August 2022 – artdiamondblog.com

Those Who Survived Dictatorship Know We Need “More Freedom, More Speech, Not Less”

(p. A19) The left’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was instructive. Anyone who mentioned the lab-leak theory was assailed as pro-Trump. Social-media companies removed posts mentioning it. By January 2021, it was obvious that shutting down debate was the true antiscience position. Invaluable months were lost, time the Chinese Communist Party used to destroy data and spread disinformation about the virus’s origins. We may never know the truth, but we do know there was a coverup.

Increasing numbers of Americans believe their freedom is under attack, and I agree. . . .

Schools are being pressured to remove books and cancel professors for spreading the “wrong” ideas. These sentiments are all too familiar to me, and to anyone who has survived life in a dictatorship. The only answer is more freedom, more speech, not less.

For the full commentary see:

Garry Kasparov. “‘Woke’ Is a Bad Word for a Real Threat to American Democracy.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021): A19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date November 17, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.

Wary, Subdued Infants Tend to Grow into “Anxious, Inhibited Adults”

(p. A21) Prof. Jerome Kagan, a Harvard psychologist whose research into temperament found that shy infants often grow up to be anxious and fearful adults because of their biological nature as well as the way they were nurtured, died on May 10 in Chapel Hill, N.C.

. . .

Professor Kagan argued in more than two dozen books, including the widely praised “The Nature of the Child” (1984), that some children were genetically wired to worry and that they proved to be more resilient than expected as they passed from one stage of maturity to another. He also contended that the specifics of parenting were often not as crucial to a child’s future as parents think, although the child’s natural predisposition to be shy or exuberant could be altered by experience.

. . .

Professor Kagan and his collaborators, including Howard A. Moss and Nancy C. Snidman, pioneered the reintroduction of physiology as a determinant of psychological characteristics that could be measured in the brain.

They derived their conclusions from lengthy studies that started with the videotaped reactions of toddlers and infants as young as 4 months to various stimuli — unfamiliar objects, people and situations — and correlated those reactions to their temperament as teenagers and beyond, as measured in interviews.

The wary ones who were subdued, shy and hovered around their mothers or who fussed, thrashed around and cried — about 15 percent of the total — tended to become anxious, inhibited adults. Another 15 percent who were ebullient as infants and embraced every new toy and interviewer tended to develop into fearless children and adolescents.

Professor Kagan acknowledged that as an ideological liberal he had originally believed that all individuals were capable of achieving similar goals if afforded the same opportunities. “I was so resistant to awarding biology much influence,” he wrote.

For the full obituary see:

Sam Roberts. “Jerome Kagan, 92, Psychologist Who Tied Temperament to Biology, Is Dead.” The New York Times (Saturday, May 22, 2021): A21.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date May 21, 2021, and has the title “Jerome Kagan, Who Tied Temperament to Biology, Dies at 92.”

Kagan’s book, mentioned above, is:

Kagan, Jerome. The Nature of the Child (Tenth Anniversary Edition). New York: Basic Books, 1994.

“Paradox”: “Masks Work and Mask Mandates Do Not Work”

(p. A19) The Evidence

From the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a paradox involving masks. As Dr. Shira Doron, an epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, puts it, “It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.”

To start with the first half of the paradox: Masks reduce the spread of the Covid virus by preventing virus particles from traveling from one person’s nose or mouth into the air and infecting another person. Laboratory studies have repeatedly demonstrated the effect.

Given this, you would think that communities where mask-wearing has been more common would have had many fewer Covid infections. But that hasn’t been the case.

In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.

Advocates of mandates sometimes argue that they do have a big effect even if it is not evident in populationwide data, because of how many other factors are at play. But this argument seems unpersuasive.

After all, the effect of vaccines on severe illness is blazingly obvious in the geographic data: Places with higher vaccination rates have suffered many fewer Covid deaths. The patterns are clear even though the world is a messy place, with many factors other than vaccines influencing Covid death rates.

