I took this photo yesterday morning as we began our journey home from holiday. It was taken at the Wiveton Hall Cafe run by the Norfolk Tea Company, looking out over the marshes to the sea. And yes, I do drink tea, not least after already enjoying two double-shot black Americanos in a morning. Their tea is very good: some came home with us.
The place was fairly quiet (although I was recognised by one customer), and we had the chance to reflect on a few days off.
The lesson for me is that I do not need to try to do so much, and that some things can wait. In truth, most of what I do probably isn't quite as time-critical as I usually think it is. I could probably, in fact, sometimes take more time to advantage.
But there was an unresolved question. I have noticed that some of the more technical articles here, like the ones on myths and the glossary posts, attract fewer reads. I think they are important. Both Jacqueline and I also think the quantum posts (which we know do not excite everyone) are significant because, in the background, they are deeply informing my thinking on the politics of care and the economics of hope. But is there just too much variety here? Are there any priorities I should note?
So, might I ask a few questions? What matters most on this blog? You can answer as many times as you like.
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Does it matter if people don’t engage so much with certain series? I know it would be nice for every piece of work you output to have a lot of (external) impact, and the metrics would look better, but…
The impression I get, from over a decade of reading your blog, is that you’ll create these pieces regardless of external feedback. That’s not a bad thing. As you’ve said yourself, many times, writing is how you process ideas. Some of that writing will, inevitably, miss the mark with many of your readers. Does that matter? Not really, in my opinion. You were going to do the writing – it’s part of your creative process – better that it’s out there and a few people might have lightbulb moments, than worry overly that it won’t get as much engagement as some other content.
The flip side to this, is that you can use the content that doesn’t land so well to inform you how to reframe topics for better engagement. If your output was low, then the argument would be for increasing focus. But your output is high. You can afford for bits and pieces to miss, despite the hit to the ego this may illicit from time to time 🙂
As always, thank you for your prodigious efforts! And keep up the good work!
Thanks
And even this comment will help inform a discussion here in 30 minutes time…
Personal preference: I don’t often watch your videos but would be lost without the transcripts. I’m used to reading stuff, and it’s so much easier to go back and check some detail in what you’d said.
Noted
Gotta kiss those frogs to find those princes! And other phrases to that effect…
🙂
“The flip side to this, is that you can use the content that doesn’t land so well to inform you how to reframe topics for better engagement. ”
Some of the “theory” comments are above my paygrade. I read all threads but do not always comment (engage) as many times I may not know or am not confident what I am talking about as I might not have thoroughly and exactly understood what I read.
That’s OK
That’s where we all are, depending on the topic.
A lot of your work enables me to engage in a more informed debate elsewhere. I can’t be the only one.
Different people will draw on different aspects and that is good. One tune bands have limited impact.
Agree with Johan above.
Thanks
I’m always amazed at the number and variety of posts you put out here and although – like many others – you are usually my first port of call every day, I might not read everything on the day you post it, especially if it requires a bit more brain power! (I haven’t read much of the quantum series yet, but definitely plan to) One of the many beauties of your blog is that I can come back when I have more time and headspace (work still interfering with that 🙂 to give them the attention they deserve, so I hope you will continue to post on anything and everything that you feel is important – I’ll get to it. To pinch a phrase – KUTGW!
Many thanks
I hesitated to choose between ‘discussion on the economy’ and ‘everything’ as I came for economic ideas and understanding, but enjoy the breadth.
How to get across some of the technical items? Personally I find a video can be refreshing, I read most of what you write but a video, especially with some graphics, is more engaging. Debunking Laffer’s Curve and shining a light into the ‘Black Hole’ I thought really good.
Thinking about the people you want to inform, who are not yet engaged; are they various groups or one? What are they thinking? If I’m a drowsy frog in the dangerous but soporific pot of modern economic thinking, how am I to wake up and jump? Are you aiming to refresh and revive the frogs, and also change the minds of the cooks, the economists and politicians?
I have sought out a video on the basis of a short, but they are a vehicle in their own right, you can get across an idea in 2-3 minutes. I think they could grab you some new viewers and maybe readers.
