Subnostr

Zach

9e9159423eac7c7595e31deb22641d02691f632f0111cf17951d3684f8133dec

Dad. Husband. Math teacher. Runner. Amateur writer. Fisherman. Mediocre guitar player and volleyball player. We need a new cultural enlightenment. I want to be a part of it.

https://z-cress.micro.blog/

The distinction is merely about the flow of funds. Adding funds arbitrarily into bank reserves just obfuscates the insolvency of the debt/money issued by the banks themselves. So any imbalances created during the expansion period stay imbalanced, rather than having the opportunity to correct.

The Fed is usually a reactionary agent, responding to crises caused by the printing/issuing of new debt by the fractional reserve system, and then backstopping it when the economy tries to correct the malinvestment.

I am familiar with his thoughts, and while technically right in a sense, I don't think the distinction is very important in the bigger picture. It has all of the same negative consequences and doesn't change the underlying reality. It merely changes whether it precedes or follows the problem of debt issuance from nothing.

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Example: If I print money and loan it to you (I'm a bank), it will distort market prices, it shifts real resources from real savers to me and you, while you pay me interest on money I never earned or owned, economic and social power shifts into our spheres at the explicit cost of those who actually created the resources we are consuming, then when it all comes crashing down because we were systemically overextended, the Fed jumps in and just bails you and I out, cementing the imbalances/unfairness that we created. If I just keep that new money on my balance sheet to bolster the loans, it doesn't fix the problem...

Had the Fed printed the money on the frontend, they'd have caused the imbalance, and when they do it on the backend, they merely prevent it from fixing itself. In the end, the problem is the same and its about how the entire system works to feedback every other part of it, the Fed, fractional banks, govt bonds, all of it.

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for taking the time to reply! 🙏🏼

We need experts and we need institutions. And most importantly we need them to not be corrupted.

I’m saying the opposite: They are trying to hide money printing by saying the only thing that matters is consumer prices. My argument is that the arbitrary creation of new money is the entirety of the problem, and the only thing that matters to measure.

Yeah, I think Snyder’s view is nearly opposite. Although “opposite” implies two possible answer at different ends of a spectrum and it’s not really that. Anyway, he would argue that the FED can’t “print” money. Mostly what gets “printed” ends up on bank balance sheets but doesn’t make it out into the real economy.

Are you familiar with his thoughts on this? He had a discussion about this very thing at last year’s Bitcoin conference with nostr:npub1a2cww4kn9wqte4ry70vyfwqyqvpswksna27rtxd8vty6c74era8sdcw83a .

I think linear algebra was the hardest for me besides the 2 analysises.

I don’t remember struggling with linear algebra too much (although I don’t think I aced it). I just remember really not enjoying it and thinking it was stupid and also thinking “here’s one more reason I don’t want to study computer science”.

I mostly agree with this and I’m not one to tear down and optimistic outlook. We need hope or why are we even getting up in the morning.

But, my biggest concern is that systemic fragility is increasing and we just keep spinning the roulette wheel. I don’t know how times we can do that. nostr:note1x0cyxs970zdnwrnq25gcsgjw7x3yu7h3sp94a0qz2ce0zejd85ssk38uee

It’s even worse than that, because it’s a metric-less measurement. They are literally putting out a data point that essentially says “the size of 20 inches has been changed by 2 inches.”

It’s meaningless, because the very notion of attempting to measure it has no foundation. The money IS the measuring tool. Trying to use a “basket of goods” means that every single change in the market, liquidity, quality, production process, innovation in organization, energy cost, and thousands of other factors that go into those things work *against* it having any meaning at all.

In short, the CPI is just flat bullshit. It works in the govt favor in almost every way. The only data point that matters is how much money did the govt or banking system counterfeit into existence. Which can’t even be easily calculated. That is the number of what was stolen from us or misallocated in the economy. Everything else is nonsense.

(Analogy: the CPI is like trying to measure how far you threw a football without being able to compare it to the ground, instead you compare it to a bunch of people in the area, the leaves on the ground, the football players, cars on the road nearby, the water flowing in the creek next to the field, the clouds over head - and making the argument that if you have enough of these things, we can figure out where the ball went. Then the wind blows a little or it rains, and all of the measurements mean Jack shit in trying to make sense of what happened to the ball.)

