains use celebrities as a
visibility and accountability shield to accomplish goals that would otherwise
be shut down if proposed directly?

~~~
martythemaniak
I have, and you can make the case that this is what's happening, and use
Trumps 2017 tax cut as a very good example of elites complaining about him,
but successfully using him for their own ends.

And that would be true, but I don't believe that overall, since it presupposes
that just because someone is a celebrity, they are necessarily some sort of
mindless, insentient vessel that optimizes for fame and can otherwise be
controlled. Why shouldn't Kim Kardashian have strong-but-misguided opinions
like any other random person? And wouldn't her existing fame make her way less
amenable to influence by unknown individuals? To use a real-life example, much
of Trump's immigration obsession is not shared by the elites who benefited
from his tax cuts.

Ultimately, I don't believe it because I don't think any person can be as
easily influenced as this scenario implies.

~~~
tsunamifury
Useful idiots work freelance, because any longer and they become a liability.
I think there is a vast pool of freelance celebrity today, with a deep bench
of influencers attempting to expand it further. So if Kim doesn’t work
tomorrow, someone else will. The difficulty with Trump is that his office has
a 4 year appointment and he accomplished his goal in 2, leading to 2 more
goalless years.

------
blinkingled
Definitely well written and well researched. Interesting that this is also a
culmination of multiple not professionally bound people's ideas, editing,
insights and feedback.

Below is towards the end of the article, so just in case any one feels more
inclined to read it, here it is -

> I’m indebted to the following individuals for conversations that led to this
> post and feedback that improved it. I’d like to thank Arjun Balaji, Brendan
> Bernstein, Alex Hardy, Kevin Harrington, Mike Dariano, one anonymous Twitter
> user, and Nick Maggiulli for all the energy they invested in editing this
> piece. They improved this piece immensely.

> I’d also like to thank Nik Sharma, Drew Austin, and Adil Majid for the
> conversations that led to this post. Each of them contributed unique
> insights that I could not have arrived at on my own.

~~~
lasagnaphil
It's interesting on a meta-level that these kinds of essays could only be
published (and publicized) because of the Internet.

------
jokoon
One thing is sure, I really don't engage in internet discussions the same way
I did. I haven't used facebook (where everybody is) for such a long time, all
I do is use reddit, and I've restrained more and more to leave a comment.

I'd rather let people yell and be part of a silent majority than participate
in crowded internet discussions.

------
zzzeek
This article would have been more interesting if it didn't premise itself on
such an inflammatory opening example.

~~~
block_dagger
I suspect overall readership goes up with such intros.

~~~
enraged_camel
Does it? It made me close the browser tab. Then I came here and read one of
the comments that vouched for the rest of the article, and went back.

------
jononor
The article argues that college bundles education and signaling (of
competence). And that as information becomes more available, and college
tuition costs skyrocket new signalling mechanisms are emerging / will emerge.
What are these new signaling mechanisms?

~~~
mc32
Searchable information? Things people publish or is written about them.
Instead of proxies like educational institutions you get to examine them via
other evidence. So education remains important but renown of institution as
proxy for the individual goes away?

------
gesman
Author is oversimplifying the causes (information abundance causes
everything!) leading to misleading conclusions.

~~~
geezerjay
If you say so, sure.

At least the author put in the time to present his case.

------
nostrademons
PG wrote a similar, but less well-researched, essay in early 2016:

[http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/re.html)

------
geuszb
If the main point is that we moved from a state of information scarcity to a
state of information abundance, one piece is missing in this article:
abundance is not, by itself, utility — to turn abundance into utility, you
need one of a very small number of organizations that have dug significantly
deep competitive moats around them (such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, or even
Wikipedia). It's not altogether clear that these new gatekeepers won't start
applying the same recipes (of vertical integration, for example) to re-
consolidate the industries around them.

------
blfr
_What the hell is going on?_

These are real trends but I have a different answer to the opening question:
the elites are failing, they don't seem better than the rest of us any more.

And I don't think it's just a matter of explosion of information available
online. They're really not as sharp and competent as their predecessors, not
as good, definitely not nearly as bold.

The reason Trump could bulldoze through two America's most powerful political
dynasties is not Hillary's emails on Wikileaks but their weak candidates who
had to rely completely on warchests, pundits, media and party machine. And the
machine didn't fail them. They failed the machine.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
The legacy, industrial-era institutions are what support abundant and cheap
access to information.

If belief in our traditional institutions crumbles due to cheap information,
information asymmetry once again will rise, returning us to the prior era.

~~~
tiredyam
Care to back up your assertion? If not most will either mentally nod or shake
their heads and move on

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
It takes coordination and peace to operate a globally-available internet, that
enables us to have cheap communication and access information.

What does it take to offer the internet in its current form? Massive
infrastructure, cables running every which way across countries and oceans,
electricity, etc-- and governments protect that infrastructure.