Yet when you look at the data on mask-wearing — both before vaccines were available and after, as well as both in the U.S. and abroad — you struggle to see any patterns.

Almost 30 Percent

The idea that masks work better than mask mandates seems to defy logic. It inverts a notion connected to Aristotle’s writings: that the whole should be greater than the sum of the parts, not less.

The main explanation seems to be that the exceptions often end up mattering more than the rule. The Covid virus is so contagious that it can spread during brief times when people take off their masks, even when a mandate is in place.

For the full commentary see:

David Leonhardt. “Masks Work, So Why Haven’t Mandates Made Much Difference?” The New York Times (Wednesday, June 1, 2022): A19.

(Note: the headings appeared in bold in the original.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 31, 2021, and has the title “Why Masks Work, but Mandates Haven’t.”

Illegal Entrepreneur “Vagabond” Works Hard to Please Customers

(p. 16) . . . nutcrackers, homemade brews that are not technically classified as to-go cocktails in New York, are still illegal, as is drinking in local parks and beaches.

. . .

Vagabond, who is in his early 30s, has kept his face and name out of articles for fear of getting into legal trouble. He said that he started selling cocktails for $10 to $15 in the park during the summer of 2020 — after his restaurant temporarily shut down — to support his family.

“None of the restaurants were open; the beaches were closed,” he said. “The only places to be were people’s backyards or the park.”

He said that nutcrackers were traditionally “really sweet, really harsh alcohol, and it’s just going to give you a buzz,” but that many sellers found ways to rebrand and shake up the colorful drinks during the pandemic.

Vagabond said that he puts a lot of thought into his cocktails, using specific liqueurs and infusing them with herbs like mint and basil, which requires extra time and effort.

Some people balk at the idea of spending $15 on a nutcracker. But as Mr. Lewis jokes about his drink, “I prefer the gentrified term — ‘craft cocktail.’”

He also said that in the nearly two years since he’s been selling the drinks, he’s never been stopped by the police.

. . .

Vagabond said that an article that featured him in 2020 gave him an uncomfortable amount of exposure.

“Within days of this New York Post article coming out, N.Y.P.D. was looking for my Instagram,” he said. “My worst fear came true. I got caught.”

After being let off with a warning, he decided selling in the park wasn’t worth the heightened risk and effort. Now, he said, he mostly just delivers drinks — occasionally catering events like birthdays and weddings.

“Some people think I just magically appear in the park and I’m just strolling along,” he said. “I think people miss how hard and demanding it is.”

Mr. Lewis also said that he’s hoping Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams will consider legalizing the work that nutcracker vendors do around the city.

“Don’t criminalize this, incorporate this,” he said. “I would rather pay a $200 license fee than a $200 fine.”

He said that he’s on cordial terms with the other people who sell drinks in Prospect Park — “there’s enough pie in New York City for everybody.”

The biggest obstacle he usually faces, he said, is the sheer labor involved in dragging the heavy bags of drinks through the park.

For the full story see:

Julia Carmel. “For Bottle Service With a Smile in a Brooklyn Park, He’s the Man.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, May 29, 2022): 16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article has the date May 28, 2022, and has the title “Want a Nutcracker or a ‘Craft Cocktail?’ He’s Your Guy.”

To Avoid Death, Northwestern U.S. Finally Embraces Air-Conditioning

(p. A15) SEATTLE — Road crews sprayed water on century-old bridges in Seattle on Thursday to keep the steel from expanding in the sizzling heat. In Portland, Ore., where heat has already killed dozens of people this summer, volunteers delivered water door to door. Restaurants and even some ice cream shops decided it was too hot to open.

For the second time this summer, a part of the country known for its snow-capped mountains and fleece-clad inhabitants was enduring a heat wave so intense that it threatened lives and critical infrastructure.

. . .

It is not just a matter of comfort. The region is still tallying a death toll from the June heat wave, and mortality data analyzed by The New York Times shows that about 600 more people died in Washington and Oregon during that week than would have been typical.

