TCAST: The Future of Data & AI

Despite significant technological and scientific progress in the study of physics, time, and space, it looks like we still have a long way to go before we ever truly understand the impact of what we are looking for. 

When exploring the origins of the universe and the nature of everything we see and know, in what ways have we exhausted our pursuit for scientific inquiry? How can we improve the way we study such an important part of our existence? Is it possible to become too data-driven in our search for meaning?

Jason suggests that we continue to fall short of understanding the universe because we’ve never pursued a proper relationship with the subject matter. This could be the case; plenty of social studies call for the researchers to immerse themselves in the communities they study. Since we acknowledge the universe as a dynamic, living, and breathing entity, this could be a new take to an ages-old problem.

Exploring The Green Lumber Fallacy: According to a book entitled Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the Green Lumber Fallacy points to one’s incapacity to truly understand the implications of what they know and how to use it. It is rooted in the idea that while we may be focused on the right issues, we may not yet be capable enough to fully comprehend its complexity.

Indeed, our desire for knowledge is going in the right direction. But are we looking at it in the right perspective? Alexander points out that while 99 percent of our universe is composed of material we can’t see, “we’re looking at one percent, maybe less—and think we’re bad-ass, and we have the answer for all of it.”

“That's like, I have the ocean on earth. I've taken out one droplet of water. One. I'm going to study it and say all of the fundamental rules of the universe and everything sits right here in this one drop, because I can see it.” he continued.

Must We Bend Before We Break?: The author of Antifragile, further, explores the concept of antifragility: things that are not just resilient to disorder, but are dependent on it for growth and development.

Parallels can be drawn between antifragility and the scientific method. This is because the constant search for knowledge requires that researchers are always open to the possibility of having their hypotheses disproven. With such a massive universe left to comprehend and explore, it would be a step backward for humanity to assume that we already have all the tools, equipment, and mindset required to uncover the truth. 

It’s on us to continuously question the methodologies we’ve set for ourselves. Are we maximizing our progress when we take the conservative approach? Do we still give ourselves room for creativity? 

Beyond exploring the big cosmic question, modern advancement has taken an aggressive view and approach to nature. Our thirst for development has led us to create sprawling urban jungles that have taken over large swathes of lush greenery. We’ve replaced rivers, forests, and habitats with rock-hard concrete and gas-belching machinery. 

It’s time to be more discerning of what we leave behind when we reach for the stars.

How We Can Refocus Becoming Antifragile: TARTLE goes beyond the surface to bring two human parties together. It’s a platform that gives people the opportunity to support experiences they may have never been exposed to otherwise.

The benefit is twofold: the first is in the transfer of skills and knowledge between communities who become invested in a common cause. The second is the capacity for these causes to look for alternative sources for funding, from people and entities that they would never have been able to reach without the platform.

Antifragility is a constant test of our character, especially when we’re exposed to lived realities that are so different from ours. However, it’s also an important part of the authentic human experience. Underneath the chaos of sharing this world with 7.6 billion other people are simple hopes, dreams, and aspirations—a chance to find common ground and empowerment in our common humanity. www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

Despite significant technological and scientific progress in the study of physics, time, and space, it looks like we still have a long way to go before we ever truly understand the impact of what we are looking for. 

When exploring the origins of the universe and the nature of everything we see and know, in what ways have we exhausted our pursuit for scientific inquiry? How can we improve the way we study such an important part of our existence? Is it possible to become too data-driven in our search for meaning?

Jason suggests that we continue to fall short of understanding the universe because we’ve never pursued a proper relationship with the subject matter. This could be the case; plenty of social studies call for the researchers to immerse themselves in the communities they study. Since we acknowledge the universe as a dynamic, living, and breathing entity, this could be a new take to an ages-old problem.

Exploring The Green Lumber Fallacy: According to a book entitled Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the Green Lumber Fallacy points to one’s incapacity to truly understand the implications of what they know and how to use it. It is rooted in the idea that while we may be focused on the right issues, we may not yet be capable enough to fully comprehend its complexity.

