52 Things I Learned in 2021

 As always, these are just in a general order of when during the year I catalogued them. Standard caveats apply--namely, an item learned does not establish its truth value or materiality. 

1. The 16th digit in a credit card number is simply a check digit based on a formula for the first 15 digits (the actual number). A great example of the value of redundancy from this Tim Harford post that is filled with great examples of both redundancy and brevity--like writing an entire email in the subject line alone with such a short message will suffice.

2. & 3. From the same episode of 99% Invisible: The lampposts in NYC's Central Park each have a unique four-digit number on them which can be used for easy navigation. The first two digits are the closest cross street. The second two show which side of the park the lamppost is on (even for east, odd for west) and how deep into the park it is (smaller is closer to the edge). 

The Swiss military had/has elaborate but nearly invisible defenses built throughout its countryside and cities. All of it to help protect it from invasion well into the Cold War, which had the added value of helping to maintain its neutral stance. From the episode, "Switzerland would eventually build out enough bunker space to house the country’s entire population with room to spare — with a buffer of over 10%, no other country’s shelter capacity comes close."

4. Christmas spending is just not that significant despite what you might suspect. In fact it has been getting relatively smaller over the past 80 years. "For every hundred dollars spent across the year in the U.S., just 30 cents are attributable to Christmas retail spending," according to Joel Waldfogel's Scroogenomics as quoted in this Tim Harford post. Also of note, Christmas was illegal in colonial Massachusetts. 

5. The older and more common response phrase is you've got "another think coming" rather than "another thing coming," which is what I've always said. My version is close in American English, and it's been getting closer over my lifetime, FWIW.

6. When Roe v. Wade was first decided it came with the general support of the Southern, Protestant religious right. I found this out reading this Scott Sumner post about what life was like back in 1973 including compared to now. If you think the abortion fact is weird, take a look at the miniskirts of the Middle East including in Afghanistan.

7. "Asian spices such as turmeric and fruits like the banana had already reached the Mediterranean more than 3000 years ago. . . ." Globalization is older than we might think. (HT: Tyler Cowen)

8. When Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO) closed the opening prayer of the 117th Congress by saying "amen and awoman", he was not being woke. He was clumsily making a very old joke as pointed out by John McWhorter on FIRE's So To Speak podcast.

9. Today's amphetamine treatments for ADHD are derived from sketchy 1950s diet pills, but they are not methamphetamines and Ritalin is not an amphetamine at all--so, many kids on ADHD medication are not on "speed", but the Adderall kids technically are. 

10. & 11. From the same episode of Every Little Thing: Most people breathe primarily through one nostril at a time plus the gross facts that every day we swallow the equivalent of about three wine bottles full of mucus filled with outside things that we have breathed in.

Wombats' poop comes out as very dense, hard cubes (i.e., they shit bricks). 

12. In the prime of his career Tiger Woods almost quit to become a Navy SEAL. 

13. From Joseph Henrich's book WEIRDest People in the World: when humans developed the ability to learn and to use language, their brains physically changed, and it impeded the part of the brain that is used to recognize faces.

14. One container ship today carries more freight than the entire English merchant fleet 400 years ago, with a fraction of the crewhttps://t.co/9ERrmD0sev pic.twitter.com/pwYY14m1PT

— Jeremy Horpedahl 🍞 (@jmhorp) February 28, 2021

15.  Lots from this video such as: There are more hydrogen atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the world's oceans; you can fit all of the planets between the Earth and the Moon with room to spare; Australia is wider than the moon; . . . and many more.

16. The famous part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech that we all remember, the emphatic conclusion, was not from the speech he had painstakingly prepared to give but rather was an off the cuff adaptation made up in the moment.

17. Society of the Cincinnati is the oldest patriotic, hereditary society in America. It has very selective and interesting rules for membership.

18. The Murray-Hill Riot (a.k.a. Montreal's Night of Terror) was new to me. It shows how tenuous at times the wall between order and chaos and how important good police presence can be.

19. With the emergence of the Brood X cicadas in 2021, I learned about how these 13 & 17-year insect events work.

20. Viva la Excel!

21. From the two remnants (Jonah Goldberg and Chris Stirewalt) on these two episodes of The Remnant I learned that large turn out elections do not necessarily favor Democrats. This is a conventional wisdom myth.

22. Conservationists sometimes transport Rhinos upside down via helicopter.

23. Queen Elizabeth is sorta technically the world's largest landowner. 

24. Icebergs always float with about 10% of their mass above the water (tip of the iceberg and all), but their shape determines which part is up and exposed. 

