Addiction stays strong because of the effort it takes to *fight* the urge, not just the urge itself.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Once any company gets 80% full of info, it’s mathematically guaranteed to stop communicating and start falling apart into cliques.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 20
Using AI for the stock market might actually make things worse because everyone will end up making the exact same mistakes at the same time.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Auditors will charge a company more just because they're getting bad press, even if their books are perfectly clean.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
Economic crashes happen because we only see the market in 'snapshots' instead of seeing the whole, smooth picture.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Trying to force drug prices down through auctions backfired so hard that quality tanked, and patients went back to the expensive brands anyway.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
If a brand stops ads for just three months, they lose 10% of their customers. Period.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
Mergers work great when an open company buys a secretive one—but if the secretive guys are in charge, the whole thing usually blows up.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
The big 'client confidentiality' case every lawyer studies? Yeah, it turns out the lawyers in that case actually leaked the secrets themselves to win.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Being 'transparent' about pay and bonuses actually makes bosses *more* biased and less fair when they're grading your work.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Facebook made over $500 million just by using a 30-year-old psych trick to change how their video algorithm works.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
Giving money to the elderly is actually one of the best ways to keep kids out of poverty and help young women get ahead.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
All those 'hidden biases' scientists spend years trying to fix? Turns out they aren't even there in most of the big, famous studies.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Huge, fancy AI models are actually worse at predicting the economy than the basic tools we were using ten years ago.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
China’s plan to give away cheap land to factories is backfiring—it’s actually shrinking their whole economy by 13%.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
In trading markets, the top 5% of pros always win, while everyone else loses money even when the house is literally paying them to play.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
The world's money system is rigged: rich countries get paid way more when they kill off a species than poor countries do.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Buying refurbished electronics might actually be worse for the planet because most people just buy them *in addition* to new ones anyway.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
When China surprise-audited companies for pollution, the firms just spent more money on political bribes instead of actually cleaning up.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
There’s a hidden 'pollution bonus' in stock returns that you can’t even see if you’re just looking at how much a company actually pollutes.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Talking to an AI about your to-do list is way better at stopping procrastination than just using a regular old planning app.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
Curfews for kids are sold as a 'nice' alternative to jail, but they actually just give cops more excuses to search kids and get them in trouble later.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Countries tried to use trade taxes to dodge the new 15% global corporate tax, but some tiny, boring customs laws just blocked them.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
Presidential candidates only care about your local economy if the race is neck-and-neck—otherwise, they’re just reading from a script.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Giving electric cars a fancy green license plate works just as well at selling them as giving people thousands of dollars in cash.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
Big investment funds have a secret limit on how much they can invest that has absolutely nothing to do with making money.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
When it comes to voting, the people who hate an idea are always willing to spend more money to kill it than the supporters are willing to spend to save it.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Trying to fix carbon emissions is way more expensive when you’re dealing with thousands of small businesses instead of a few big ones.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
People will literally blame you for having bad luck, even if they can see you did everything perfectly right.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
If you use just a little bit of something, you'll like the 'fake' version better, but if you use a lot, you'll want the 'natural' one.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 20
Any company with a boss-and-employee setup will eventually hit a wall where it’s mathematically impossible to keep growing.
Cosmic Scale ssrn | Mar 20
Small business loans actually get paid back more often when the people in the group *don't* all have the same deal.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
You can actually guess how well a company's stock will do just by looking at how bright the streetlights are around their headquarters.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
China stopped being a 'copycat' and started inventing new drugs not because of better science, but because they changed their insurance laws.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Just 15 minutes of chatting with an AI can actually make you less prejudiced against people in the real world.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 20
There’s no such thing as a 'best time to post' on social media—every group has its own weird, unique rhythm for when they're actually paying attention.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 20
A lot of those modern 'personality tests' for bias are really just recycled employment laws from the 70s.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 20
Italy is the world's biggest loser when it comes to soccer talent, losing billions to Latin American teams.
Practical Magic arxiv | Mar 19
In Jakarta, poor families refuse cheap tap water because they simply don't trust the system.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Most psychiatric diagnoses are more about doctors trying to agree with each other than actual medical discoveries.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
AI oversight in big companies is mostly just for show since nobody can actually explain how the decisions are made.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
If you add more parking restrictions, people actually start using e-scooters way more.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
When the economy tanks, businesses stop lending to each other, but political drama actually makes them lend more.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Making cities greener doesn't have to mean forcing out the people who already live there.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Messy, jagged city borders are actually better for keeping people fed than clean, straight ones.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 19
The more AI helps us learn, the more we lose the actual skills we need to build AI in the first place.