Indeed, our desire for knowledge is going in the right direction. But are we looking at it in the right perspective? Alexander points out that while 99 percent of our universe is composed of material we can’t see, “we’re looking at one percent, maybe less—and think we’re bad-ass, and we have the answer for all of it.”

“That's like, I have the ocean on earth. I've taken out one droplet of water. One. I'm going to study it and say all of the fundamental rules of the universe and everything sits right here in this one drop, because I can see it.” he continued.

Must We Bend Before We Break?: The author of Antifragile, further, explores the concept of antifragility: things that are not just resilient to disorder, but are dependent on it for growth and development.

Parallels can be drawn between antifragility and the scientific method. This is because the constant search for knowledge requires that researchers are always open to the possibility of having their hypotheses disproven. With such a massive universe left to comprehend and explore, it would be a step backward for humanity to assume that we already have all the tools, equipment, and mindset required to uncover the truth. 

It’s on us to continuously question the methodologies we’ve set for ourselves. Are we maximizing our progress when we take the conservative approach? Do we still give ourselves room for creativity? 

Beyond exploring the big cosmic question, modern advancement has taken an aggressive view and approach to nature. Our thirst for development has led us to create sprawling urban jungles that have taken over large swathes of lush greenery. We’ve replaced rivers, forests, and habitats with rock-hard concrete and gas-belching machinery. 

It’s time to be more discerning of what we leave behind when we reach for the stars.

How We Can Refocus Becoming Antifragile: TARTLE goes beyond the surface to bring two human parties together. It’s a platform that gives people the opportunity to support experiences they may have never been exposed to otherwise.

The benefit is twofold: the first is in the transfer of skills and knowledge between communities who become invested in a common cause. The second is the capacity for these causes to look for alternative sources for funding, from people and entities that they would never have been able to reach without the platform.

Antifragility is a constant test of our character, especially when we’re exposed to lived realities that are so different from ours. However, it’s also an important part of the authentic human experience. Underneath the chaos of sharing this world with 7.6 billion other people are simple hopes, dreams, and aspirations—a chance to find common ground and empowerment in our common humanity. www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

Concrete has become synonymous with urban development and progress. It’s responsible for creating shelters, protecting manmade infrastructures from natural disasters, making transportation easy, and more.

However, the environmental cost of creating concrete is often understated. It’s a convoluted process with plenty of extraction involved. As a finished product, concrete also makes cities hotter because it absorbs the heat of the sun, and traps gases from car exhausts and air conditioning units.

In addition, it separates us from our natural environment without providing an alternative for so many important ecological functions. The cost of creating concrete jungles is the loss of fertile soil, animal habitats, river systems, and lush greenery.  

Is it time to reinvent the concrete wheel?

One solution that is currently in the works is using concrete to store greenhouse gases back in the bedrock.

“If it's getting released from the ice, earth naturally in its own chemistry and set up, has these pockets. So if we put it back in the porous nature of the bedrock, we can store that and prevent it from being up in the atmosphere; so send it back down where it needs to go,” Alex explained.

Historical records indicate that the Romans were the first to deal with concrete. Despite the test of time, plenty of infrastructures remain standing today. One notable achievement was the creation of concrete that could withstand the test of coastal regions, where saltwater speeds up the process of degradation.

This wasn’t the case for Roman concrete, which even benefited from the microorganisms carried by the seawater. Alex described it as “a symbiotic relationship between the saltwater, the organisms, and the concrete itself.”

Is concrete worth the environmental trade-off? The process of manufacturing and maintaining it makes up around eight percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions. Components that go into the creation of concrete include silica, alumina, iron, limestone, and gypsum —- materials that are extracted from the Earth’s crust by diesel-powered machines and then processed in kilns that generate heat by burning coal or fossil fuels. 

The current strategy for producing concrete is incredibly complex and involves plenty of anaerobic processes. Convincing corporations to make changes to the way they create concrete will be a challenge because these entities are already accustomed to this traditional method. This means that they have invested time, money, labor, and effort into maintaining all the machinery and manpower needed to keep these environmentally degrading practices alive. 

