From our weird comparisons department: are these two charts related? And if so, what can they tell us about the future of the US stock market?
Note: Apple has the highest market capitalization, and is by far the largest component, of S&P 500.
Percentage Of US Population Using Social Media
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| Price Of Apple Stock |
passing through:
ReplyDeletehttps://a-kind-of-chicken.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-peoples-subpoena-of-musk.html
Wow akoc, I thought I was anti-musk, but you do take the cake... You might enjoy the 'Behind the Bastards' podcast on Musk. It's a two part episode, on Spotify.
Deletehey, thanks for the link.... don't think I will have the time... but read the reddit post on it... =)
Deleteon a personal level, I think we have only two strategic choices, kill Musk and his ilk; or kill each other (as society disintegrates) ... I am going with Kill Musk. =)
Our era has a scent of the Robber Baron time. Lots and lots of excess, colorful characters, new technologies, fortunes being made almost overnight, semi-criminal behavior...
ReplyDeletehey anon, you are somewhat right... The difference is there is no new technology these days... so, instead of making money by advancing society, Musk is using pseudo science to loot society... his stuff just does not work...
DeleteI'm not implying that Musk provides new tech, after all electric cars are older than internal combustion ones. Undeniably, however, IT, telecom and AI are new tech and are shaping society at breakneck speed. A mere 30 years ago Amazon would just not be possible, for example. To put it another way: my campus computer center occupied a huge airconditioned room. Today, it fits in my pocket and does a heck of a lot more.
DeleteI guess it depends on how we define tech. Most of AI and IT are based on designs that are nearly 50 years old. The ``advances'' are mainly the result of faster computers. And these computers are not faster because of new tech, they are faster because of refinements of old tech... there is very little that is really new coming down the pipes... and we are truly going to hit a wall in the next 50 years...
DeleteWhile "new" tech may indeed be old tech on steroids, it does make a huge difference in people's daily lives. For example, Moore's law (no. of transistors per integrated circuit doubles every 2 years) has held astonishingly constant for 60(!) years. Does it matter? Computers as a tech have existed since ENIAC in 1954, yet when I graduated college some 30 years later, a computer could only perform approx. 10^4 operations per second. Today, it performs 10^15 ops/sec.
DeleteSimilar exponential patterns can be observed in DNA sequencing, air travel and medicine/pharma. For example, the development and distribution of COVID vaccines was accomplished in mere months instead of years - if ever.
Technological advancement is a continuous process and not a step-wise discontinuity, even though it may sometimes appear as such.
thanks for the comment. appreciate it.
Deleteyes, I think scientific advancement comes in step wise discontinuity, when we bring in a new way of thinking about things. mind you, what constitutes actual scientific advancement and what the general public thinks is an advancement, are two very different things.
For example, I would say the invention of a transistor was a great scientific advancement; hey guys, a switch that can be turned on and of with electricity, making it possible to have controllable patterns of electric discharge. I would say that the invention of the computer is a trivial implementation of the transistor.
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so, how can I know that there is nothing new coming down the pipes? after all, I cannot have specialized knowledge of every field.
DeleteIt is partly a guess based on observation of stuff around me. When the only idea that the IT side has is to squeeze more and more transistors onto a chip (which cost exponential amounts of money), I know they are lack any new basic invention which would make better use of that money.
When I see people throwing money at Musk.... I know it is because they can't find anything else to invest in.
Further, I know quite a few academics, many of them quite fancy. Many lack even a rudimentary understanding of their field and most papers are riddled with basic errors. Hard to believe, I know. But remember Krugman and his high school chart? The reason he thinks he can get away with such stuff is because the scientific community has gone to the dogs.
https://a-kind-of-chicken.blogspot.com/2021/06/mathematical-proof-that-academics-are.html
the reason why the general public does not directly feel the lack of scientific advancement is because there is a 50 year lag between (truly) new ideas and products... I suspect they will feel it soon.
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