I have really appreciated the Economics Questions series and the Quantum series – they complement each other and the latter are getting more accessible to me after the first few. Without the groundwork of fiat currency, spend-then-tax and bond market myths, I might think it less achievable.
I also follow a good video (plus blog) series on gardening, and find the playlists are very useful for finding what I want. Looking at yours, ‘Economic Myths’ is thin, a ‘Begin here’ or ‘Caring politics & how to fund it’ category might be good. ‘Tax wealth not Work’ is a current mantra, and you’ve plenty of material to explain how we can tax the income from wealth fairly simply.
You’ve so much good material, I think organising it for new eyes (and maybe adding some introductory material) could help spread the word.
Very glad you’ve had a good time away from keyboard and lens.
We need to work on that organisation. task…
Even if I only understand some small point in your technical pieces, they are still worthwhile reads. Your variety of posts is valuable. Keep them coming.
Thanks
I couldn’t engage with the ‘quantum’ series at all. I think that was because I did not understand what they were on about, primarily down to the language used. I have never understood why quantum mechanics uses the word quantum. Similarly with the ‘questions’ series I found them difficult to engage with when I didn’t know enough about the people involved. Both my responses there were strange as I have no problem engaging with many of your posts when I knew nothing about the subject matter to begin with. It may be that I knew I had difficulty with earlier posts in the series, so didn’t try. Perhaps if they had not been flagged as part of a series I may have tried each one and done better?
However, as someone else has said, does it matter if some posts have less engagement? There is still huge engagement anyway.
Noted, and thank you.
Classical mechanics describes what is happening to an object in the universe. Quantum mechanics is agnostic about objects. It divides the universe up into quants and then describes what is happening in a quant. There are no objects, no matter, no mass, only energy. What happens to energy in a quant determines what physical properties emerge, which we call physical objects. Economics is rather agnostic about objects. It calls everything a widget. So it makes sense to me that economics is describing the energy process that is behind the emergence of widgets.
@ Bill
Interesting way of describing QM, and different from the lens I usually look through. I’ll certainly muse on your description.
@ Cyndy
To address why quantum mechanics is called quantum mechanics, from a different perspective: when we describe very small things (very very small things… like electrons or photons) their behaviour and properties can’t be described in the same way we describe big things (like humans, tennis balls, cars etc). Where big things have a position, for example, electrons have an energy.
Why is this quantum? Well, because, like a guitar string being plucked, which plays one note (vibrates at one frequency), with the note determined by its length (which fret are you fretting?), mass (how thick is it?) and tension, electrons can only occupy single specific energy values. These values are separated and discrete. The energy levels are quantised.
Or, perhaps, like climbing up a ladder. You can only stand on the rungs, you can’t stand in-between the rungs. Each rung is an energy state you can occupy, and you can only occupy those quantised rungs/states. QM quickly gets quite difficult and not intuitive beyond these basic descriptions, but the above is about as close to real-world analogies as I can get.
But, to answer your question, the quantisation of states is where the name Quantum Mechanics comes from.
Thanks
That makes more sense
On further overnight reflection, and after writing my original response on QM…
I’m really sorry Bill, but your explanation, using Quants, is just not correct. I don’t know what your background is (this is where we learn that he is a Physics professor) but…
“There are no objects, no matter, no mass, only energy”
This is false. How do we know? The first commonly cited term of the time-independent Schrodinger Equation (which can be used to calculate QM properties) is:
-h/(4 * pi * m) * d^2 psi/dx^2
where ‘h’ is the Plank’s constant (don’t worry too much about this, it links particle properties with wave properties and energy)
and ‘m’ is the mass of the particle being described by the wavefunction ‘psi’ (don’t worry overly about wavefunctions either – they are a way of probabilistically describing the behaviour of small things in energy fields)
So, clearly there is mass, and indeed, when we talk about solid-state physics (which is where part of my knowledge specialism is) we use the mass of electrons (and holes in the case of semiconductors), moving through our solids, as part of the description of the overall conductivity of the solid.