It’s commodifying inefficiency, normalized and understated to avoid public clamor.

Some companies are already looking into making concrete a more environmentally friendly substance. A company based in Halifax, Canada named CarbonCure discovered a process that takes liquified CO2 from ammonia and ethanol plants, and injects it into wet concrete while it is being mixed. This increases the concrete’s compressive strength and replaces some of the cement used in the process.

It’s an opportunity to repurpose the waste product of other industrial plants while minimizing the amount of time used to form concrete in a kiln, which requires high amounts of heat and pressure — around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

Since the system is simple and easy to deploy, CarbonCure has a strong selling point. Concrete manufacturers do not need to implement massive shifts in their processes just to become more eco-friendly; this strategy only requires a little extra hardware.

Convincing the concrete industry to clean itself up won’t be easy work. Alexander and Jason brush on how concrete plays a pivotal role in funding and facilitating criminal activity, pointing out the challenges in convincing malicious actors to invest in ecologically friendly alternatives; but the problem runs deeper than that as well.

Prominent websites such as Taylor & Francis Online, The Guardian, the World Economic Forum have released stories on the seedy underbelly of concrete and construction, labeling the material as “the most destructive material on earth” and “the dirtiest business.” 

It’s disheartening to think that even after this podcast, concrete isn’t a standalone villain we can all gang up against. We’ve got an entire industry to hold accountable and demand transparency from.

Climate stability is one of TARTLE’s Big 7. While calling for action won’t be an easy feat, every small act we can generate towards this cause is a small step forward in the right direction. With the TARTLE platform, you have the opportunity to support groups, not-for-profits, or charitable organizations that work towards scientific research and development in this niche.

How much is your data worth? www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

Concrete has become synonymous with urban development and progress. It’s responsible for creating shelters, protecting manmade infrastructures from natural disasters, making transportation easy, and more.

However, the environmental cost of creating concrete is often understated. It’s a convoluted process with plenty of extraction involved. As a finished product, concrete also makes cities hotter because it absorbs the heat of the sun, and traps gases from car exhausts and air conditioning units.

In addition, it separates us from our natural environment without providing an alternative for so many important ecological functions. The cost of creating concrete jungles is the loss of fertile soil, animal habitats, river systems, and lush greenery.  

Is it time to reinvent the concrete wheel?

One solution that is currently in the works is using concrete to store greenhouse gases back in the bedrock.

“If it's getting released from the ice, earth naturally in its own chemistry and set up, has these pockets. So if we put it back in the porous nature of the bedrock, we can store that and prevent it from being up in the atmosphere; so send it back down where it needs to go,” Alex explained.

Historical records indicate that the Romans were the first to deal with concrete. Despite the test of time, plenty of infrastructures remain standing today. One notable achievement was the creation of concrete that could withstand the test of coastal regions, where saltwater speeds up the process of degradation.

This wasn’t the case for Roman concrete, which even benefited from the microorganisms carried by the seawater. Alex described it as “a symbiotic relationship between the saltwater, the organisms, and the concrete itself.”

Is concrete worth the environmental trade-off? The process of manufacturing and maintaining it makes up around eight percent of the world’s annual carbon emissions. Components that go into the creation of concrete include silica, alumina, iron, limestone, and gypsum —- materials that are extracted from the Earth’s crust by diesel-powered machines and then processed in kilns that generate heat by burning coal or fossil fuels. 

The current strategy for producing concrete is incredibly complex and involves plenty of anaerobic processes. Convincing corporations to make changes to the way they create concrete will be a challenge because these entities are already accustomed to this traditional method. This means that they have invested time, money, labor, and effort into maintaining all the machinery and manpower needed to keep these environmentally degrading practices alive. 

It’s commodifying inefficiency, normalized and understated to avoid public clamor.

Some companies are already looking into making concrete a more environmentally friendly substance. A company based in Halifax, Canada named CarbonCure discovered a process that takes liquified CO2 from ammonia and ethanol plants, and injects it into wet concrete while it is being mixed. This increases the concrete’s compressive strength and replaces some of the cement used in the process.