If order and stability is lost to the extreme viewpoints the internet enables,
and eroding trust in our existing institutions, there will no longer be
necessary support for the infrastructure that enables free, open, cheap
communication.

~~~
tiredyam
I tend to agree, but I actually don’t think peace is prerequisite. The
internet was designed during the Cold War and was designed in a way to be
resilient to massive fallout of the network (nuke safe). While, I do agree
that if the establishment is not pleased with the openness of the internet
they will attempt to regulated/censor it more heavily, but I think it’s too
late. Attempts to regulate the internet would be met with massive resistance.
Maybe, I am just slightly delusional about how much people care though,
especially considering net neutrality in the states

~~~
JMTQp8lwXL
It's hard to say what the political class thinks of things like Breitbart. To
them, it might just be another tool to win elections. People generally vote
with their emotions, and not based on policy -- driving home feelings of
anger, fear, or resentment to "the other side" might just be another tool in
the tool belt of keeping turnout high.

------
oblib
I'm surprised he didn't mention how the "liberal" corporate media pretty much
did a total blackout of covering Bernie in 2016.

To his early supporters this was a glaring omission and I cannot conclude it
was an oversight. It seemed to be an obvious collusion between them and the
DNC who had $1.3Billion to spend on media that year.

Their plan seemed obvious. Ignore Bernie, create a deluge of negative coverage
of Trump, and promote Hillary as our only alternative.

This caused me and many others to just tune out the bloviating corporate
lackey gasbags they have working for them. I've not watched CNN, NBC, ABC,
MSNBC, since. I never watched FOX News because it's always been easy to see
they have an extremely biased agenda to promote and do not do "News" at all,
but the others, at that time, still had some credibility up to then. They've
pretty much lost all of that.

The truth is, they started losing their cred before that. I recall watching
CNN during the "Occupy" protest when Carrol Costello complained about those
protesters being "noisy" and making it difficult for her to get to the
entrance of their New York facilities. She went so far as to comment "what are
they even protesting for" when they were right outside their front door.

Every time I open my "Apple News" app I'm amazed at what drivel they present.
"Look at what Kim Kardashian is wearing, it makes her butt look huge!"

HN gets far more of my time than all those "News" corporations put together
now.

------
acidburnNSA
> According to Gurri, modern information technology enables the public,
> composed of amateurs, to break the power hierarchies of the industrial age.

This is really reflected in my area: nuclear design. This has gone from once
the most secret and guarded information possible (Manhattan project) to a
world where there are 50 small companies working on various types of reactor
designs [1], many run by what can easily be considered amateurs.

Last week I was in D.C. at an industry conference and met a guy running one of
these companies. He was explaining to me the merits of his design and had the
basic physics unequivocally backwards. I prodded him gently on it: "Oh, you
mean the fast neutrons don't get readily absorbed in fission products, not the
slow ones, right?" He doubled down. Some poor schmuck is funding this guy.

Meanwhile, Transatomic, the famed Thiel-backed molten salt company recently
folded [2] partly because the two MIT grad student co-founders apparently
spent more time giving TED talks about how thermal-neutron reactors could "run
on nuclear waste" than reading the 1940s literature that established that this
was not possible [3]. (To be fair to the co-founders who are wonderful and
smart people, many reactor companies make big mistakes early on, most are just
a lot less public about it)

On the other hand, a then-amateur reactor designer named Kirk Sorensen read
some stuff about molten salt reactors in an old book and then almost single-
handedly built up an internet army of thousands of people yelling from the
rooftops the benefits of fluid-fueled reactors. Now the big institutions like
national labs have caught back up and there's serious talk and work on these
reactors all over. Molten salt reactors (especially thorium-fueled ones)
essentially went viral.

So there's a lot of good and bad coming out of all this, and I'm not sure
where it will end up. One thing from the article seems certain: we need new
forms of accreditation. We should try to find ways to bring trust back to the
situation given its new reality.

[1] [https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-
in...](https://www.thirdway.org/infographic/the-advanced-nuclear-
industry-2016-update)

[2] [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transatomic-
to-...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transatomic-to-shutter-
its-nuclear-reactor-plans-make-its-technology-public)

[3] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-
sta...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-startup-
transatomic-backtracks-on-key-promises/)

~~~
achalhp
What applies for fission products should also apply for control rods in fast
spectrum. If control rods do not absorb fast neutrons, how a fast reactor is
controlled?

The cross section of fuel in fast spectrum also decreases. Fast reactors have
larger fissile holdup. For every atom of fission fragment there are more fuel
atoms in fast reactor than in thermal reactor. Fast reactors can run longer
because fission products are dilute in the fuel. But, reprocessing is needed
even for fast reactors to close the fuel cycle.

The advantages like U238 or Pu239 fission or fast fission factor can be also
obtained in heterogeneous thermal spectrum reactors. (Example: A CANDU is
heterogeneous reactor. It can burn more plutonium and it can use LWR SNF-fuel
without reprocessing.) For a fluid-fuel reactor the fuel acts only as fuel and
heat exchange takes place outside reactor core. Fuel region in a fluid-fuel
reactor can be as thick as it is needed. So, reactor can be designed for
maximum multiplication factor. (Solid fuel rods can't be very thick, because
they are also heat exchangers.)

Slide 6 in this presentation.
[http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/uploads/6/9/8/7/69878937/s...](http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/uploads/6/9/8/7/69878937/seaborg_technologies_thec18_slides.pdf)

Edit: This is a reply for: "I prodded him gently on it: "Oh, you mean the fast
neutrons don't get readily absorbed in fission products, not the slow ones,
right?" He doubled down. Some poor schmuck is funding this guy."

