What I've Been Reading 6/7
Undoing the Truth Fetish
Shamik Dasgupta argues that there's not reason to be especially excited about the truth. This paper verges on the sort of thing Aristo complained about when he said:
Those who dwell on dialectics resemble those who chew on crabs; so many bones for just a bit of juice!
This is after all, a paper on meta-meta-semantics. But there is at least one interesting insight here that may matter. It has to do with schema-flexibility, there are ways of conceptualizing meaning that are difficult to account for. For example, when I use the + operator do I mean addition or quaddition? Quaddition follows the rules of addition if the numbers are less than 50, but otherwise maps every result to 5. If you only see me perform arithmetic on numbers less than 5, what determines what I mean? For every property that can account for me meaning addition, there are properties that one can posit that would make me mean quaddition. For example, if it seems "natural" for me to mean addition, there's the property of "quaturalness." This is a kind of move that I'm sympathetic to, for example, in debates over persistence and it would be interesting if it works for supporting pragmatism writ large.
Free Cash Flows
Great thread by Ced on capital allocation and leverage one can get from free cash flows:
My sense is that plays like this are underrated by many silicon valley types. And, that the ease in actually pulling it off is underrated by others.
Tyler Cowen on American Outrage
Relevant quote:
To put recent events in perspective, the number of Americans (of all races) killed by police peaked at 1,143 in 2018. On one day last week, May 30, nearly as many Americans — 1,010 — died of Covid-19.
Korean Cover for Lessons in Stoicism
John Sellars' Lessons in Stoicism is a fine introduction to the philosophy.
There will be a Korean translation. Here's the cover:
Roam Research
I've been using Roam Research to take notes, write, and organize my work cycles. I'll write up my flow. It's the best tool of its kind. Recommended, once the waitlist is lifted.