Sorting Through the Wisdom of our Elders

 Among the many interesting aspects noted in Tyler Cowan's article, "The Inequality That Matters," one particular quote caught my attention.

 ". . . there is usually greater inequality of income among both older people and the more highly educated. . ."

The ethos that has been imparted into the minds of my generation has been "you have to go to college." Or "just go to college and everything will be okay." Certainly the numbers, as mentioned in the story, back up the increased income in persons with a secondary education versus those who do not. And numbers, as the saying goes, do not lie. But they can deceive.

There is one important element left out in that statistic: debt. The costs of college are exponentially growing and not necessarily commensurate with expected income. This is the information our parents didn't warn us about.

What high school students need to be taught is that a college loan, like any other loan, is an investment. Specifically, it is an investment in human capital. It is not a one-way ticket to the American dream.

The ethos began with my grandparents generation, the "Greatest Generation." They lived through the horrors of the Great Depression and World War II. The mere fact that we are here today is proof that they are survivors. They knew that nothing in life was guaranteed and that hard work and perseverance were the only paths to prosperity. 

Their children, the baby boomers, grew up with strict fathers, loving mothers and a belief that a life of hard work was the norm. They grew up in a relatively prosperous age. The Cold War ended and the Great Depression was simply a footnote in their history textbooks. What they came to discover was that there was a wealth of opportunities in the work force and they had not pursued their passions. The nine-to-five, cubicle enclosed, suburbia lifestyle tasted stale, and felt cold and empty.

Their belief was that the key to happiness was finding something you enjoyed and making a career out of it regardless of the money it brought you. The way to do this was "just go to college."

Some people accuse my generation of having a sense of entitlement. Damn right we have a sense of entitlement; look at the lie we were sold!  A big recession our parents never lived through hit us hard and now we have a generation of art, creative writing and film majors with enormous college bills and no prospects for our dream jobs we were told were out there waiting for us.

This is the reason I brought up the quote about income inequality. I have a friend who tends bar in Orlando and makes a killing in tips while not having to foster the college debt with which my art-major brethren struggle. His income may be less (although it could very well be more when compared to some) but he lacks debt and therefore has a higher net profit than many college graduates with low-paying degrees and high tuition costs.

If I could speak to my generation I would tell them three things. First, know the value of your career. There are plenty of aspiring artists, gym teachers and social workers out there. If you cannot separate yourself from the majority of them, maybe you should choose another career. Know that there are a finite number of jobs out there.

Second, know the cost of education versus the expected income of the degree. You'll have to crunch some numbers here but if the debt you incur is close to your expected income you might want to rethink some things. Maybe work as a waiter and bang out some community college classes while you figure out how to best invest in your career. Buck the rush-to-college-and-just-get-a-degree trend.

Third, pursue your passion but make sure its practical. We don't have to all be investment bankers but most of us will never work in our dream jobs so we should position ourselves in a manner that makes us valuable to employers but still allows us to enjoy ourselves.

No one should have to work a boring, soul-siphoning job for the rest of their lives but we certainly don't want to be unemployed with a sports journalism degree and $50,000 of debt. Find a happy medium.

Struggling With the Politics of Lyme

One of the topics I will deal with is the search for truth. I think there is a human tendency to pick an ideology early in life and stick with it because there is just too much information out there to process. But I see Cognitive dissonance and Dunbar's number as obstacles to be transcended and I think the first step is awareness.

A recent controversial debate has bubbled up concerning Chronic Lyme Disease. What's controversial about Lyme Disease? I'm glad you asked. The Roanoke Times produced a pretty comprehensive piece here. There is also a good documentary titled Under Our Skin.

Here is the nuts and bolts of the debate: due to the Borrelia burgdorferi spirochete, which can hide from blood tests, it is difficult to diagnose patients with Lyme. This creates a problem as, within the medical community (and the age of modernity), there tends to be a belief that if something doesn't have matter, it doesn't exist. The ISDA sets the following injunction for doctors that, if after four weeks of antibiotics for treatment of Lyme, symptoms still persist, then it is simply not Lyme. It would look something like this:

ISDA: "You're symptoms do not exist."

(That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I told you there'd be jokes.)

This led to many doctors to conclude that patients (mostly women) were simply depressed or wanting attention. Fortunately for many, there are doctors in small pockets of the country willing to treat long-term Lyme and cure most, if not all, of the symptoms. Now, this flies in the face of the ISDA's statement of non-existent, post-four-weeks Lyme symptoms. So now doctor's who treat long-term Lyme are facing license suspensions and malpractice suits.

After that brief introduction on my search for truth, you might be wondering if it appears I have already taken a side on this debate. The fact is, I have to battle emotion as I have a vested interest in this topic: my wife has chronic Lyme Disease. She went 10 months without a diagnosis (she was treated for bacterial infection, ear infection, fibromyalgia, POTS, and sadly, depression. See, that was a pun! Chalk up another joke!) before testing positive with the Western Blot test for Lyme. She had previously taken two ELISA tests for Lyme with negative results, which just goes to show the difficulty in testing for Lyme. For the past four months she has been treated with antibiotics with no signs of improvement.

Here's where the finger pointing begins. This ISDA (and the majority of the medical community) contend that these doctors are charlatans and long-term antibiotic treatment is harmful. There is certainly some truth to the latter but opponents of long-term antibiotic treatment have yet to address the issue of patients who have found success with said treatment. Since there are cases of patients being treated for chronic Lyme that have gotten seriously ill from the treatment, however, the ISDA has every right to be critical of these doctors that are not following the protocol accepted by the majority of the medical community. If there is no empirical test, how do you know it's Lyme you are treating?

Advocates of long-term treatment point right back and reveal that most of the ISDA board members are in the pockets of insurance companies that don't want to cover the costly long-term treatment of Chronic Lyme.

So here I am stuck in the middle with a wife who is too sick to work and costly health insurance set to only get worse once her COBRA runs out. Do I think she has Lyme? Probably. She does have empirical evidence although the lab tests are still considered controversial. The ISDA could be wrong but I think that has more to do with their demand for hard evidence and their egos (accepting Chronic Lyme would be admitting they were wrong) rather than the influence of insurance companies. All I know is that I have less faith in the health industry than I could ever imagine.

There is a truth in the middle of all this that I may never discover. She may be being treated for the wrong disease. Maybe she'll get better despite the treatment. Maybe she does have Lyme and it will take several years of treatment to recover. All I know is that I will never be fully convinced either way. Now there's a statement that speaks to my curious nature.

Genesis

2020 update

In the simplest of words, this blog is about me trying to understand what is good and what is true, and counting how many times I change my mind along the way.

Bayesian Fox is a reference to two things: Bayes' Theorem and Philip Tetlock's superforecasters.

I'm mostly interested in understanding human behavior, including, and perhaps especially, my own.

I get a lot of my inspiration from Scott Alexander. He believed in the Principle of Charity, writing:

"Charity is ... to assume that if you don’t understand how someone could possibly believe something as stupid as they do, that this is more likely a failure of understanding on your part than a failure of reason on theirs."

I believe in charity. I also believe in the quote by Richard Feynman:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool."

Finally, I am inspired by the Thomas Sowell quote, "There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs."

I hope this blog is a place where I can come to better understand others and avoid fooling myself. And I hope to always consider the tradeoffs. 

I have a particular interest in policy, partisanship, tribalism, and psychology.