Officials in Portland’s Multnomah County pointed to a lack of air conditioning in homes as a key factor in deaths. Unlike large swaths of the country where air conditioning is now standard, many in the Pacific Northwest live without such relief. Just 44 percent of residents in Seattle reported having some sort of air conditioning in 2019, although those numbers have been on the rise, with installers struggling to keep up with demand.

. . .

The warming particularly threatens residents of low-income neighborhoods. During the last heat wave, Vivek Shandas, a professor of climate adaptation at Portland State University, went to the poorest parts of the city with a calibrated thermometer and got a reading of 121 degrees, five degrees higher than the official high for the day, recorded at the airport.

For the full story see:

Mike Baker and Sergio Olmos. “Broiling Today, Northwest Knows It Must Adapt for a Hotter Tomorrow.” The New York Times (Saturday, August 14, 2021): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article has the date Aug. 13, 2021, and has the title “The Pacific Northwest, Built for Mild Summers, Is Scorching Yet Again.”

“Overzealous Environmentalism” Hurts Poor Poaching “Misunderstood Outcasts”

(p. 17) In the journalist Lyndsie Bourgon’s telling, . . ., the poachers are not quite villains. Instead, they are responding — if not justifiably then at least predictably — to a lack of economic opportunities and the perception that the rules governing forests are arbitrary and heavy-handed.

Bourgon puts herself in the poacher’s shoes, and the result is a refreshing and compassionate warning about the perils of well-intentioned but overzealous environmentalism.

. . .

. . . she regards the history of the American conservation movement with something approaching scorn. It was hatched, she writes, to serve the whims of wealthy urban vacationers who wanted access to lands unspoiled by their longtime inhabitants. National parks were conceived as vehicles to resist “any attempt to turn to utilitarian purposes the resources represented by the forest,” as one booster put it.

At times, the motives were even less pure. Bourgon describes how ultrarich environmentalists in the early 1900s saw conservation — and in particular the protection of California’s redwoods — “as part of a mission to enshrine a white, masculine dominance over the wilderness.” Some conservationists, she notes, were “eugenicists who saw parallels between environmental destruction and the decline of Nordic supremacy.”

. . .

This is the backdrop for Bourgon’s depiction of “tree thieves” as misunderstood outcasts. “I have begun to see the act of timber poaching as not simply a dramatic environmental crime, but something deeper — an act to reclaim one’s place in a rapidly changing world,” she writes, tracing that desire back to 16th-century England, where poachers in royal forests were celebrated as folk heroes.

Bourgon immersed herself with a small handful of these men in the Northwest, and a picture emerges of a fractious band of down-on-their-luck crooks. A number abuse drugs. The poachers acknowledge that what they’re doing is illegal, but they frame it as principled, akin to stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families.

. . .

On the one hand, unemployed loggers and others who are suffering economically because of stringent enforcement of conservation laws are facing poverty. On the other hand, the damage that poachers are inflicting on forests appears to be, in the grand scheme of things, modest.

For the full review, see:

David Enrich. “No Clear-Cut Villains.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, July 24, 2022): 17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June [sic] 21, 2022, and has the title “When It Comes to Timber Theft, There Are No Clear-Cut Villains.” Where the online version has “misunderstood poacher’s” [sic], the print version quoted above has “misunderstood outcasts.”)

The book under review is:

Bourgon, Lyndsie. Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.

A.I. Cannot Learn What 4-Year-Old Learns From Trial-And-Error Experiments

(p. C3) A few weeks ago a Google engineer got a lot of attention for a dramatic claim: He said that the company’s LaMDA system, an example of what’s known in artificial intelligence as a large language model, had become a sentient, intelligent being.

