What’s Putanumonit?
People see some things as quantifiable, e.g. tax rates, and unquantifiable, e.g. love, charity, happiness, feminism and Chinese soccer. Personally, I have no idea how the American tax system works, but everything else seems quite easy to put a number on if you try.
For example, a simple mathematical fact can explain why the Chinese soccer team sucks despite China’s huge population. I write often about other sports as well. Love and dating is also a popular subject, from guides on leveraging or “hacking” OkCupid to musings on feminism and Nice Guys. My best received post is Shopping for Happiness, one of my essays on the best ways to use money to make yourself happier and to improve the world. I call out people who use bullshit numbers, whether by mistake or with intent to mislead. Those include bad scientists, good scientists, and even FiveThirtyEight. I fully encourage you to call me out in turn when I get something wrong. I occasionally dive into economics and public policy, I wrote about voting (bad idea), basic income (good idea, maybe) and inequality (complicated idea). My writing, in fact my entire life, is informed by the rationality community and the writings on LessWrong.com. A few of my posts address the study of rationality explicitly.
I also wrote a post about Pokémon. I hope that doesn’t become a category.
Putanumonit is a personal labor of love, free of ads and affiliations. The chronological archive is here, new posts arrive 3-4 times a month on a schedule unknown even to me. Please subscribe on the right sidebar, leave comments on any old or new post and write putanumonit at gmail dot com with personal missives, datasets you want me to analyze and invitations to beer.
Enjoy,
Jacob
PUTANUMONIT 