~~~
acidburnNSA
Similar to fission products, neutron control material (like Boron) indeed does
not absorb fast neutrons _as much_. Fortunately it still does absorb fast
neutrons _enough_ to control fast reactors (with which we have 430 reactor-
years of experience or so).

Indeed fast reactors need higher fissile concentration to be critical. Some
kinds of fast reactors (like the Bill Gates Traveling Wave Reactor idea,
which, disclaimer: I have professional connections to) can breed up plutonium
in spent fuel and then burn it down without reprocessing (to be fair, the
spent fuel would have to be hot refabricated into metallic fuel first, but
that's still not separations/reprocessing). This kind of reactor needs
enrichment once (to start up) and then can just be fed natural, DU, or SNF and
it will run on a stream of it happily "forever" (until the vessel life is
reached, at which point you transfer the core to a new machine and keep on
shuffling). Only fast neutron systems can do such a thing. The Fast Mixed-
Spectrum Reactor idea of BNL in 1980 was similar. Many fast-neutron MSRs are
the same.

Fast fission is not all that's at play in a fast reactor. It's all about Eta
(neutrons released vs. neutrons absorbed in fuel). In a fast reactor, it
skyrockets around 0.5 - 1 MeV because of three different physical facts:
neutrons released per fission goes up with fast incident neutrons, fission
cross section stays flat for all actinides around this range, and capture
cross sections drop off towards zero around this range. This is discussed on:
[https://whatisnuclear.com/fast-
reactor.html#havingmore](https://whatisnuclear.com/fast-
reactor.html#havingmore)

Having extra neutrons around means you can afford to invest more in breeding
fissile material, and only fast neutrons can get you to the point where
reactivity is flat or increasing instead of decreasing as fission products are
produced. The only exception is Thorium fuel cycle, where U-233 releases a lot
of neutrons even with thermal neutron absorption. In that case you have to be
removing the fission products as they are created with separations, and this
basically is only practical with fluid fuel. This was the idea of the Molten
Salt Breeder Reactor project of Oak Ridge in the late 1960s.

With reprocessing, you can definitely re-concentrate the remaining fissile
material and get a thermal reactor critical again to burn it. But you cannot
meaningfully use the other actinides as fuel, which is the whole idea of
"running on spent fuel".

Regarding that slide deck, I love the idea of molten fuel in tubes. I
investigated it heavily once upon a time, being super excited about it. I ran
into the problem that while salt fuel mass densities are low, separating them
out even more physically makes the fissile density annoyingly low, to the
point that I couldn't get the reactor performance I wanted for my then target
market. I still think this concept is very interesting so I hope these folks
do well. They won't be extracting any non-fissile energy from SNF though until
they replace that moderating fluid with something like lead, gas, or sodium
and change their fuel salt to a chloride.

CANDUs can't use straight-up SNF out of a LWR without first stripping out the
fission products. They're an example of "burning down the fissile material
even better" but not "extracting the 100x more energy from the fertile U238".

BTW the safety example in that slide deck is a bit disingenuous by suggesting
that traditional reactors are not physically stable. If you know those guys
you might want to tell them. Overmoderation and Doppler and the NRC ensure
that they are inherently stable at power. These things aren't like the F-22 or
whatever, requiring active systems to stay in the air. The engineered safety
systems are simply for removing decay heat, which can be done passively in Gen
III+ plants and indefinitely in any Gen-IV plant.

~~~
achalhp
Fission products have larger cross section than enriched Boron-10. It is all
about concentration; that is the number of B-10 atoms per number of atoms of
fuel. Here is the cross sections plot I took yesterday:
[https://imgur.com/a/uWb0SAa](https://imgur.com/a/uWb0SAa)

Robert Steinhaus' Question for fast reactor folks: "While the theoretical case
for fast reactors being used to burn nuclear waste down to fission products
with short half lives has been made for decades, there has in all that time
not been a single demonstration of a fast reactor actually experimentally
burning any significant quantity (kilograms) of separated Minor Actinides and
Transuranics down to fission products to a batch completeness exceeding 90%.
The proposal of using fast reactors to treat nuclear waste has been vigorously
put forward for decades. Why do fast reactor proponents not demonstrate with
one existing fast reactor the burn up of some kilograms of separated long half
life Minor Actinide waste to prove the technical feasibility of fast reactors
for the application of waste burning and waste treatment?"

Yes, more neutrons are released for Pu239 fast fission. In CANDU, U238 fast
fission is more because 99% of fuel is U238. If we increase Pu concentration
Pu fast fission happens as well. U238 fast fission is ~3% of CANDU's power.
This is because all neutrons are born fast. A FFR (MSR) can adjust
heterogeneity as required, because heat transfer takes place outside the core.
A MSR can have thicker fuel regions and higher lattice pitch than a CANDU and
exploit fast fission further.

CANDU can use straight-up SNF. Check this or search it:
[http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Publ...](http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/29/013/29013478.pdf)

"These things aren't like the F-22 or whatever, requiring active systems to
stay in the air." That is exactly how pressuriser in a PWR works. A control
system loop with Temp & pressure sensors with heater and water injection.
Almost all reactors are directly synced with grid, reactors will participate
in tiny load adjustments and there is also cooling water temperature
variations in a day.

MSRs can be isolated from the power conversion using a thermal salt reserve.
That is called inherent safety. Water temperature variations or frequency
control wont hit the reactor.

Even if MSR is connected to grid directly, there is no DNB control, the
boiling point margin is high. If Xenon is removed with >90% efficiency, -ve
reactivity can take care of leftover xenon as well, no control rod circus for
MSR till a xenon equilibrium is attained.