Large language models like LaMDA or San Francisco-based Open AI’s rival GPT-3 are remarkably good at generating coherent, convincing writing and conversations—convincing enough to fool the engineer. But they use a relatively simple technique to do it: The models see the first part of a text that someone has written and then try to predict which words are likely to come next. If a powerful computer does this billions of times with billions of texts generated by millions of people, the system can eventually produce a grammatical and plausible continuation to a new prompt or a question.

. . .

In what’s known as the classic “Turing test,” Alan Turing in 1950 suggested that if you couldn’t tell the difference in a typed conversation between a person and a computer, the computer might qualify as intelligent. Large language models are getting close. But Turing also proposed a more stringent test: For true intelligence, a computer should not only be able to talk about the world like a human adult—it should be able to learn about the world like a human child.

In my lab we created a new online environment to implement this second Turing test—an equal playing field for children and AI systems. We showed 4-year-olds on-screen machines that would light up when you put some combinations of virtual blocks on them but not others; different machines worked in different ways. The children had to figure out how the machines worked and say what to do to make them light up. The 4-year-olds experimented, and after a few trials they got the right answer. Then we gave state-of-the-art AI systems, including GPT-3 and other large language models, the same problem. The language models got a script that described each event the children saw and then we asked them to answer the same questions we asked the kids.

We thought the AI systems might be able to extract the right answer to this simple problem from all those billions of earlier words. But nobody in those giant text databases had seen our virtual colored-block machines before. In fact, GPT-3 bombed. Some other recent experiments had similar results. GPT-3, for all its articulate speech, can’t seem to solve cause-and-effect problems.

If you want to solve a new problem, googling it or going to the library may be a first step. But ultimately you have to experiment, the way the children did. GPT-3 can tell you what the most likely outcome of a story will be. But innovation, even for 4-year-olds, depends on the surprising and unexpected—on discovering unlikely outcomes, not predictable ones.

For the full commentary see:

Alison Gopnik. “What AI Still Doesn’t Know How To Do.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, July 16, 2022): C3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 15, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Omaha Streetcar Will Look More Like St. Louis Failure Than Kansas City Success

(p. A1) After decades of stops and starts, Omaha is the closest it’s ever been to the development of a modern streetcar line.

But where city officials and local developers see an asset for economic development connecting midtown to the riverfront, one transit professional urges caution.

Tom Rubin knows a few things about public transportation and finance, having worked as the chief financial officer for the large transit system serving Los Angeles. And the Omaha native is skeptical of the plans for a streetcar in his hometown that he fears could financially run off the rails.

He’s concerned that rising inflation and interest rates could raise the cost of building the system and at the same time reduce the private development that’s being counted on to pay for it.

He questions why the city has not thought further about pursuing federal dollars to help defray the construction costs.

(p. A3) And he thinks there needs to be much more independent study of its financial feasibility beyond the lone review to date that was written by an engineering firm in the business of designing streetcars.

. . .

Rubin is not an Omaha taxpayer. But the Omaha native, who has more than four decades of experience in public transit as a senior executive, consultant, auditor and author, has taken an interest in the Omaha proposal.

Rubin founded the transit practice of what is now accounting firm Deloitte, formerly served as CFO of the nation’s third-largest public transit system in Los Angeles and has served as a consultant to numerous federal, state and local transit agencies and planning organizations.

He also has written papers and studies on transit issues for groups as varied as the Environmental Defense Fund and the free-market Reason Institute. He has said he may seek to publish a paper on the Omaha project.

. . .

“What is the magic that will make people decide to put their new office building along the streetcar route?” he said. “I’m far from convinced that putting tracks down generates development.”

Streetcar supporters disagree, often pointing to the Kansas City streetcar as a shining example of the development potential.

. . .

But there are other systems built in recent years that Rubin holds up as less than ideal. He mentioned St. Louis, where a streetcar shut down shortly after going into service. In that city, the line’s developers chose a route that did not have nearly enough ridership to support it.

Rubin said the current economic environment also raises concerns about bonding the Omaha project. Inflation could raise building costs, and higher interest rates figure to raise the cost of borrowing.