It’s an opportunity to repurpose the waste product of other industrial plants while minimizing the amount of time used to form concrete in a kiln, which requires high amounts of heat and pressure — around 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

Since the system is simple and easy to deploy, CarbonCure has a strong selling point. Concrete manufacturers do not need to implement massive shifts in their processes just to become more eco-friendly; this strategy only requires a little extra hardware.

Convincing the concrete industry to clean itself up won’t be easy work. Alexander and Jason brush on how concrete plays a pivotal role in funding and facilitating criminal activity, pointing out the challenges in convincing malicious actors to invest in ecologically friendly alternatives; but the problem runs deeper than that as well.

Prominent websites such as Taylor & Francis Online, The Guardian, the World Economic Forum have released stories on the seedy underbelly of concrete and construction, labeling the material as “the most destructive material on earth” and “the dirtiest business.” 

It’s disheartening to think that even after this podcast, concrete isn’t a standalone villain we can all gang up against. We’ve got an entire industry to hold accountable and demand transparency from.

Climate stability is one of TARTLE’s Big 7. While calling for action won’t be an easy feat, every small act we can generate towards this cause is a small step forward in the right direction. With the TARTLE platform, you have the opportunity to support groups, not-for-profits, or charitable organizations that work towards scientific research and development in this niche.

How much is your data worth? www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

Let’s talk about Dogecoin. We’ve had a lot of requests to discuss it since it has been in the news a lot, stirring up the online world with a sudden spike in price and a subsequent roller coaster of ups and downs. It’s known as the plucky little crypto that could, the gateway for the regular person to get into cryptocurrency without having to mortgage the house to get one or two Bitcoins. Or is it? Let’s dive into the doge pound. 

Started back in 2013, the meme currency chiefly differentiated itself from Bitcoin right off the bat by using a different, less resource intensive encryption method, which meant that it became much faster and cheaper to mine it as well as transfer it. That also resulted in a lot more of them becoming available in a short period of time. Which in turn made it easier to manipulate. Elon Musk provided the perfect example when he tweeted out his support of Dogecoin, causing that massive spike in its perceived value we mentioned earlier. It went from a fraction of a cent to $0.46 practically overnight. If someone had put down a mere hundred dollars a month before, they suddenly found themselves with a lot of money available to them. 

Yet, is it a currency? If you recall from our discussion on Bitcoin and whether it is a currency, one of the things that makes it so is whether or not it has fees associated with transferring it. Bitcoin has massive fees to do anything with it and while Doge has few fees, they still exist. It also is a centralized coin that has no real cap. It started with one but it was reached so quickly that they just pumped out five times that cap without thinking twice. 

It also has had its trade restricted by well-known trading apps like Robinhood. The story is that Doge was trading at such a high volume, it caused a system failure. Taking that explanation at face value it still sucks. It means that Robinhood’s code can’t handle a popularly traded stock or coin. It’s an indictment of the way they run their business. It’s as though they never thought to stress test their system. Normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal but it’s one of the most popular ways to buy and sell crypto of all kinds, including Dogecoin. 

How do you navigate all of this? All too often, people are constantly reacting. Whether it’s a tweet from Musk or Tom Brady adding laser eyes to his profile pic (this happened and the price of Bitcoin spiked. No joke). This reactive behavior is what is causing the price of Doge, Bitcoin, and others to fluctuate so much. No one is really looking for and getting solid data about what is happening right now. Actually happening, not what a random tweet asserts is happening. It isn’t hard to imagine how regular people are getting hurt here as they sell when they should hold and buy when they should wait. Not just regular people either, but funds and even professional investors can get sucked in when they are too greedy. 

That’s why TARTLE is such an advocate for getting hard, first person data to make decisions with. Instead of reacting, it’s possible to get a read on what is going on by actually talking directly to people. When a fund does that, they are making decisions not based on the latest tweet but on what real people are planning and perceiving. That is a much better approach than just following whatever pied piper comes along. If enough people can grasp this concept, perhaps the general behavior will change and people will look to fundamentals again instead of just memes and bring some stability back to the market.

