Thoughts on Asian Outmarriage

This is well-known in the AA community as a hot-button issue. AA sites such as Goldsea and AsianFinest have had countless threads on this topic. It’s not surprising that, being a huge fan of social trends, I’ve been doing much reading on the matter and have interviewed individuals to hear anecdotal  experiences. 4 years of this amateur research has culminated in a fundamental realization: While wandering around Prague in the rain, the idea suddenly hit me that the discrepancy between marriage/dating between AM/WF and WM/AF is just due to economics.

It sounds deceptively simple (and really is nothing new from an economics point of view), but my reasoning is as follows: There is data out there that shows that Asian women are exceptional in that they are not biased towards their own race as all other women are. Instead, they are equally accepting of Asians and whites (but not of blacks, hispanics, etc.).

Disregard the males for now. They (like in most aspects of life) are irrelevant. You may assume for simplicity that there are the same percentages of a majority population (whites) that are open to dating a minority (asians). The exact numbers may be different, but that’s irrelevant to this argument.

Because of the asymmetricity in female preference versus male preference, you get the following:

Any Asian woman wandering the streets would act as a magnet and draw the attention of the white men who are open to dating Asians. They know that their odds of success are pretty good (even with an Asian male). For Asian males, even before we consider any cultural influences that may have made them gun-shy about approaching women, the numbers simply do not favour them. One cannot distinguish between white women who are open to Asian males and those who aren’t. Therefore, it is simply not worthwhile approaching a generic white woman because of the low expected return. Assume that the utility of acquiring an interracial mate is the same for white males and Asian males. To enjoy this utility, the Asian male has to expend more effort and approach many more women. There is a corresponding effort (time, money) involved in the pursuit of women. These contribute negative utils. For an Asian male, the net util from pursuing white women is probably negative. This is where opportunity costs come into play; the rational Asian male will most likely pursue other activities that have a higher net util (pursuing Asian women, working overtime, going on vacation).

If we disregard female initiation and pursuit, we get a model in which the gender/race imbalance is due to the high net utility of an Asian woman for a white male. If we want to rectify the imbalance, the only socially realistic method is to increase the proportion of white women who are open to dating Asians. As long as this key number stays low, one cannot expect rational Asian males to approach white women.

Applying microeconomic arguments to this issue is not novel either. I tip my hat to Awkward Utopia.

Spending Addicts

I’ve harped quite a bit that the US is living on the edge and that people need to get used to a reduced standard of living in the future. The reason is simple: the government and most people are consuming much more than their incomes can justify. The sad thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any repentence in the face of a crisis, just the same old deferment of apocalypse with deficit spending (see California). Somehow, the piper needs to be paid, which means much higher future tax rates or a collapse in the value of the dollar (either through inflation or default). Pick your poison. Get through the pain now while it’s still reasonable or have your children endure much greater suffering.

The CIA’s report of life in 2020 is quite gloomy, but reflects what is quite possible given exploding deficits. In short, start saving now and get used to living ascetically. Alternatively, you may choose to move to another country that has more stability, such as Canada or New Zealand.

Are Netbooks Worth It?

Since my European backpacking adventures is almost upon me, I’ve been thinking of taking along a netbook as my primary computer. That got me thinking about the popularity of netbooks in general and whether they are sufficient as one’s only computer. In my last post, I speculated that the performance is good enough to perform office tasks and web surfing. Streaming video and games are not there yet. This time around, I was sorely tempted by the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which offers 9.5 hours of battery life, 3lb lightweight design, and 92% full-size keyboard. Sadly though, I could not justify spending more on extraneous luxury products given the economy (a paradox, since my spending would help drive growth).

During my research, I found that Intel is trying to downplay the desirability of netbooks as a mass market device by casting them as toys for kids and cheap gimmicks. Still, consumers aren’t buying that argument. There is clearly pent-up market demand for small, mobile, cheap, and light computers that can all of what most people expect and desire. If Intel avoids leading the market, VIA and AMD need to pick up the slack in offering alternatives to the Atom. VIA’s Nano is a good start, but the company lacks the ability to get OEM penetration (a marketing skill), so sadly there are very few models available using that CPU.

