30 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2023
  2. Sep 2022
    1. This winner-take-all popularity pattern of memes, in which most are barely noticed while a few spread widely, could not be explained by some of them being more catchy or somehow more valuable: the memes in this simulated world had no intrinsic quality. Virality resulted purely from the statistical consequences of information proliferation in a social network of agents with limited attention.
  3. Aug 2022
  4. May 2022
  5. Mar 2022
    1. “Scarcity: WhyHaving Too Little Means So Much” (2013) by Mullainathan andShafir. They investigate how the experience of scarcity has cognitiveeffects and causes changes in decision-making processes.

      I'm reminded of a reference recently to Republicans being upset that poor people of color would "waste" their money on frivolities like manicures and fake fingernails instead of on food or other necessities. How might this tie into the argument made in this book?

  6. Feb 2022
    1. It’s the fear that having a kid in this day and age dooms that kid to a miserable life on a miserably hot planet.

      That may be what some people believe, but there are other reasons too. Resource depletion, food shortages, and underemployment are big ones. Having fewer children isn't just about the climate; it's about creating a generally healthier society in the long term.

  7. Aug 2021
    1. To me, the greatest benefit of IndexCards is that they force you to not write too much. This is a big help to those of us who are still squishing the bitter juice of BigDesignUpFront from our brains. The expense and rarity of vellum played a similar role in MedievalArchitecture.
  8. Apr 2021
  9. Feb 2021
  10. Nov 2020
    1. If membership isn’t scarce, the membership loses its signal message. The same applies to physical products: Apple will never offer a cheap iPhone to compete with low-end Android devices – it would destroy the company’s signal message that the iPhone is a luxury product.

      If a high-end brand comes out with a low-end offering, it is diluting the high-end part of their brand message. Apple will never come out with a low-end version of the iPhone because it would dilute the message of being a premium phone.

  11. Sep 2020
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  13. Jul 2020
  14. Jun 2020
  15. Feb 2020
    1. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years’ average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore represented more value.

      Diamonds were first discovered in Brazil in 1729 near the city of Belo Horizonte. This started a diamond rush and a period of feverish migration of workers.

      Major diamond rushes also took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in South Africa and South-West Africa.

      Diamond rushes, like gold rushes or other types of rushes, are for Marx economic bubbles or asset bubbles (sometimes referred to today as speculative bubbles, market bubbles, price bubbles, financial bubbles, speculative manias, or balloons).

  16. Aug 2019
    1. At the same time, US companies are deleveraging, which has shrunk the supply of new corporate debt, leading to a dearth of investment-grade issuance. Net supply from municipal borrowers, another vital source of new issuance, has also turned negative so there is not enough available for pension funds and insurers to buy.
  17. Sep 2018
    1. Becoming posthuman means exceeding the limitations that define the less desirable aspects of the “human condition.” Posthuman beings would no longer suffer from disease, aging, and inevitable death (but they are likely to face other challenges). They would have vastly greater physical capability and freedom of form

      Posthuman beings contradict the human conditions that apply to my life, and every living being for that matter: immortality is non-existent. The passage alludes that the posthuman evolution will oppose the current human condition, and humanity will be redefine its physical form. A reformation in the modern humans understanding of scarcity is entirely different than that of the posthuman. With increased control over the posthumans physical capability are differing in juxtaposition to the human condition in the twenty first century: Prompting our modern society with the question of whether the human condition makes significant biological changes. The change from the former to the latter intertwines technological advancements with physical capabilities, although to what end? The human condition will be a backbone to the technology that manages the posthumans interpretation of reality.