~~~
acidburnNSA
Whoops: the dominant control reaction in B-10 is (n,alpha), not (n,gamma)!
That's a common mistake. As you'll see, it's larger than most fission products
across the board See [https://imgur.com/6ODUcRx](https://imgur.com/6ODUcRx).
There are a few Hafnium and Europium nuclides that can beat it but they're
pretty expensive so most people stick to Boron control.

Regarding that paper on CANDUs, I'd like to see some lattice physics calcs
supporting that. Has anyone run CASMO on it? I would be absolutely shocked if
you took a core of 55 MWd/kg (avg) LWR spent fuel, put it straight in a CANDU
with no separations (all FP inventory accounted for) and saw it push through
an additional normal amount of burnup.

Today, most CANDU's use ~2% enriched feed, I believe.

PWRs are not unstable. They are in their most critical configuration during
operation. If they heat up, the water density goes down. Neutrons fail to be
moderated and the source of thermal neutrons back into the fuel goes down, and
the chain reaction shuts down. This is a regulatory requirement (GDC 11 of the
NRC). Unstable cores run away in power excursions when poked (see Chernobyl).
Modern cores don't do that. They have negative MTC and Doppler.

I'm well aware of what inherent safety is. EBR-II, a sodium-cooled fast
reactor, was the first to actually demonstrate passive shutdown and passive
decay heat following unprotected loss of heat sink and unprotected loss of
flow.

BTW I don't advocate for fast reactors to burn SNF. It's much more economical
to just dispose of it and mine new uranium. I just was pointing out that some
people messed up their attempts to burn SNF in thermal reactors.

~~~
achalhp
Yeah, I missed it the first time. You commented when I started editing it. I
took (N,TOT) this time. Fission product cross sections is still higher.
[https://imgur.com/a/pjoNv1p](https://imgur.com/a/pjoNv1p)

CANDU: DUPIC fuel cycle is not demonstrated. Canadians don't run PWRs. India,
China and South Korea run PWR and CANDU, not much advanced R&D in India.
Chinese CANDU in Qinshan may be testing this. US is most advanced in nuclear
R&D. Why not build a CANDU in the US and demonstrate this?

I was talking about pressuriser and DNB. If there is no pressuriser (PWR) and
constant adjustment of recirculation flow (BWR), clad may get damaged and fuel
may melt because of DNB or denucleate boiling. Not inherently safe, engineered
systems are needed. (In BWR fuel itself is engineered top-to-bottom with
different enrichment levels and different burnable poison concentrations.)

Control rod adjustments are needed till a xenon equilibrium is attained. Also
flux flattening circus, boron dilution circus etc. Operators are needed to
babysit a LWR or CANDU. This is not like diesel generator or PV panel. Passive
_shutdown_ does not mean passive _operation_ like a diesel.

I don't think first generation of MSRs can be like diesel generators.
Operators are needed. But, there is potential for nuclear reactors to be like
diesel generators with fluid-fuel reactors.

(Edit: Reply to "Today, most CANDU's use ~2% enriched feed, I believe." No.
ALL heavy water reactors run with natural uranium in most tubes, depleted
uranium or thorium in few pressure tubes for flux flattening circus. No
enriched uranium in any tubes.)

~~~
acidburnNSA
Total includes scattering which isn't a loss mechanism. Best bet is to do a
spectrum weighted 1-group macroscopic absorption XS (including all neutron
loss mechanisms) in various reactors for a meaningful comparison. Most nuclear
textbooks have these in the appendix. All I'm telling you is that boron is
used for control in fast reactors. I think you asked how it was done a while
back.

I kept reading about all these advantages of "slightly enriched uranium" in
candus so I'm surprised they aren't using it anywhere! [1]

Autonomous control can theoretically be done with many kinds of reactors and
fuels. Sodium reactors have vast pools of liquid metal with extraordinary
thermal conductivity and heat capacity. Lead-cooled reactors are similar. So
are salt-cooled FHRs, and pebble-bed gas reactors like x-energy. There are a
few decades of regulatory catchup before that can happen. Arpa-e has a current
project into operator assistance which is aiming to move to more autonomous
control.

Don't forget about maintenance costs. Equipment and chemistry will cause
maintenance of any reactor to be higher than an average diesel. Fluid fuel
will have 50% of the periodic table in thermal gradients, plating out in heat
exchangers and other cold surfaces. Sodium reactors have sodium fires. Lead
reactors have corrosion. Gas reactors have power cycle leaks. It's a worthy
goal but we have lots of work before we get there. We don't have enough
experience with fluid fuel yet to judge how maintenance of a commercial unit
will pan out. It might be great, or it might prove difficult. Very worthy goal
though!