What’s your crypto worth? www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

Let’s talk about Dogecoin. We’ve had a lot of requests to discuss it since it has been in the news a lot, stirring up the online world with a sudden spike in price and a subsequent roller coaster of ups and downs. It’s known as the plucky little crypto that could, the gateway for the regular person to get into cryptocurrency without having to mortgage the house to get one or two Bitcoins. Or is it? Let’s dive into the doge pound. 

Started back in 2013, the meme currency chiefly differentiated itself from Bitcoin right off the bat by using a different, less resource intensive encryption method, which meant that it became much faster and cheaper to mine it as well as transfer it. That also resulted in a lot more of them becoming available in a short period of time. Which in turn made it easier to manipulate. Elon Musk provided the perfect example when he tweeted out his support of Dogecoin, causing that massive spike in its perceived value we mentioned earlier. It went from a fraction of a cent to $0.46 practically overnight. If someone had put down a mere hundred dollars a month before, they suddenly found themselves with a lot of money available to them. 

Yet, is it a currency? If you recall from our discussion on Bitcoin and whether it is a currency, one of the things that makes it so is whether or not it has fees associated with transferring it. Bitcoin has massive fees to do anything with it and while Doge has few fees, they still exist. It also is a centralized coin that has no real cap. It started with one but it was reached so quickly that they just pumped out five times that cap without thinking twice. 

It also has had its trade restricted by well-known trading apps like Robinhood. The story is that Doge was trading at such a high volume, it caused a system failure. Taking that explanation at face value it still sucks. It means that Robinhood’s code can’t handle a popularly traded stock or coin. It’s an indictment of the way they run their business. It’s as though they never thought to stress test their system. Normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal but it’s one of the most popular ways to buy and sell crypto of all kinds, including Dogecoin. 

How do you navigate all of this? All too often, people are constantly reacting. Whether it’s a tweet from Musk or Tom Brady adding laser eyes to his profile pic (this happened and the price of Bitcoin spiked. No joke). This reactive behavior is what is causing the price of Doge, Bitcoin, and others to fluctuate so much. No one is really looking for and getting solid data about what is happening right now. Actually happening, not what a random tweet asserts is happening. It isn’t hard to imagine how regular people are getting hurt here as they sell when they should hold and buy when they should wait. Not just regular people either, but funds and even professional investors can get sucked in when they are too greedy. 

That’s why TARTLE is such an advocate for getting hard, first person data to make decisions with. Instead of reacting, it’s possible to get a read on what is going on by actually talking directly to people. When a fund does that, they are making decisions not based on the latest tweet but on what real people are planning and perceiving. That is a much better approach than just following whatever pied piper comes along. If enough people can grasp this concept, perhaps the general behavior will change and people will look to fundamentals again instead of just memes and bring some stability back to the market.

What’s your crypto worth? www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an early paradise he debunks. - Ludwig von Mises

That’s a pretty lofty view of economics and economists. As such it is far, far away from any view that most people have, especially of economists. Anyone who is even the slightest bit informed as to the track record of economists and their pronouncements will at best see them as something like a weatherman. In this view, the economist tries to make honest predictions based on the available data but gets it wrong more often than not. At worst, people see the economist as exactly the kind of charlatan Mises decries in the above quote. Economics as a discipline has lost a lot of respect. In short, economics is in trouble. 

A big part of the problem is that too many economists don’t actually start with data. Not that they don’t use data. What they do is start with a theory that they prefer and then find the data to support their theory, ignoring or explaining away everything else. And that is on a good day. On a bad day (which seems to happen more and more) the economist is just providing quasi-intellectual cover to justify the policies of whichever government or corporation that they are working for. You can definitely see this if you pay attention to politics. Each party has its favorite economists to trot out to justify what they are doing, or to attack what the other team is doing, regardless of what the policy is. I first noticed this when way back in the Clinton administration, there was a Democrat move to do away with the “marriage tax” and the Republicans opposed it. Once Bush was in office, the positions flipped. Not that I believe either party really cared about the tax. It was simply another political football. 