“It’s a lot easier to show you can make the debt service with a 2.5% bond than a 5% bond,” he said.

And higher interest rates also could slow development along the streetcar line. Less development would mean fewer TIF dollars to pay the bonds.

Another concern Rubin raises is the high cost of the streetcar system, which he said makes it hard to justify as a mode of transit. It is much more expensive per rider, for example, than Metro’s new ORBT rapid bus transit service.

Rubin said that prior to a major investment in a streetcar, an independent and unbiased analysis of the alternatives is needed. The HDR draft analysis at this point isn’t enough to convince him the streetcar is either a good idea or financially feasible for Omaha.

He noted Omaha-based HDR has long been a heavy hitter in the world of massive transit projects, including streetcars. On the Omaha project, the company did some initial design work on the streetcar route, utility coordination, the location of the streetcar vehicle maintenance facility and vehicle specifications.

. . .

Rubin acknowledged the Kansas City streetcar is working well but questioned whether Omaha could replicate that success. He’s not sure the Omaha route would be as viable as the one in Kansas City, which links the city’s riverfront and downtown with the arena district and Crown Center.

“They have a good route and some things that work well for them,” Rubin said. “I don’t think Omaha, even best case, could be as successful as Kansas City.”

For the full story see:

Jessica Wade and Henry J. Cordes. “Transit Consultant Skeptical of Omaha’s Streetcar Project.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, June 5, 2022): A1 & A3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article was updated Aug. 5, 2022, and has the title “Public transit consultant skeptical of Omaha’s streetcar project.”

U.S. Climate “Net-Zero” by 2050 Costs $11,300 per Person per Year

(p. A19) . . . Mr. Biden’s current promise—100% carbon emission reduction by 2050—will be . . . phenomenally expensive.

A new study in Nature finds that a 95% reduction in American carbon emissions by 2050 will annually cost 11.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. To put that in perspective: Total expenditure on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid came to 11.6% of GDP in 2019. The annual cost of trying to hit Mr. Biden’s target will rise to $4.4 trillion by 2050. That’s more than everything the federal government is projected to take in this year in tax revenue. It breaks down to $11,300 per person per year, or almost 500 times more than what a majority of Americans is willing to pay.

Although the U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses right now, America’s reaching net zero would matter little for the global temperature. If the whole country went carbon-neutral tomorrow, the standard United Nations climate model shows the difference by the end of the century would be a barely noticeable reduction in temperature of 0.3 degree Fahrenheit. This is because the U.S. will make up an ever-smaller share of emissions as the populations of China, India and Africa grow and get richer.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Biden’s Climate Ambitions Are Too Costly for Voters.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, October 14, 2021): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Oct. 14, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

Maverick Rickover Was Dedicated to the Project of a Nuclear Powered Navy

Several years ago, a student in my entrepreneurship seminar asked if he could do his paper on Admiral Rickover. I am glad that I finally said “yes.”

(p. C9) . . ., in “Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power,” Marc Wortman delivers a 17-gun salute to this short, profane spitfire who pulled a reluctant Navy into the atomic era.

. . .

Though physically courageous, Rickover, according to one of his commanding officers, showed “no outward signs of qualities of leadership.” In the late 1920s, he spent a year studying electrical engineering at Columbia University.

. . .

It can be difficult for landlubbers to grasp the significance of nuclear power to a navy. Freed from the shackles of fuel tenders, a nuclear-powered submarine can “slide into the depths and maintain top speeds for weeks or even months without need for recharging fuel, air, or battery,” Mr. Wortman notes. “Atomic-powered submarines represented a seafaring and naval warfare leap as fundamental as that from sail to steam.”

. . .