Cosmic Scale ssrn | Mar 19
Laws that stop people from being 'poached' by rivals are forcing companies to just buy out their suppliers instead.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Government stimulus checks don't work nearly as well in countries where the population is getting older.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
AI companies seem to be ignoring the economic rule that says high interest rates should slow down investment.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Expert whistleblowers are surprisingly bad at stopping Ponzi schemes compared to just general bad news about the economy.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Most 'green' trade deals are being signed in places where trade in eco-friendly goods isn't even growing.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Being a 'safe driver' matters way less for road safety than how the road and the car were actually built.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Letting neighbors trade solar power can actually make the local grid more likely to crash in the summer.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Regulators can be a lot nicer to banks if they just promise to audit them more often.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Farmers in Cuba got way more productive when they were just given 'rights' to the land, proving you don't need private ownership.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Companies use patents more as a 'don't mess with me' signal than as actual weapons to sue people.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
You can predict traffic with 90% accuracy just by looking at a map, so we don't really need all those sensors.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Being too 'lean' with inventory actually wastes more energy because every little hiccup causes a massive power drain.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
The social network Farcaster has a 'follow-back' setup that makes info go viral way faster than on traditional platforms.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 19
Government housing subsidies in small cities are letting big developers crowd out families and build smaller apartments.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Robots are actually helping close the gender pay gap because they help with 'female' jobs more than 'male' ones.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Mandatory college English programs in the Gulf are actually making the rich-poor gap worse.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
The stock market loves when IT companies use AI, even though it’s killing off 70% of entry-level jobs.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Global trade depends on a tiny handful of companies, meaning the whole system could collapse from one small mistake.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Being 'somewhat' integrated kills innovation, but going 'all in' makes a company a radical innovator.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Kazakhstan's welfare system makes it mathematically pointless for people with mental health issues to ever get a job.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Tech companies don't have much debt because they're terrified of 'bad things coming in threes,' which old models ignored.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Tech innovation has been moving at a steady, predictable speed for 2.8 million years, no matter which human species was around.
Cosmic Scale ssrn | Mar 19
AI fails are usually because the 'summaries' we see on dashboards are too simplified, not because of the AI itself.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Forcing employees to take security training after they fail a phishing test actually makes them more likely to get hacked later.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Giving private land rights to herders in China actually made overgrazing worse, not better.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Making stock exchanges faster can actually lead to bigger price gaps and higher costs for regular investors.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
A stock’s price is driven more by how much it 'stands out' to people than by any of its actual financial data.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Repeating first grade can actually give struggling kids a huge reading boost over the classmates who moved on.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Workplace harassment policies are often just legal loopholes that help companies stop people from reporting.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Almost all the difference in poor infrastructure happens within city neighborhoods, not between them.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
In rich areas, spending more on digital government services eventually starts making things less efficient.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Making paid sick leave mandatory actually leads to fewer accidents and safety issues at work.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Big government payouts like the CHIPS Act actually led semiconductor companies to carry less debt.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
One in seven big U.S. companies pays its CEO zero stock, sticking entirely to cash and a fixed salary.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Making supply chains 'perfectly efficient' creates a vacuum that causes them to collapse like a boiling liquid.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Sending 'motivational' emails to people looking for jobs actually makes them less likely to find one.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
War actually increases social mobility, but only by dragging the rich kids down to everyone else's level.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
'Zero Tolerance' policies haven't stopped harassment, but they have done a great job of killing social trust.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Living in a former Olympic Village actually makes students do significantly better in school.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Giving more people access to electricity actually slows down a country's move to green energy.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Solar farms in Sweden can grow 400 times more saffron than traditional open fields.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Making research 'free for everyone' actually makes it harder for scientists who aren't already famous to get noticed.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
When political chaos hits, investors actually dump Bitcoin instead of treating it like a safe haven.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Privacy laws meant to protect you can accidentally block marginalized people from getting bank accounts for years.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
When China ended its birth limits, Chinese immigrants in the U.S. immediately started having more babies too.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 19
A math test for 'extremeness' shows the most rigged voting maps are in California and Illinois, not just the usual suspects.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Having one national currency acts like a hidden trade barrier for a country's own poorest regions.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Working-class candidates lose because they can't raise money, not because people don't want to vote for them.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Laws against 'spiteful' property use historically have had zero to do with whether the owner was actually being a jerk.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Giving every teacher the same raise is a really inefficient way to make schools better.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 19
Giving moms a bigger Child Tax Credit leads them to spend way less time on basic chores like feeding and bathing kids.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Keeping super strict budgets and financial records has almost zero effect on whether a small business actually makes money.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19
Sanctuary city rules don't actually hurt the wages of local workers, even the ones with the least skills.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 19