[1]
[https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:20038082](https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:20038082)

~~~
achalhp
RE "This kind of reactor needs enrichment once (to start up) and then can just
be fed natural, DU, or SNF and it will run on a stream of it happily "forever"
(until the vessel life is reached, at which point you transfer the core to a
new machine and keep on shuffling)" As fission product concentration
increases, even fast reactors have to remove fuel and reprocess it. What works
for boron also works for fission products. I don't think any reactor (fast or
thermal) can close fuel cycle without the help of reprocessing. May be fast
reactors need less frequent reprocessing, that's it.

(LWR-SNF cannot go fast critical. May be fission products is not removed, but
reprocessing is needed to concentrate Pu in LWR-SNF.) Even if LWR-SNF has to
be used as-is, it has to be toasted in blanket region of fast reactor before
it is used as fuel. Some designs like TWR claim no reprocessing needed between
toast step and burn step. I agree with that. But, for complete fission of SNF,
fission-product removal is needed at some stage when fission product
concentration exceeds a particular level in the fuel rod. No exception for
travelling wave burnup.

For a critical reactor core some minimum length of fuel rod is always required
to be in use. If fission product starts accumulating from bottom of the fuel-
rod towards top, somewhere at the midway core can't go critical because a
minimum length of rod is needed for criticality.

4% of 1GW-LWR fuel runs for 4.5 years. 100% of this fuel has potential for
112.5 years. A solid-fuel rod can't maintain integrity for 100 years. The
crystal structure damage can't be reversed by any amount of maintenance. This
is the same phenomenon how solar panels get degraded in sunlight. A fuel rod
has crystal structure damage by radiation as well as by fission products.

Fluid-fuel can be used indefinite time and it is easy to reprocess liquid fuel
by any method. There is no crystal structure to get damaged. ORNL was working
on physical separation of fission products like vacuum distillation when the
project was cancelled. Chemical separation and isotopic separation may raise
proliferation concerns and they may not be environmentally friendly.

There is a chemical separation of fuel from fission products called fluoride
volatility, which is used in industrial scale for enrichment of fuel. But, it
works only for fluoride salts. ORNL has demonstrated this process when they
switched from U235 to U233. They irreversibly damaged the drain tanks and
hastelloy plumbing by doing this. MSRE would have lasted longer if they had
not done this fluorination experiment.

RE "Fluid fuel will have 50% of the periodic table in thermal gradients,
plating out in heat exchangers and other cold surfaces."

Just throw away the hot leg plumbing and heat exchangers every 2.8 years
initially (MSRE salt loop was circulated for 2.8 years) and increase this
incrementally. Fact: In solid fuel reactors fuel itself acts as a primary heat
exchanger. In 4.5 years LWRs throw away a heat exchanger worth of Zr
tubes/cladding. Earlier LWRs threw away solid-fuel every 3 years. Why point
fingers at MSR folks when solid-fuel reactors throw away stuff? Note the
difference between Inconel 625 (similar to hastelloy-N) and Zr.
[https://www.tricormetals.com/cost-
comparison.html](https://www.tricormetals.com/cost-comparison.html)

~~~
acidburnNSA
> But, for complete fission of SNF, fission-product removal is needed at some
> stage when fission product concentration exceeds a particular level in the
> fuel rod. No exception for travelling wave burnup.

Of course. This kind of thing is very well established things like [1]. TWR is
not interested in burning SNF, that would require reprocessing to convert it
from oxide in the first place. Reprocessing is expensive and has historical
proliferation concerns. TWR's entire purpose is to approach closed fuel cycle
advantages (Gen-IV safety, sustainability, cost) without needing any
reprocessing whatsoever. It's a natural step after the US CRBRP mega-
boondoggle. Don't reprocess SNF, bury it in geologic repositories and/or
boreholes. Burn U-238 at global scale. That's the idea there. It's called a
Modified Open Cycle, or Deep-burn once-through fuel cycle.

> Fluid-fuel can be used indefinite time and it is easy to reprocess liquid
> fuel by any method. There is no crystal structure to get damaged.

Fluid fuel trades solid fuel performance challenges for chemical/corrosion
challenges and radionuclide containment challenges. At MSRE, ORNL has yet to
account for about 50% of the radioiodine produced. No one knows where it went.
that's a huge but not impossible challenge. I agree with the "Easy to
reprocess liquid fuel" advantage, but recognize that it is also a
proliferation disadvantage.

> Just throw away the hot leg plumbing and heat exchangers every 2.8 years
> initially (MSRE salt loop was circulated for 2.8 years) and increase this
> incrementally. These are rad waste remote operations, which has step
> influence on cost. What's the operational cost of this at FOAK? What's the
> operational cost at NOAK? It may be very cheap (Thorcon is well on their way
> to this) or it may be prohibitively expensive. The only way to really find
> out is to build and operate such a reactor commercially. To this end we will
> all benefit.

> Why point fingers at MSR folks when solid-fuel reactors throw away stuff?
> Who's pointing fingers? I mentioned downsides to all forms of reactors in
> the parent comment. MSR is wonderful and exciting and we as a community need
> to build many more of them and shake them down.