This is also apparent in the varying attitudes towards deficit spending. Both parties love it when they are in charge. They just spend it on slightly different things. If you pay too much attention to it, you just might drive yourself bonkers. 

Another issue is that modern economists are too focused on tinkering around with policy, hoping to manipulate the market to get the outcome they want. This leads to extremely shallow thinking as all they wind up doing is at best looking at surface data and then trying to manipulate that so it fits better with their vision. What they neglect is everything below the surface, everything that is actually driving the data they are responding to. 

Let’s get back to economists and their theories for a minute. Economists are often professors, teaching others about economics and how they work. One might be inclined to ask if they really know so much about economics, why aren’t they rich? Don’t they know how the systems work and how to make use of their knowledge to their own benefit? Perhaps it’s because there is more going on than their equations can account for.

That is one of the central aspects of Mises and his Austrian School of Economics, there is just too much data to actually absorb it all. With any economy, there are any number of variables that simply cannot be accounted for. That’s why Mises considered the idea of central planning and that one can control the market to be absurd. It is simply impossible to plan without knowing all the variables. Things will just happen whether you know the cause or not. Not only that, Mises understood that many if not most of the variables are not directly related to money, which is why he advocated for economists studying the social sciences.

Instead, perhaps we should be more humble and realize we can’t know everything and instead, observe the data as it is without imposing theories on it. Then perhaps we can move towards Mises’ goal of understanding the world a little better. 

What’s your economy worth? www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an early paradise he debunks. - Ludwig von Mises

That’s a pretty lofty view of economics and economists. As such it is far, far away from any view that most people have, especially of economists. Anyone who is even the slightest bit informed as to the track record of economists and their pronouncements will at best see them as something like a weatherman. In this view, the economist tries to make honest predictions based on the available data but gets it wrong more often than not. At worst, people see the economist as exactly the kind of charlatan Mises decries in the above quote. Economics as a discipline has lost a lot of respect. In short, economics is in trouble. 

A big part of the problem is that too many economists don’t actually start with data. Not that they don’t use data. What they do is start with a theory that they prefer and then find the data to support their theory, ignoring or explaining away everything else. And that is on a good day. On a bad day (which seems to happen more and more) the economist is just providing quasi-intellectual cover to justify the policies of whichever government or corporation that they are working for. You can definitely see this if you pay attention to politics. Each party has its favorite economists to trot out to justify what they are doing, or to attack what the other team is doing, regardless of what the policy is. I first noticed this when way back in the Clinton administration, there was a Democrat move to do away with the “marriage tax” and the Republicans opposed it. Once Bush was in office, the positions flipped. Not that I believe either party really cared about the tax. It was simply another political football. 

This is also apparent in the varying attitudes towards deficit spending. Both parties love it when they are in charge. They just spend it on slightly different things. If you pay too much attention to it, you just might drive yourself bonkers. 

Another issue is that modern economists are too focused on tinkering around with policy, hoping to manipulate the market to get the outcome they want. This leads to extremely shallow thinking as all they wind up doing is at best looking at surface data and then trying to manipulate that so it fits better with their vision. What they neglect is everything below the surface, everything that is actually driving the data they are responding to. 

Let’s get back to economists and their theories for a minute. Economists are often professors, teaching others about economics and how they work. One might be inclined to ask if they really know so much about economics, why aren’t they rich? Don’t they know how the systems work and how to make use of their knowledge to their own benefit? Perhaps it’s because there is more going on than their equations can account for.

That is one of the central aspects of Mises and his Austrian School of Economics, there is just too much data to actually absorb it all. With any economy, there are any number of variables that simply cannot be accounted for. That’s why Mises considered the idea of central planning and that one can control the market to be absurd. It is simply impossible to plan without knowing all the variables. Things will just happen whether you know the cause or not. Not only that, Mises understood that many if not most of the variables are not directly related to money, which is why he advocated for economists studying the social sciences.

Instead, perhaps we should be more humble and realize we can’t know everything and instead, observe the data as it is without imposing theories on it. Then perhaps we can move towards Mises’ goal of understanding the world a little better. 