25. In 1930 the Indiana Bell Building was Rotated 90° While Everyone Inside Still Worked!

26. Robert P. McCulloch was the amazing entrepreneur who purchased London bridge, which, as I knew before, was dismantled brick-by-brick and reassembled in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. I did not know that he did it as an effort to bring tourists and publicity to his town nor did I know that he was the inventor of the light, one-person chainsaw. (HT: David Henderson)

27. The awful practice of forcing Jews to wear a yellow star to identify them to unsuspecting others originated not with the Nazis but well before that in the European middle ages.

28. There are a bunch of things I learned from these cool guides. One is the difference between a swamp and a marsh. Another is the signs a dog will bite. Still another is interpretation of tree rings. And more . . .

29. Humans make up just 1/10,000th of Earth's biomass. We are dwarfed slightly by livestock and greatly by fish (neither too surprising to me), vastly by arthropods (somewhat surprising), and colossally by bacteria (greatly surprising). 

30. Two words: Reindeer Cyclones.

31. I was surprised to learn of these contemporary and relatively important people who opposed the decision to use nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945.

32. Over the past eight years, a Chinese billionaire has died on average every 40 days--in case you're wondering, there aren't enough of them to make that a normal, nothing-to-see-here statistic. This appears to be wrong on its face as well as once the proper framing is applied. I regret the error. 

33. "Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy — a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United States did so." -- From The Invisible Hook

34. Thomas Jefferson's awkward (to say the least) and wrongful position of being a slaveholder had no easy answer for resolution. It was complicated not just by him having inherited his slaves, but that it was an extreme impracticality for him to ever free them. It was statutorily illegal for him to do so, and more importantly his debts outweighed his assets meaning there was no way for him to free them and discharge the debt. Rather he would have to auction them off to other potentially much worse slaveholders which very likely would mean breaking up the slaves’ families.

35. Among so many things in mixology Peter Suderman's Substack has taught me, perhaps the most impactful was what I didn't know or appreciate about sweet Vermouth.

36. This insane development was begun in 2014 in Turkey and sits abandoned, partially finished. It was to be a luxury housing development for wealthy Gulf tourists based on a Disney inspiration it would seem. Here is more on what was to be the Burj Al Babas.

37. Spiders sometimes eat snakes.

38. In what is an unintentional tribute to spontaneous order and entrepreneurial problem solving, the Lagos megachurches are becoming relatively well-run cities unto their own. Perhaps an African-Christian version of Burning Man?

39. The reason horse terms were originally used in describing things about cars and naming some car brands is that many people greatly hated cars as a replacement to their beloved horses, and this marketing technique made peace with those who were so strongly opposed to automobiles.

40. "Organic farming is less polluting than conventional farming when measured per unit of land but not when measured per unit of output." From this abstract which includes hints that magnitude matters. 

41. These facts about Ireland during WWII including that the country was neutral. 

42. From The Soho Forum's Bill Kristol vs. Scott Horton Debate on U.S. Interventionism I learned that Somalia is the U.S.'s longest war rather than Afghanistan. 

43. Hard to summarize, but I learned a lot about genetics from this Richard Hanania CSPI podcast interview of Razib Khan. 

44. Dog's noses are amazing. I knew that. But I didn't know how those slits on the side of the nostrils work or how they can triangulate the source of a smell especially with the help of another dog. 

45. The vastness of the Walt Disney World complex is incredible including how big the parking lots are.

46. Coincidental with the prior item, I learned about this utopian city in India, Auroville, that has a strange Epcot focal point among other things strange and non-utopian. (HT: Scott Alexander)

47. Also from Scott Alexander I learned about all these phenomenal families. 

48. LBJ's daughter once kept a cat fetus in the White House private residence's freezer for months--from the ELT podcast.

49. The best-selling novel I, Libertine was a total hoax played on the elite, snob-class created by late-night radio host Jean Shepherd. 

50. A Bar-tailed Godwit set a world record by flying more than 8,100 miles nonstop! between Alaska and New South Wales, Australia. 

51. I learned about some recent tragic developments in horse racing. These trends look particularly bad and bad for the sport, which will be a future WWCF topic.

52. Philip Van Doren Stern wrote a short story in 1943 titled The Greatest Gift inspired by a dream he had. Because he couldn't find a publisher, he sent 200 copies of it to friends as Christmas cards. That led to a publisher taking interest and publishing it in book form in 1944. Then two magazine publications printed it one in each of the years 1944 and 1945. Eventually it came to the interest of Hollywood where it was adapted and resold to eventually becoming the 1946 Frank Capra film staring Jimmy Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life.