  18. Jun 2017
  19. Jan 2017
  20. Dec 2016
  21. Mar 2016
    1. Another perspective sees competition as a function not just of funding, but of thebalance between supply and demand of resources, particularly human resources. Inthe current competitive system, young scientists are pitted against one another forattractive career opportunities that are becoming increasingly scarce [28].Researchers, feeling the pressure to be first to present findings in their fields,employ armies of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows and strive to maketheir laboratory groups the smartest and the fastest. The result is a ‘‘postdocbottleneck’’ [29] where the supply for highly educated and trained researchers farexceeds the demand [30–33]. In concrete terms, Donald Kennedy and colleagues[34] have described the structural problem as a source of excess supply of humancapital: ‘‘We’ve arranged to produce more knowledge workers than we can employ,creating a labor-excess economy that keeps labor costs down and productivity high’’(p. 1105). The system produces, they claim, a ‘‘legion of the discontented’’ [34].They argue that institutional and policy decisions about training scientists should becoupled to placement histories of recent graduates, numbers of intellectual offspringof faculty, and job markets for scientists. Roger L. Geiger [35] has suggested thatthe imbalance between supply and demand is due in part to deficiencies in graduate

      Role of lack of positions. Interestingly, this has been shown by Fang et al to be not reflected in misconduct stats: i.e. the vast majority of scientific fraud is conducted by senior (male) scientists, not job hungry post-docs or grad students.

    2. Analysts differ as to the reasons why competition has intensified. Some see thesituation in terms of money. Tempering the effects of competition is not a primeimpetus behind calls by the National Science Board [26] and by a recent coalition of140 college presidents and other leaders [27] for more federal funding for scientificresearch; however, some scientists see such advocacy movements in terms of easingcertain aspects of competition that are worsened by tight dollars. More money, morepositions, and overall expansion of the research enterprise would improve thesituation

      role of funding

    3. here are indications, however, that the natureof competition has changed in recent years. Goodstein [25] argues that this shift islinked to negative outcomes:Throughout most of its history, science was constrained only by the limits ofits participants’ imagination and creativity. In the past few decades, however,that state of affairs has changed dramatically. Science is now held back mainlyby the number of research posts and the amount of research funds available.What had been a purely intellectual competition has become an intensestruggle for scarce resources. In the long run, this change, which is permanentand irreversible, will probably have an undesirable effect on ethical behavioramong scientists. Instances of scientific fraud will almost surely become morecommon, as will other forms of scientific misconduct (p. 31)

      relationship of negative aspects of competition to change in funding model that promotes scarcity. See Goodstein, D. (2002). Scientific misconduct.Academe, 88, 28–31

  22. Feb 2014
    1. As intellectual property lacks scarcity, and the protection of it fails the Lockean Proviso, there is no natural right to intellectual property. As such, the justification for intellectual property rights arises from the social con tract, and in the case of the United States, the Constitution.

      The justification for intellectual property from the social contract established by the US Constitution; it otherwise has no justification by natural right because it fails the Lockean Proviso.

    2. Property Status Conclusions and Implications Intellectual property is neither ‘scarce,’ nor does the taking of it leave “enough, and as good, left in comm on for others” (the Lockean proviso) (Long, 1995, n. pag.; Locke, 1690, Chap. V, Sect. 27).

      Intellectual property is neither scarce nor leaves enough for the common good. It is not property in the Lockean sense.

    3. these traditional property rights, as suggested by Locke, depend on the scarcity of that property (1995, n. pag.). I f ‘Joe’ owns property and ‘Sue’ acquires it, then Joe no longer has it, and Sue has harmed Joe (by stealing). Joe’s property is scarce.
  23. Nov 2013
    1. Insofar as the individual wants to maintain himself against other individuals, he will under natural circumstances employ the intellect mainly for dissimulation.

      Seeing the world as a hostile place, we defend with our power to deceive. Competition and survival based in theories of scarcity.

  24. Oct 2013
    1. Indeed, I think there are scarcely any who can do both things--that is, speak well, and; in order to do this, think of the rules of speaking while they are speaking.

      Is that not the point? That it takes skill to learn to do both things at once? So rhetorical strategy should not be used because few can speak well and remember strategy?

  25. Sep 2013
    1. Good, too, are things that are a man's very own, possessed by no one else, exceptional; for this increases the credit of having them.

      Good through virtue of their scarcity.