The wikipedia page on the Schrodinger equation – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger_equation – provides a much better typeset version of the Schrodinger Equation, and a comprehensive, but mind bending, explanation of how it works, for anyone who fancies a bit of ‘light’ bedtime reading…
One final thought:
In semiconductors, we talk about heavy- and light- electrons and holes. The relative mass of these particles relates to the direction that they are travelling through the semiconductor material. Light-electrons have higher mobility (move faster) than heavy-electrons.
Now – if we were to consider a parallel analogy for economics, is there such a thing as a heavy-pound and a light-pound? I don’t know if this would be a useful concept? But the thought experiment over a cup of coffee might be a bit of fun…
Don’t we have to go to photons to avoid mass?
Photons have no rest mass, but they do have momentum
So kind of yes, they have no mass, but it’s not quite the whole truth 🙂
Accepted.
Hi
I don’t think you should (and I don’t think you ever shall) only focus on topics that are popular. I think that would be going down a dead end, both for your own thinking and the people reading/watching.
Further to this, what you write is an expression of your thought processes and helps you to further these. Therefore you’re not actually going to be stopping the thinking on any topic, even if you stopped the actual writing of that particular thinking.
So as long as you feel it’s worthwhile to your thinking, then write as much as you want on whatever you want.
Years and years of increasing engagement with your work shows that overall it’s a resounding success.
Thanks
Appreciated
I read everything as it comes out. Occasionally I disagree. Often I plan to come back to chase up an extension or a reference, and seldom manage it. I do my best to pass on the simpler points (eg country isn’t a household) which I think I understand better than some others. But I’m not an expert, and my time is limited. But what is meta-valuable in all your posts is the original thinking on a wide variety of topics, which is something no-one else can do as you do. So KUTGW. It’s needed.
Thanks
KUTGW – I don’t read everything, I do not understand everything (although I try!), and I do not always comment on that which I have read, although I do read many of the comments – I then bore the pants of people in the hopes they too will engage – I call it continuing education – thank you.
🙂
PS – so pleased that you and Jaqueline had a good and restful time in Norfolk – I do not know Cley, although I have visited Blakeney where we went for school outings. I spent many happy days (and indeed weeks) elsewhere in Norfolk too – Wroxham Broad – mucking about in boats, and possibly boating about in muck. There was a Pike (fish) that was rumoured to be so big, that it had to go to the middle of the Broad to turn around – such were the fables of yesteryear. A few wherries were still in action in my time there, and a retired wherryman, Captain Webb, used to come round early on a Sunday for a dram! He told us many stories, including how they used to catch pike by attaching a small fish to a line off a floating straw bale with a small dead fish attached, so when the bale began to spin, they knew that a pike had taken the bait – fortunately this is no longer allowed. You brought back many good memories – thank you.
And thank you. It was a vgery good break.
The ‘to do’ list looks rather long today….
I prefer to read the transcript rather than watch video’s
Question, when do most people visit the site?
Might that me useful to know – or even if you did know it would not necessarily change how you do things? – which I can understand.
7 am
12 noon
The early evening
Weekends – any time
An early morning publishing programme suits me
I like the videos, but prefer reading the transcripts a few times. I appreciate that the videos will be more popular with a younger audience. They are exceptionally well made. I would be using them as teaching aids if I was still in the classroom. I wonder if any current economics teachers use them. I find myself uncannily agreeing with most of your take on the news and its implications, which is very reassuring. I also listen a lot to LBC where I tend to agree a lot with James O’Brien. I’m surprised he doesn’t have you on more often. He’s politically astute and knows what’s going on, but he’s not sure or confident on the economics.
Keep up your good work. I’m sure you are making a positive difference to the political direction of travel.
Thanks.
James O’Brien has been very complimentary about me.
But I am rarely invited.
Agree with Johan mainly. Some longer pieces going into more depth like the recent one on bonds are useful as sometimes the shorter ones leave obvious questions unanswered. I couldn’t get a foothold on quantum economics, though that’s no reason for stopping it – there’s plenty else to ponder. Yes keep the video transcripts. And the bird watching!
And thanks, as ever!
Thanks