What’s your economy worth? www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

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One of our big seven things we really care about at TARTLE is government and corporate transparency. Normally, when this topic comes up, we are calling one or the other out for their lack of transparency. Today, we actually get to go the other way for once. 

That is thanks to the governor of Alaska who recently ordered the justice department to investigate the state’s health department. If that sounds unusual, it is. Governments typically don’t publically announce that they are investigating themselves.

What could have prompted the unusual action? It turns out Alaska’s Health Department has been using data in ways that not the governor disapprove of, they may also have violated federal HIPAA laws. As with so many other things in the last year and a half, the situation was prompted by COVID. What they did was set a program to call senior citizens in Anchorage and enquire as to their vaccination status. The health department also outsourced that particular activity to third-party contractors. The program was begun to help people understand and take advantage of the availability of the COVID 19 vaccines. However, there are several questions to be asked. Did the seniors of Anchorage actually need any help with this? Did they ask for it? Did the health department actually ask them? What about the data? Whether or not a person has a particular vaccine is sensitive medical data, data that should not be getting shared with a third party, the ones doing the actual work. Finally, one has to wonder just what the state was doing with that data in the first place. Public emergency or not, the government should not have that kind of information about individuals. How did they acquire it and for what reason did they do so? 

Once data starts to get shared like that, from one group to the next, it becomes harder and harder to track exactly what is being done with it. The sovereignty over the data has been lost and anonymity, in this case, is obviously also compromised. From those third parties, a patient’s data could be sold virtually anywhere, including their identity. 

Fortunately, once news of the program got out (thanks to one of Anchorage citizens blowing the whistle), the governor stopped it and ordered the investigation. In at least this instance, Governor Mike Dunleavy showed real leadership. Not only did he shut down the program, he ordered the investigation, and even more importantly, did so publically. And it gets better. Dunleavy ordered a full review of all the data sharing agreements for the state, promising to put policies in place that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again. It isn’t often you see this kind of transparency coming from the government. For that, he should be commended. www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!

One of our big seven things we really care about at TARTLE is government and corporate transparency. Normally, when this topic comes up, we are calling one or the other out for their lack of transparency. Today, we actually get to go the other way for once. 

That is thanks to the governor of Alaska who recently ordered the justice department to investigate the state’s health department. If that sounds unusual, it is. Governments typically don’t publically announce that they are investigating themselves.

What could have prompted the unusual action? It turns out Alaska’s Health Department has been using data in ways that not the governor disapprove of, they may also have violated federal HIPAA laws. As with so many other things in the last year and a half, the situation was prompted by COVID. What they did was set a program to call senior citizens in Anchorage and enquire as to their vaccination status. The health department also outsourced that particular activity to third-party contractors. The program was begun to help people understand and take advantage of the availability of the COVID 19 vaccines. However, there are several questions to be asked. Did the seniors of Anchorage actually need any help with this? Did they ask for it? Did the health department actually ask them? What about the data? Whether or not a person has a particular vaccine is sensitive medical data, data that should not be getting shared with a third party, the ones doing the actual work. Finally, one has to wonder just what the state was doing with that data in the first place. Public emergency or not, the government should not have that kind of information about individuals. How did they acquire it and for what reason did they do so? 

Once data starts to get shared like that, from one group to the next, it becomes harder and harder to track exactly what is being done with it. The sovereignty over the data has been lost and anonymity, in this case, is obviously also compromised. From those third parties, a patient’s data could be sold virtually anywhere, including their identity. 

Fortunately, once news of the program got out (thanks to one of Anchorage citizens blowing the whistle), the governor stopped it and ordered the investigation. In at least this instance, Governor Mike Dunleavy showed real leadership. Not only did he shut down the program, he ordered the investigation, and even more importantly, did so publically. And it gets better. Dunleavy ordered a full review of all the data sharing agreements for the state, promising to put policies in place that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again. It isn’t often you see this kind of transparency coming from the government. For that, he should be commended. www.tartle.co

Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.

The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.

What's your data worth?

Find out at: https://tartle.co/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial

Spread the word!