[1] [https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-
parti...](https://www.iaea.org/publications/7112/implications-of-partitioning-
and-transmutation-in-radioactive-waste-management)

~~~
achalhp
Both metallic fuel and salt fuel are not suitable for geological repository.
Salt fuel may be stored in salt mines, but unproven. More R&D is needed for
geological disposal; but, the point in having metallic fuel or salt fuel is
the ease of separating fission products and reusing fuel, not geological
storage.

Iodine: Not 50%. It is a probability range. "Thus, of the order of one-fourth
to one-third of the iodine has not been adequately accounted for."

RE: "but recognize that it is also a proliferation disadvantage"

MSR without reprocessing: MSR can be as hardened as anyone wants. Because of
liquid fuel-form, MSR can be sealed tamper-proof. Fuel goes in and nothing
comes out during operation.

Safeguard scenario in case of maintenance: By design the fuel will move to
drain tank when shutdown for maintenance. IAEA can have the keys for the drain
tank. Fuel can't be pumped back without the presence of IAEA inspector. If
someone tampers this, license will be cancelled and the country will have no
electricity.

MSBR with reprocessing: How easy separation of fission products from denatured
liquid-fuel can be a proliferation disadvantage? It is actually a advantage
because fuel always stays inside a tamper-proof system. ORNL attached a "add-
on" apparatus for fluoride volatility, and fuel always stayed inside MSRE
building. This is actually an advantage.

As material science improves, MSRs last longer and longer without need for
maintenance. Safeguards will also become less frequent and less expensive.

I strongly agree that MSR needs a chance. MSR graduated with excellent results
with MSRE. MSRE has answered most of the questions and raised very few new
questions. MSR should be given a suitable employment like process heat or
medical isotope production as soon as possible. We can scale it up for
electricity later on.

------
imetatroll
The article doesn't outline how truth can be reestablished on the internet.
Honestly I don't believe that it ever can and, frankly, I don't believe it
ever was in the first place: we just were not exposed to the chaos of thought
that can be found collectively. It is quite clear that the old media narrative
has been shattered by the internet. If anything is capable of reassembling
this fractured state, I am honestly a bit fearful of what that might be. AI
that entirely fabricates a reality that calms people? AR that curates a user's
perception to harmonize with their mental and emotional state? Let's be honest
there are so many different ways of looking at the world available for perusal
on the internet, that establishing "truth" is extremely difficult. I believe
that what I know about the world rings true, but so does everyone else.

------
smn1234
A recent HN thread discusses the topic of how School is for Signaling rather
than Skill-Building from another article,
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19406432](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19406432).
The concept also explored within this post.

------
amelius
> I’m going to describe your least favorite politician: Everything they say
> goes viral. The establishment despises them, donors can’t influence them,
> and the media can’t tame them.

The media can't _tame_ them?!? It's more like they love them and are the
reason they continue to exist in the first place.

~~~
throwaway441
I have a theory that from now on, the candidate who wins the presidential
election will be the one that generates the most advertising revenue for the
media companies.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I have a theory that from now on, the candidate who wins the presidential
> election will be the one that generates the most advertising revenue for the
> media companies.

That's not actually a big change; Free media has always been powerful, and
it's always been awarded based on the media’s business interests, mostly
advertising dollars (except for outlets that are in the game to drive a
specific agenda even when that involves sacrificing profit opportunities.)

------
h3ctic
Well written and interesting article. If got a few points:

Education: The cost factor is an American thing. Here, in Germany it way more
affordable. I have a Bachelor's in pure mathematics. I wouldn't have studied
all those often hard and boring fundamental topics if they weren't required by
the curriculum, that's what I like about the university. Now, I'm more
interested into research and there the university is the best place to be Of
course you could offer a curriculum online, online learning doesn't have to be
cherry picking. But I see a value in beeing enrolled. This whole student
culture helps broadening my horizon.

Media: I'd argue that the internet is getting more centralized. Most people
use Google Search and YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. There, an algorithm
decides what you see. So yes, it is easier to diversify your media intake but
there is still a central entity.

Attention: I think that's the thing this essay is mostly lacking in coverage.
Having only the New York Times as reference you read a thorough report on a
subject. Would you read it if you could get just a TL;DR or a quick video? I
am not sure if the general public is really getting more educated or shut
gaining a shallow knowledge based in FB or Reddit.

For example this article, or every Wait But Why article, are long and you read
it only if you're interested. Otherwise I often catch myself only reading the
comments.

Still, good article

------
jger15
Great distillation of the internet's effect on business, education and
politics.

Perell references Martin Gurri and Ben Thompson throughout. Going to dig in to
Gurri as I'm not as familiar.

Alex Danco's series on Understanding Abundance is probably a good reference
point as well.

~~~
pmart123
I agree. I just came across Alex Danco’s blog and it is very good overall. I
can’t help to think though that he has flipped the cause and effect of why
distributions have changed. My feeling is most of his examples are the result
of an increasing wealth gap, and not the other way around. You can afford nyc,
a $2000 phone, etc. or you can’t.

------
Const-me
> Big brands are losing share of America’s GDP pie

A data about GDP share would be very nice but is missing.

Companies who own these brands are not losing anything. Brands are imaginary
things, they aren't real. The real P&G company who manufactures and sells
stuff is doing OK.

~~~
tiredyam
Hrm, there was an graph in the article that visualizes just what you are
looking for. If you look at the graph you can see P&G is doing fine relative
to the other companies discussed, but they are steadily losing GDP percentage.
And as someone who works at one of these so mentioned micro brands that is
attempting to distrust P&G stranglehold I can see that we are starting to get
some serious traction

------
muvek
What's been happening with getpocket.com? Pocket fails to make articles out of
the latest articles I added. I need it so I can read stuff on my kobo, but it
seems to be failing miserably lately.

