ASB Partners Nuggets 1.10.25
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution
52 more things Kent Hendricks learned in 2024
Waymo self-driving taxis generate 88% fewer property damage claims and 92% fewer bodily injury claims than human drivers. After driving 25.3 million miles, Waymo Driver had nine property damage claims and two injury claims, compared to 78 property damage claims and 26 injury claims from humans who drive an equivalent number of miles.
You may worry about cultural change or other things, but a single Jensen Huang or Elon Musk can carry a lot of dead weight. As of October, Nvidia’s market cap was around $3.5 trillion. By way of comparison, all US spending on federal welfare programs was $1.2 trillion in 2022. Nothing in Huang’s family background indicates that they would have been let into the country under a system that only sought proven geniuses, as some restrictionists say they favor. If one wants to take all the human and physical capital assets of some of the most successful companies in the US and toss them into the ocean, they need to have an incredibly compelling reason
Christopher Balding on China stimulus: "I totally understand this idea that China isn't stimulating but this overlooks a key point. China is effectively in a state of constant stimulus. For instance, government and corporate debt continues to balloon with debt growth roughly continually running 2x nominal GDP growth an entirely unsustainable growth level which it has done for roughly the past decade. So when people talk about stimulus what they are really saying is let's take stimulus from 30 miles an hour above the speed limit to 60 miles an hour over the speed limit. If total debt growth is 2x nominal GDP growth, what would be considered "stimulative"? 4x? Run the second order numbers on what that means. It's absolutely crazy. So when people say stimulate, they do not mean stimulate in that they aren't stimulating now, but that it isn't having the results desired AND that stimulus would need to enter absolutely absurd levels"
The Global EV Calamity Blame the Obama era’s ‘permission structures’ behind a phony climate fix.(WSJ)
The years just keep getting warmer. I mean this facetiously. At first, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told us 2016 was 0.94 degree warmer than the 20th-century average. Then the agency raised its estimate by several steps to 1 degree in 2020 before dropping it back to 0.99 perhaps under Trump influence. With Democrats back in charge under President Biden, 2016 started getting warmer again, reaching 1.03 degrees in 2023. The latest NOAA chart shows it 1.04 degrees warmer than the baseline.
The result is finally in view: a colossal self-destruction of the Western auto industry, with Germany’s at the forefront. Volkswagen is in a panic about Chinese competition to the money-losing EVs that Berlin forces the company to sell. Germany’s export-led economy is in free fall. Its bellwether auto giant, VW, is pursuing its first-ever domestic factory closures and layoffs.
How long does it take to get approval for prescribed burns in California?
Why the space community should care about Arctic geopolitics: "Any satellite in a polar or sun-synchronous orbit, such as those in critical communications, imagery and weather monitoring constellations, requires an Arctic ground station for consistent tracking, telemetry, and control throughout every revolution."
Podcast/Videos
👇I’ve read Atomic Habits and listened to this podcast twice…It’s really good
“The cardinal rule of behavior change in Atomic Habits is behaviors that get immediately rewarded, get repeated, behaviors that get immediately punished, get avoided, and it’s really about the speed and the intensity of that feedback.” – James Clear
The quicker the feedback occurs, the quicker change in behavior occurs
Intensity is also important, feedback needs to be meaningful to change behavior
It can’t be so low that it doesn’t register
It doesn’t need to be too intense either
Peter notes that one of the themes of James’ book is that willpower is not a great long-term strategy to change behavior
The genetic component
James discussed something similar with his friend David Epstein (he’s known for his work on the books The Sports Gene and Range)
David said one of the things that surprised him, when he was researching The Sports Gene, is that characteristics that he thought would be mostly genetic (strength and speed and things like that) turned out to be heavily influenced by training and choice
Then qualities that he thought would be a choice, like grit and perseverance and desire to train turned out to have a much higher genetic component than he realized
How finding one’s passion can cultivate perseverance and discipline [23:15]
James discussed grit with his friend David Epstein, and the question came up, what if this grit/ perseverance/ discipline is one’s natural propensity based on the thing they are working on?
If a person is highly interested in something, what are the chances they will have increased perseverance and discipline in that area?
“It’s very hard to beat the person who’s having fun because they’re going to want to keep working longer than the person who’s suffering, so grit is fit, I think is one way in which you can maybe try to stack the deck or stack the odds in your favor and get your genes aligned with the things that you’re working on” – James Clear
A person who is curious and willing to explore a lot of things is more likely to come across an area where they are fascinated or they are interested, and it also is a really good fit for their natural abilities or propensities
James compares environment to gravity; it has a pull that can be resisted for a bit but at some point it drains a person and sucks them back in
One story from Atomic Habits is about soldiers who got addicted to heroin and drugs during the Vietnam War
People were worried what would happen to them when they returned home
90% or more of them were fine
Because they didn’t go back to the place where they got addicted
They went home to friends and family
They didn’t have all the same signals that were prompting them to pick up the habit so they were able to drop it more easily than was expected
👇I follow Israel very closely and missed this
Peter Attia Podcast on the 3 A’s - Autism, ADHD, and Anxiety
“There’s a saying, ‘If you’ve met one child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism.’”‒ Trenna Sutcliffe
Peter points out that the CDC said in the year 2001, that roughly 1 in 150, 200 kids had autism
This was before this change to the DSM-5
We can only that that to mean that those were the kids in the bucket of more extreme autism
That did not include PDD-NOS or Asperger’s
The last year, prior to that change in 2012 it was down from 1 in 50 to 1 in 69
In other words, there was something that was increasing the prevalence or diagnosis by about a factor of 2
Then we get the change in the DSM, and today, we’re at 1 in 36 (that’s what the CDC said in 2020)
The heritability of autism is anywhere from 70-98% depending on the definition used, but it’s well over 90%
Peter didn’t know it was that high
The heritability of autism is higher than it is for any other condition in the DSM
Even schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression ‒ things that we know have very strong genetic components
There’s definitely a genetic component to this but it’s not 1 gene ‒ it’s multiple genes
Peter’s analogy
He likens it to cancer with a fundamental difference
Cancer is mostly about somatic mutations and not germline mutations
Meaning most of the time when a person gets cancer, it is not based on genes that they were born with
It’s based on genes that were at one point normal that have since acquired mutations in their mutated state
Those genes no longer function normally, and the person develops cancer
This complicates the analogy because only about 5% of cancers arise from germline mutations (that you’re born with)
The genes that are implicated in autism are indeed germline (you’re born with them)
Peter adds, “I think it’s just got to be so hard for parents to potentially stomach putting children on psychiatric medication. But what you said earlier is interesting, which is most of them are coming back after saying, ‘I wish we did this sooner,’ which I suppose would be the most affirming thing you could ever hear in that situation.”
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam