Sky, fly, sigh
So much we don't know. Do progressives "walk right" on marriage? Is there a unified theory of marriage? The problems of measurements, Goodhart's law for truancy. Climate Econ models are bad.
Galaxy structures: we do not understand the cosmos
Moths: why do they fly to light
Biology: new structures, obelisks
Marriage: is there a two parent privilege?
Education: Truancy, what is it measuring?
Goodhart’s law: When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure
Speculative fiction: techno-eco-thriller, Chen Qiufan
Events:
Civic Future, is our schools policy radical enough? London, Feb 5th
Meet-up: EV, Progress, sustainability, arts. Life; London, Feb 8th
ESG book launch: Feb 15th, Will Martindale and me in conversation for his new book
Links (end): Why do moths fly crazy at lights? | Julliard trained. 8 children. Of faith. An intriguing profile of a life I was unaware of but with multimillion social following
I was thinking on aliens. There are moments when I’m stunned. Stunned by how little we know. How little I know. Last week, I mentioned the quasi-moon 2002 VE 68 (or Zoozve) only discovered a few years ago. The James Webb Space telescope (entering service in 2022) has revealed many structures we can not explain. We now have structures that do not seem to fit into our standard models of the cosmos.
BBC: Ring-shape structure is 1.3bn light-years in diameter and appears to be roughly 15 times the size of the Moon in the night sky as seen from Earth. Named the Big Ring by the astronomers, it is made up of galaxies and galaxy clusters. They say that it is so big it challenges our understanding of the universe.
Our limited understanding is not only the cosmos. We didn’t know how bumble bees fly until recently. We have only relatively recently figured out some reasons for why we sigh. We are not sure why moths fly to lights (but it probably is not because of moon confusion). For everything, we might know there seems to be more we don’t.
Again, in the last few months:
Scientists have discovered strange entities hiding in our guts and mouths that may represent an entirely new class of life—if they are even alive.
Dubbed “obelisks,” these tiny rings of RNA can fold into a structure that looks more like a rod, hence the name. They’re also surprisingly commonplace in our microbiomes—the community of viruses, bacteria, fungi, and their genes that live in our bodies. Yet, they’ve gone undetected until now and represent the latest discovery in an ever-growing list of mysterious “genetic agents” hiding in plain sight. (The obelisks were discovered by a team lead by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist and pathologist, Andrew Fire, who shared their findings in a preprint. )
So this week was filled with the many things we don’t know. I think one could view this as terrifying - the unknown. Or, one could look at this as a grand adventure.
Closer to earth, NYT op writer Jessica Grose has this on marriage1:
There’s an idea that’s been floating around for a few years that when it comes to marriage, wealthy elites hold luxury beliefs.
Examines the ideas that progressives like to “talk left, but walk right”
Her core argument threads the “common sense” ethos:
“my sense is that it’s because the benefits of marriage and two-parent families are pretty obvious to most Americans already. It’s not some big secret that having more resources and increasing the number of loving adults in a child’s life makes parenting easier.”
This is on the back of economist Melissa Kearney’s book on the two parent privilege which sparked some debate in late 2023. This is looked at by Alice Evans here, who has some of the most sophisticated takes on gender lens issues.
Alice has a “unified theory of marriage” based on qualitative research, which is here.
People marry for love, money or social approval. Financial considerations are especially salient for women, if they earn less and bear responsibility for the kids. But when women become economically independent, they needn’t tolerate disrespect. Systematically, marriage rates tend to fall with secularisation, individualism and gender parity in earnings. The rise in single women may even reinforce a self-perpetuating cycle. Why settle, if there are plenty of fish in the sea? Moreover, a multitude of sexual invitations may exacerbate promiscuity and distrust.
What’s the solution? Well, some seek to reverse this downturn by normatively championing marriage. But such policing won't make any difference in places like the US that are highly individualistic. Like King Cnut, commanding the sea to stop, it’s not clear that we can reverse these structural shifts in demography, economics and culture.
As I reflected on this, it seemed to me that Goodhart’s law was relevant.
Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
Many aspects of social science that we look at are in practice very hard or not, in fact, useful to target.
In the world of health and safety (some might say as aspect of ESG) if you target zero accidents, you get unintended consequences of people mis-reporting and other bad behaviours. Zero or low accidents is an outcome of proper processes, behaviors, culture but also luck.
Targeting a marriage statistic itself is only an outcome of a complex set of factors of love, money, social approval.
I judged this is similar to a UK campaign on school truancy days. Days off school have been targeted but these are only a symptom of much more complex factors of money and social situations. Actually forcing a child in a socially difficult situation to be at school likely does nothing to help the underlying causes for why that child is not at school.
A while ago I was looking at research on young people on probation and re-offending rates. This in part was trying to look at if theatre or other creative factors could help lower re-offending. One measure that came up was the idea that families who managed to have meal times together had lower re-offending rates. One notion was that social services could encourage families to eat together.
But, on qualitative assessment it’s obvious it’s not the meal time in itself which is helping, but all the complex factors which allow a family to all be present for a meal together. If the earners have to be out of the house due to work, or they have addiction problems that makes them unreliable, these factors can be seen in the outcome of reduced family meal times.
This is a large problem everywhere but I can observe it with many environmental and social and governance metrics. The metrics are only the outcome of a complex set of driving factors.
When you can observe it, this is when qualitative and quantitative models together are more powerful than random measures with limited causality.
Poor climate economic models
This complexity is likely in part why our economic climate models are so poor. We rely on thinking about the “social discount factor”. There is much complexity behind the social cost of climate change and limited agreement on what it might be.
I’ve been skimming this paper which critiques some economic climate models2 and it looks to see what might be needed. It’s technical, but some of the conclusion is that certain models are not fit for policy making. We continue to deal with much uncertainty. (And I can continue my membership of economics are bad at climate club, H/T Mike Clark).
Part Abstract (link end): We demonstrate that the functional form of the climate emulator of the DICE-2016 model is fit for purpose, despite its simplicity, but its carbon cycle and temperature equations are miscalibrated, leading to the conclusion that one may want to be skeptical about predictions derived from DICE-2016. We examine the importance of the calibration for the social cost of carbon in the context of a partial equilibrium setting where interest rates are exogenous, as well as the simple general equilibrium setting from DICE-2016. We find that the model uncertainty from different consistent calibrations of the climate system can change the social cost of carbon by a factor of four if one assumes a quadratic damage function.
I listened to a fireside chat with speculative or science fiction writer Chen Qiufan, also known as Stanley (Thanks Alice Wang). He chose Stanley being inspired by Stanley Kubrick. Amongst interesting observations about writing speculative fiction was how this type of fiction can be used in activism and political ideas.
There are political ideas (related to China) that you can explore set in a place which is entirely not-China.
I’ve started on his book Waste Tide which is being called an eco-techno-thriller.
“Mimi is drowning in the world's trash.
She’s a waste worker on Silicon Isle, where electronics -- from cell phones and laptops to bots and bionic limbs — are sent to be recycled. These amass in towering heaps, polluting every spare inch of land. On this island off the coast of China, the fruits of capitalism and consumer culture come to a toxic end.
Mimi and thousands of migrant waste workers like her are lured to Silicon Isle with the promise of steady work and a better life. They're the lifeblood of the island’s economy, but are at the mercy of those in power.”
Some events you can catch me at:
Civic Future: Is our schools policy radical enough? Education policies currently promoted by the main parties include tackling school exclusions, supervised teeth brushing for children and extending maths lessons until 18. But is our schools policy radical enough?
I’m on the panel, very loosely representing “radical ideas” like home education whereas Rachel Wolf and Daisy Christodoulou know what they are talking about in terms of mainstream policy.
Tickets are free but places are limited. Register for tickets via Partiful here. London, Feb 5th 6.30pm
Then on Feb 8th, I’m having my Q1 winter-spring party meet-up.
Meet-up for EV, arts, investing, sustainability, progress etc folk to mingle and chat.
My own interests are broad but range across: progress, sustainability, creative arts, theatre, investing, economics, philosophy, education, food, autism and everything that makes humans human.
Logistics Address Details: Theatre Deli, 107 Leadenhall Street, EC3A 4AF. It's a corporate looking entrance, go past the first guard reception on the ground floor through to the back where there is the Deli reception. Then wind your way round to the bar! Time: 6pm-ish to 9pm-ish (but OK to be late). RSVP link here
And then on Feb 15th, Join Will Martindale and Ben Yeoh for the book launch of "Responsible Investment: An Insider's Account".
You need to message me for invite but if you are reading this, you are invited. 6pm, London. The book traces the history of ESG thinking.
Links:
Moths: Not confusing lights with the moon.
https://x.com/samueltfabian/status/1752372075946299464?s=20
8 children. Huge social media following.
https://x.com/benyeohben/status/1752411624487395810?s=20
The moon-not-moon of Venus. A fun thread (X). Where I learnt about quasi-moons; shows we barely understand the structures of the universe.
Climate in climate economics: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3885021