Dollhouse Update

Well, a lot has happened over the past few years with respect to television. Ratings in general are on a perpetual spiral downward, but Dollhouse blew them all out of the water in comparison by scoring abysmal ratings (finale was 1.0 share), even lower than Firefly, which you remember was promptly canceled. Thus, everyone was expecting the worst for Dollhouse. Much to everyone’s surprise, the show was retained for another season. It turns out that angus63’s dire predictions of generals fighting the last war are not coming to pass for a few reasons:

1. Joss Whedon. Whedonesque is ecstatic about Joss’s ability to deliver in a second season, citing Buffy and Angel as the prime examples.  It seems that Fox is aware of this as well and is hoping for a more solid and coherent show.

2. Kevin Reilly. The president of Fox Broadcasting has a reputation for nurturing promising shows (see: The Office). Whedon has stated that the whole team at Fox has changed from the ones that destroyed Firefly, and it seems to be true: Whedon’s posts state that Fox is behind the show and gets the premise.

3. The importance of new media.  Perhaps due to being placed on the Friday night slot, Dolhouse didn’t perform as well by the Neilson ratings as indicative of its popularity. DVR, Hulu, and iTunes views undoubtedly influenced the decision, convincing the execs that the show has avant-garde viewers watching in nontraditional fashions. Now it’s up to broadcasters to monetize that population.

4. All in the family (acknowledgements to NickC).  Since Whedon (in the form of Mutant Enemy) and 20th Century Fox are also producers, Fox Broadcasting could ask them internally to reduce the show’s price tag and shoulder a larger share of production costs.

Despite the hope injected by the renewal, I feel that Whedon still has to tighten up the plot to attract viewers. Whedonesque speculates on why the show is not succeeding. If you ask me, it’s due to a lack of relatable characters. There is no sense of family or any romance, as was in all of Whedon’s previous forays into TV. Instead, all the characters put up barriers, making it difficult to become emotionally attached to anyone. Also, the fact that the show focuses on the gray areas between solid moral boundaries of technology, regular viewers lack a “hero” or a “villain” to identify with and root against. Each character on the show is complex and motivated by different priorities, which makes for an intriguing novel but a dense show (see Ice and Fire).

The Best Linux Games

A careful selection of the best games, given my 4 years using Linux.

OSS:
pingus
wormus
nexuiz
wesnoth
supertux
lincity
frozen bubbles
freeciv
freecol

Proprietary:
UT 2004
Neverwinter Nights
ETQW
sid meier alpha centauri
heroes of might and magic III

Windows Native on Wine
warcraft 3 (including all blizzard games)
aoe 2
medieval 2 total war
morrowind
spiderweb software games
baldur’s gate

Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating

What a gem! This article is an attempt at self-help disguised as satire while still hilariously grounded in reality.

Argh, Pirates!

In the wake of The Pirate Bay’s defeat in court and subsequent retaliation, I thought it would be appropriate to link to a tribute honouring pirates in history.

Reflections on the Depression

Obama just fired off a few speeches on shared sacrifice. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke is urging the government to spend more to recrank the economic engine. Apparently, Keynes’s popularity came about because he was the only one who offered activist ideas to stimulate the economy (aside from the tired supply-side idea of tax cuts). Not to be cynical or anything, but it seems that everyone turns Keynesian when we enter a recession and become supply-side when we are in boom years. Anyways, we can look at the example of Japan in the late 1980s, when it experienced an asset-inflated bubble, 80% tumble in the stock market, and heavy government spending to stimulate growth. The result has been a decade of stagnation and now the world’s highest debt as a percentage of GDP. What’s more, the Japanese people have essentially capitulated and given up on spending and are instead saving 50% of their wealth in low-yielding savings accounts (even at close to 0% interest).