Pocket fails to make an article out of this url.

------
woopwoop
If you really think education is all about signalling, shouldn't you be more,
not less, optimistic that it will be robust to technological changes that make
delivering course materials cheaper?

------
davidgl
Great article. Reminds me a lot of the book (highly recommended) 'The Square
and the Power' about the role of network and breakdown of authority, and the
last time this happened with the advent of the printing press. He was
interviewed as part of the long now seminars:
[http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/nov/19/networks-and-
power/](http://longnow.org/seminars/02018/nov/19/networks-and-power/)

------
itamarst
This article has some good points, but it also suffers a lot from the author's
extremely narrow horizons:

\- It's very US-centric. Public universities are AFAIK free or very cheap in
Germany for example. The reason for rising costs in the US is in large part
about cuts to government support for higher education.

\- It's very upper-middle-class in perspective, with no understanding of
anyone who isn't doing well. America is one of "the most prosperous countries"
in the world if you're in top 10%—but if you're in bottom 30%, say, there are
many countries where you'll be much better off. Anywhere with socialized
medicine, for example: if you're poor, what is a routine trip to the doctor
elsewhere can cause bankruptcy in the US.

\- The author apparently knows very little history.

Consider this quote: "During the 20th century, “the people” were an ambiguous,
lifeless mass. They couldn’t organize themselves, so organization came down
from the commands of people who controlled the media. Nothing else was
possible; deference to authority was the structural destiny of the Mass Media
age."

This is absolute nonsense. The 20th century is bursting with political
movements that came from below: good, bad, and ugly, whatever you might say
about any particular one, there's a hell of a lot of them in total.

In the 20th century, in the US alone, you could point to the suffragettes,
organized labor at different times, the KKK (4 million members at peak in
1920s!), the multitude of different workers' groups of all political stripes
(from veterans' march to IWW organizers to wacky retirement-lottery scheme
whose details I forget) who pushed FDR to eventually offer the New Deal to
counter-act the rising tide of protest, the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-
Vietnam-war protests, Stonewall and the gay rights movement... on and on and
on.

~~~
y4mi
> _It 's very US-centric_

thats a strange critique considering the article. i mean the whole thing just
focuses on the american society... why is that a problem?

> [quote] _This is absolute nonsense_

While this quote is indeed nonesens with no context, thats not exactly what
the author meant there

Back then, quick organization and initiatives weren't really possible.

Take each of your example and check just how long it took for them to become
widespread. It was years - not hours as it is today. And in order to actually
organize something political, a leader of such a popular organization would've
to intervene, making his point spot on.

~~~
itamarst
The general argument is "X has this impact on Y" (in this case, Internet and
US). Given that X is global, that the Internet impacts many countries, a
reasonable perspective would involve at least looking at how X impacted A, B,
and C, which might prove that the impact is merely correlation in the time,
not causation. Or it might strengthen the argument.

But in its current form it's a universal claim backed by very limited evidence
(and ignoring evidence that suggests other causes than the Internet).

------
ThomPete
It's pretty simple in my book and is why I expected Trump to have a good
chance of winning the election.

Both Trump and AOC are populists. They care less about what's factually true
and more about whats emotionally true.

Politics is not about being factually correct. You can be correct but still
not have it your way.

This is what Trump knew. Perception is reality.

That's why it never make sense to judge a politician on their person but only
on their policy.

~~~
WillPostForFood
Who do you think the was last president to win on facts and not populist
appeals to emotion?

~~~
burlesona
That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know the answer, but the common
refrain is that Kennedy was the first president of the TV era - where
personality and charisma were suddenly most important. In that case perhaps
Eisenhower (his predecessor) was the last of the “facts” presidents?

Then by extension, perhaps Obama was the last of the “personality and
charisma” era?

------
weibing
I don't like this article. It is not a objective article. Cherry-picked
evidence for the proposed point. Unsubscribed the newsletter after I read it.

------
fellellor
>When geographic and social mobility is high, information asymmetry is the
norm.

Why is this?

------
bsenftner
Comprehensive and brilliant.

------
naveen99
So my guess he is likes both both trump and aoc.

------
microcolonel
> _Half of you think I’m describing Donald Trump. The other half, Alexandria
> Ocasio-Cortez._

Not really, no. The people who are aware of both AOC and DJT enough to have an
opinion are not split evenly in terms of their thinking about each of these
politicians. I don't despise AOC, I just don't particularly care for her, and
I think the way she was elected by exploiting people's lack of attention to
the primary race, and unwillingness to even consider any alternative party in
the general.

Conversely, I don't laud Donald Trump, I'm just not personally all that
offended by his MOR '90s Democrat style policies.

~~~
JasonFruit
What does MOR stand for?

~~~
geuszb
Middle of the road?

------
blueboo
It's nicely written but I don't know how thoughtful it is.

> Big institutions, whose dominance once seemed eternal, are on the brink of
> collapse.

> The explosion of information has undermined and obsoleted the 20th-century
> organizational model. Big brands are losing market share. Big universities
> are going bankrupt. Big political parties are splintering and losing their
> control over the political narrative.