[Rickover’s] experience at Columbia imbued him with an unconventional attitude toward authority when he headed the Navy’s nuclear-propulsion group. At the Atomic Energy Commission’s Division of Naval Reactors, “he abolished rank and uniform,” Mr. Wortman writes. “ ‘There is no hierarchy in matters of the mind,’ Rickover said, and he insisted that all were ‘permitted to do as they think best and to go to anyone and anywhere for help. Each person is then limited only by his own ability.’ ”

But he also demanded accountability and was a Captain Bligh to the men he selected to run his reactors. Addressing one group of newly minted engineers, Rickover “jumped his then-seventy-seven-year-old body up on a tabletop, stomped with rage like an angry djinn, and screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘I understand genetics. If you make a mistake with my nuclear plant, it’s because your mother was a street whore who trawled for tricks with a mattress on her back!’ ” His Pattonesque benediction concluded: “On penalty of all you hold dearest, do not fail to live up to my standard of perfection.”

His maverick approach threw off sparks when it rubbed against military structure. “Navy and government officials bristled at Rickover’s rebellious nature, indifference to the chain of command, and frequent workarounds,” Mr. Wortman writes. “He was obstinate, egotistical, and abrasive, a specialized engineer indifferent to and sometimes actively in rebellion against the Navy’s chain of command, protocols, and culture. By pushing the Navy into technology frontiers, his nuclear-power program proved alien to existing thinking.” Passed over for promotion twice, the ill-tempered Rickover relied on supporters in Congress and the White House to move up to admiral and remain in uniform past retirement age.

For the full review, see:

Jonathan W. Jordan. “The Navy’s Atomic Generator.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022): C9.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date February 11, 2022, and has the title “‘Admiral Hyman Rickover’ Review: The Navy’s Atomic Generator.”)

The book under review is:

Wortman, Marc. Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022.

Increasing Tax Rates Will Reduce Venture Funding for Cancer Research

(p. A17) In his last year as vice president, Joe Biden launched a “cancer moonshot” to accelerate cures for the disease. It was short-lived, but he did help negotiate an agreement in Congress easing regulation of breakthrough drugs and medical devices.

In February [2022], President Biden revived the initiative, setting a goal of reducing cancer death rates by at least 50% over the next 25 years. It’s ambitious but may be achievable given how rapidly scientific knowledge and treatments are advancing. Other Biden policies, however, are at odds with the goals of this one.

Two pharmaceutical breakthroughs were announced only last week that could save tens of thousands of lives each year and redefine cancer care. Yet the tax hikes and drug-price controls that the Biden administration is pitching would discourage the private investment that has delivered these potential cures.

. . .

Oncologists were blown away by the results reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine: All 12 patients receiving the drug achieved complete remission after six months of treatment. None needed surgery, chemotherapy or radiation. Although some may relapse, the 100% success rate is unprecedented even for a small trial.

. . .

Last week AstraZeneca in partnership with Daiichi Sankyo reported that Enhertu reduced the risk of death by 36% in patients with metastatic breast cancer with low HER2 and by half for the subset who were hormone-receptor negative. These results blow the outcomes for other metastatic breast-cancer therapies out of the water.

. . .

These treatment breakthroughs aren’t happening because of government programs. They’re happening because pharmaceutical companies have invested decades and hundreds of billions of dollars in drug research and development. It typically takes 10.5 years and $1.3 billion to bring a new drug to market. About 95% of cancer drugs fail.

This is important to keep in mind as Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress push for Medicare to “negotiate”—i.e., cap—drug prices and raise taxes on corporations and investors. The large profits that drugmakers notch from successful drugs are needed to reward shareholders for their investment risk and encourage future investment. Capital is mobile.

Mr. Biden’s proposal to increase the top marginal individual income-tax rates, including on capital gains, would punish venture capitalists who seed biotech startups, which do most early-stage research on cancer drugs and are often acquired by large drugmakers. At the same time, his proposed corporate global minimum tax would raise costs of intellectual property, which is often taxed at lower rates abroad.

There aren’t many things to celebrate nowadays, but biotech innovation is one. Let’s hope the president doesn’t kill his own cancer moonshot.