Other academics have made similar calls for consumers to up their spending to counter the “paradox of thrift” that emerges when everyone saves at once in the face of a recession. For consumers, there is usually no choice; the average person is so indebted that there was no way spending could grow further. The massive credit overload that drove economic growth in the Bush years turned out to be illusory. The ensuing cycle of corporate losses, job cuts, and more consumer spending cutbacks makes for a deflationary cycle that is difficult to counter. Again, I reference Japan’s ongoing experience of collapsing consumer confidence, which is not an unlikely fate for more countries that don’t clean up their financial systems. However, on a personal level, I would recommend to everyone I know to save more in the face of the unknown. It’s a good idea to always spend less than one’s income while building up rainy day funds and long-term nest eggs. Personally, I save about 80% of my meager earnings each month – ab0ut $1600 from my TA job gets funneled into my savings account on payday, without debate. My checking account always has $500 in it at the beginning of each month, which is the hard limit for any spending in that month (typically $385 rent and $100 food). Since the recession hit, I have talked of cutting back even more, to the derision of Wayne, who says, “Any more belt-tightening and you’ll sever your GI tract.”

Granted, there have been moderate voices calling for alternatives to the current overreaction. Most notably, a package proposal by Jeffrey Miron relies on a rebalancing of spending, taxation, and immigration to get the country out of the malaise. However, those ideas are politically nonstarters because of their innocuous nature. The changes would be smart even during boom years, but in desperate straits, politicians want to be seen as active and energetic. What did Obama/Summers/Geithner say about this? Something like “it’s better to err on the side of action”? Perhaps not always. Greg Mankiw has a graph showing that in the long run, economic activity decreases due to crowding out. In other words, spending more might make the recession shallower, but it will make everyone worse off 10 years from now.

What is amazing about the current recession is the global nature of it. Economies everywhere are collapsing. Count Iceland, Brazil, the Eastern European Bloc, Russia, Dubai, Japan, and UK as the countries whose exposures are so deep that they will need bailouts from the IMF in the end (or at least see massive social upheval and unchecked populist rage). There will be widespread misery and maybe even some revolutions akin to after the First World War before it all passes. On a smaller scale, deteriorating job markets have are depressing wages for those who still have jobs while at the same time the unemployed cannot hope to find jobs that pay as much as they once did. If nothing else, the range of jobs hit – from executives to golddiggers – has been breathtaking.

Epiphany of the Day

Illustrating the birth a new open-source developer:

Hmm… There’s this thing called Linux.
Ubuntu seems to be the distro everyone’s using.
What’s does Debian-based mean?
Gah! I’m fed up with my programs being out of date, let me switch to Fedora.
Fedora’s stability sucks. How about Arch/Gentoo?
Even with the latest program, ___ feature doesn’t exist/work properly.
Hey wait, the source code is available.

Women in CS

A recent article on the NYT reminded me of a glaring issue in academia – gender imbalances in different departments. I do not consider this a social injustice like my liberal arts classmates do; rather, I think it’s a natural reflection of societal pressures and preferences. Like it or not, men are drawn to high-paying, high-pressure situations with minimal social contact. Engineering actually piqued the interests of some rather nerdy math whizzes I knew from high school, offering them a challenge to keep them away from drugs hacking DoD computers. Women, on the other hand, tend to be drawn to more cooperative disciplines that involve dealing with people. So, rather than constantly wonder how to “solve” the problem of a shortage of women in technical fields, let’s attribute it to a societal phenomenon that’s best left alone. After all, why aren’t we trying to solve the shortage of women in American Football or men in English class? Heck, women outnumber men in terms of undergraduate degrees bestowed and we’re not raising a ruckus about that. The cynic in me says that the men probably like it that way.

Some would argue that we are losing perspectives or a diverse set of views. Nonsense. There’s still a baseline 20% women in computers. They could provide the insight. If not, the men in the field who want female input can consult female colleagues, friends, or neighbours.

With that said, we should carefully examine and understand the structural causes of this difference. After all, we know that this difference in preference is not bestowed at birth; countries in Eastern Europe boast much higher proportions of women in technology. In other words, is there something about American culture that causes women to prefer interacting with people, which results in fewer choosing to go into CS.

I had a discussion of this last year with a female classmate in the CS deparment at Berkeley. She said, “we (women) like computers, but not the isolation,” which reinforces my theory that it is the perceived nature of computing that prevents it from becoming attractive to women. That is to say, women are exposed at an early age to images of the technogeek who speaks in l33t and other jargon but sadly lacks social skills; this creates a stereotype of the field as not being conducive for interpersonal interactions.

For other conversations on the matter, I present an old article by Phil Greenspun of MIT way back in 1995 as well as this post with excerpts from papers, well-argued points, and a nice summary of the issue.