I think that makes sense. But it seems like - and please correct me if if I’m wrong - you are equating “money printing” to inflation in consumer prices and I’m not sure that there’s a direct causation between those two things. (Money printing meaning, in part, the increase in the M2 money supply). At least that was my understanding from Jeff Snyder when he described inflation versus “money printing” and the Eurodollar. Are you familiar with his framework for inflation, the macroeconomy, and the Eurodollar?

Do you like proofs?

I stopped at bachelor's cuz I like numbers but not proofs 😅

Real and complex analysis were killing me.

I love proofs! But, I never took complex analysis. So that might’ve been the end of the fun for me. lol

I did find calc-based prob and stats quite difficult. I would say that’s toughest math I bumped into.

Replying to 7a644594...

Chris Williamson is a plant FED i think

I’m not sure what that means exactly, but why do you think that?

A student asked a great question earlier today when we were talking about the connection between position, velocity, and acceleration in calculus. She asked, “if the integral of acceleration is velocity, and the integral of velocity is position, then what’s the integral of position?”

We had a great conversation about it after I did some thinking and research.

Here’s an in depth explanation for anyone interested. #teaching #math

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1637409/what-does-the-integral-of-position-with-respect-to-time-mean#1637650

Replying to Cui Bono

"so what's the real inflation rate? it's a vector right it's not a scalar a scalar is like two percent, no it's not it's like an n-dimensional vector and there's a different inflation rate for everything in every place for every time period dynamically evolving right?

Once you understand that you realize that there's probably two inflation rates of interest one inflation rate is the rate at which uh cost of living is going up for a middle-class family that's not the CPI because the CPI is a manipulated market basket set by a politician or a bureaucrat"

#Inflation #Bitcoin

Have you listened to Eric Weinstein talk about this? He echoes similar points - essentially cpi is a BS quantity (scalar) when inflation should be represented more like a vector field. It’s like saying the average temperature in the United States is 52 degrees. What does I even do with that information if I live in Montana? A weather map with information dependent on location is a much better description.

He discusses it in his most recent conversation with Chris Williamson. If that interests you then I will look for the time stamp.

Just to be clear, I love teaching math. I get to be around math most days and I love sharing math with my students. I love working with young people and watching them grow.

A few of you mentioned that if I love doing math then I should pursue it - and maybe I should! But if it went full throttle into all the stuff I’m passionate about I’d need about a half dozen lifetimes. 😂 I’d spend one getting amazing at guitar. I’d spend one doing math. One teaching math. One backpacking all over the world. And maybe one studying philosophy. Heck, maybe one just bass fishing. #grownostr nostr:note1q0zukkcdu69kp5gy5c0xh5naxecjym0v8l8d5zfrelj5ska6x5hsljr98q

Reading about elaboration theory this morning. #education #teaching

Man, I love doing math. I’m making solution guides to every calculus assignment this year and it’s reminding me of how much I love it. I sometimes wish I had pursued it beyond my bachelors, but I’m not sure if I had the mathematical chops to cut it. Probably could’ve made through a masters program. But I doubt much beyond that. I actually looked into it a few years after I started teaching but there was no way to make it work while also maintaining a full time job. #math #grownostr #teaching

Good to know. Thanks for sharing. nostr:note10zfw83zj9y8tgg3l754ja7w3f82ec5dk2zwac3vre0n345tquchshxa90l

Beautiful nostr:note1aaqrndcyau5heglef7fpl0sga5fjfh3uej2qnhvypu7843aa3pgq7xxp6x

Three hours of Eric Weinstein just dropped. 👀

https://youtu.be/p_swB_KS8Hw?si=NO7JG1vT_xYTInOI

This article looks really good.

"The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers."

Link:

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-2024

I’m a bit confused, are you agreeing or disagreeing with the article?

I’m agreeing, mostly. As with most things in education there are few absolutes. And the article isn’t arguing that we should NEVER let students struggle through the discovery process. Just that the contexts in which that actually helps students learn are when students have most prior knowledge required to tackle the problem. Basically, not when students are learning new stuff but when they are applying knowledge they already have.

This is a stubborn misconception about learning that many teachers fully embrace. I’ve certainly been guilty of it over the course of my career. Early on I would’ve thought that discovery learning was ideal but it was just too time consuming to be practical. #education #teaching

If you’re following along, here’s the crux of the issue for me. Learners spend too much energy (their working memory) searching for solutions or even approaches to get to the solution for them to move anything from working memory to long term memory.

This is a stubborn misconception about learning that many teachers fully embrace. I’ve certainly been guilty of it over the course of my career. Early on I would’ve thought that discovery learning was ideal but it was just too time consuming to be practical. #education #teaching

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