Isn't the exact opposite happening? The big universities are getting bigger,
richer, more exclusive. In practice, Trump is probably less divisive of his
party than Obama. Brands are consolidating (particularly in this media
landscape that is supposed to be so dizzyingly dynamic and fractured!) . And
sure, people identify less with retail or luxury hotel brands. But you know
what brands they love? Apple. Netflix. That crazy new starter, "McDonald's".
And data is making their strangle grip tighter, not looser.

Information wants to...empower those who have the money to leverage it.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose...I'm afraid this is a lot of words
about Those Dang Kids Today

~~~
Mary-Jane
The point wasn't that David has beat Goliath. Netflix and Apple are examples
of companies that changed the rules: when was the last time you visited a
Blockbuster or used your Palm Pilot? What happened to companies like Sears,
Border's, Radio Shack, Kodak? The point is that the mindset that used to
enable these companies now works against them.

~~~
lazulicurio
I could maybe see Netflix as an example of what the author was talking about,
but how exactly does Apple fit in there? Apple is all about branding and mass-
market appeal.

FWIW I had the same thoughts as the GP while reading the article. Look at the
examples that it gives for brand fragmentation: Halo-Top, Talenti, So
Delicious, Ciao Bella, and Coconut Bliss.

Talenti is a subsidiary of Unilever. Ciao Bella is 50% owned by Sherbrooke
Capital Management. So Delicious is produced by WhiteWave which is owned by
Danone (Dannon).

I think the article makes some good points, but ultimately gets a bit too cute
trying to paint "information abundance" as the cause for all the discussed
structural changes.

------
neokantian
When I first read Bill Gates' quote (1995), "We always overestimate the change
that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will
occur in the next ten", I somehow knew that he was onto something, but I
couldn't picture back then what the world would look like today; not for lack
of trying, though.

------
giardini
What the Hell happened to informative titles?

~~~
dredmorbius
You can email hn@ycombinator.com if you feel a title is clickbait, requesting
a change.

(I have, here.)

"How the shift from information scarcity to information abundance is
transforming commerce, education, and politics", from the text, might work,
though it's long.

------
jolux
Comparing AOC to Trump got a laugh out of me. Acting like they’re even
comparably detached from reality is ludicrous. Having political ambition and a
vision of a changed society is not a bad thing if the thing you’re railing
against is real and dangerous (climate change inaction). Leveraging the
pervasive racist elements of American society into executive power for the
purpose of building an expensive, unnecessary, and ineffective wall on the
Southern border defies all rational consideration. These are not the same
thing, and I would think that is obvious to nearly everyone left of Sean
Hannity.

~~~
qualipetv
It took me two clicks to find out he's one of the nouveau grifters fawning
over right wing demagogues (ie Jordan Peterson).

Funny how you can identify these kind of personalities within a few sentences
from their oh-so objective writing. I'd love for HN to acquire some critical
thinking skills to dismiss pseudo-'data-driven' articles like this one.

------
futureastronaut
I imagine that everybody who watches too much Fox News or Rachel Maddow has a
manifesto like this up their sleeve. Just like everybody has a book, which
should not necessarily be written. There's something distinctly sad about a
disenfranchised person devoting most of their time and thoughts to politics.
The entire circus is a scam.

~~~
johnwheeler
Did you even RTFA? It’s by no means a political rant. It’s about how
information asymmetry is being resolved by the internet and how that’s
affecting consumer tastes. This wriitng is on par with Yuval Noah Hurari

~~~
futureastronaut
Of course I didn't read every word of this lengthy opinion essay, I skimmed it
and it's nothing new. I loved the ending though:

> Essays like this are a team effort. This essay was inspired by a frustrating
> conversation at Thanksgiving dinner. They say not to talk about politics,
> and guess what… we talked about politics. However, the disagreement was
> productive. It sent me on a long journey to dig deeper and find my own
> answers.

I'm sure the author's a great person to hang out with. He sees the truth and
speaks it to power! Um, and would you pass me some potatoes?

------
cobbzilla
There are roughly two kinds of responses to this article: openly disdainful
and partisan, and not openly disdainful and partisan. I find this interesting
against the backdrop of the article itself, a microcosmic image of the effect
in the HN-sphere. To complete the meta-circle I guess that puts this comment
in group 2.

~~~
cobbzilla
I’m getting downvoted- anyone want to actually reply/engage instead? Or keep
downvoting to prove my point while simultaneously hiding/censoring it?

~~~
fwn
It was probably a bit provocative to call every single response in this thread
partisan.

As an example: The current top comment praises the quality of the essay
without any further remark.

~~~
cobbzilla
> to call every single response in this thread partisan.

Um, I specifically wrote that the responses seemed totally bifurcated into
partisan and non-partisan. Where did I say every single response was partisan?

------
astazangasta
This is a garbage post. I read as much as I could but it is full of basic
errors like this: "The cost of a university education grew linearly, as the
number of global college graduates grew exponentially. As a result, college
degrees aren’t as valuable as they once were."

The number of anything grows exponentially because population grows
exponentially. It doesn't mean anything. Earlier they say "big brands are in
decline" because GM and Ford lost market share. Well, are big brands in
decline or just those two? Were they replaced by a bunch of small brands or
just Honda and Toyota?

This is a bunch of incorrect stuff masquerading as a point.

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tiredyam
Your response does not change his point. It seems to me you did not read the
article carefully.