Chokeholds Reconsidered - 2021 New Year's Resolution Fulfillment

I fulfilled my perpetual, annual New Year's Resolution in 2021 by changing my mind on the desirability of banning police chokeholds. 

The list of improvements we could make to reduce police state abuses is long. However, one specific policy that I no longer endorse is to ban police chokeholds in all circumstances. It is my view that banning chokeholds for police is a net negative as that leads to more violence including more deadly violence but also the use of batons and other instruments that can inflict long-term damage. 

Forbidding chokeholds negates the ability for a single even well-trained officer to subdue a violent noncompliant subject without using deadly violence. I came to this conclusion after listening to this Sam Harris interview with Rener Gracie, master of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu whose grandfather invented it and who has trained police officers around the country. 

This is not to say that chokeholds should be used often or without extreme reservation. It also is not to say that chokeholds are in any way a non-violent police tactic. Yet completely taking this tool away seems likely to cause more harm than good.

This does reinforce and speak to my bias that banning things is a bad, blunt-force instrument. The world is more complicated than that. And unintended consequences almost always result from such actions.

BONUS: Additionally I changed my mind on my reaction to treating kids with Adderall, et al.  I still think we over prescribe drugs to kids in these circumstances for selfish reasons and we don’t have nearly enough tolerance for deviations from a desired norm—quiet, obedient children. But the dose makes the poison and there are very legitimate uses of dangerous things including of course many drugs. I thank Scott Alexander and his post on how much drugs problematic drug users actually use for changing my mind.

Hélio Gracie

You're Allowed Cynical Beliefs But Not Cynical Reactions

Society rewards cynical beliefs and optimistic reactions while at the same time it punishes optimistic beliefs and cynical reactions. 

Consider that a politician is given wide latitude to sow distrust in the system and the powers that be but would be viewed as naïve for believing things work by and large pretty well and our default position should be charitable benefit of the doubt. Similarly a politician would be expected to embrace a development as beneficial to his side while being seen as a sour puss or exhibiting sour grapes to downplay a successful event.

This is not just a political phenomenon. CEOs must be grounded realists who only crack a smile when championing an outcome. Otherwise, they should be on the lookout for the next problem. Yet if a problem arises, they get no credit for being dismissive.

Perhaps the biggest exemplification can be found in everyday life where nobody wants to hear about the downside after a positive moment and at the same time nobody wants to hear how it will probably all be okay in the face of fear. Rather one should doubt the future and champion any moment of progress while rejecting hope and brushing aside any consideration that ulterior motives may be at play.

Social media amplifies these truths orders of magnitude due to the network and feedback-amplification effects. 

I am a bit ambivalent on this in general. I both fight and embrace my personal tendency toward cynicism. It can negatively bias one's thought process like a disease, but it can also provide healthy critical analysis. A good journalist has a proper balance in regard to cynicism. They are not a cheerleader for their beat nor a pure curmudgeon. 

We are all and always have been journalists in one way or another to greatly varying degrees of quality. Today's technology makes this more apparent, but it has always been the case. We gather facts, analyze data, and relate stories. Some are better than others and some do it for pay while others do it for pleasure (or shear necessity of living in a society). 

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2021-11-11 Addendum: As a personal example of this, I offer how as a fan of OU football any optimistic outlook I hold is seen as being a “homer”, a derisive label. At the same time a cynical take on the team’s prospects is seen as wise and level-headed. Further, if the team does well, it is widely viewed as uncouth to not give them credit for their success. Even more so, if they do poorly, one is not allowed to point out ways the opponent got lucky, etc.

I do not find these social norms to be desirable, tbs.

What You Think Versus How You Think

What is more important: what you think or how you think? 

To what degree is it fair to hold people accountable for what they think. Cognitive dissonance should be relative to rational ignorance. It seems unfair to hold people highly accountable for beliefs and other thoughts they shouldn't have legitimately thought much about or simply haven't had much exposure to. Further, what you think is subject to social desirability bias and group identity--factors that are so ingrained as to be a bit out of our immediate control. I think of that not as a pure get-out-of-jail card for bad thoughts (or thinking--see below) but rather as a relaxation of culpability.

How someone thinks implies an examination of reasoning, and that seems to be a much more legitimate way to evaluate thinking. What someone thinks should ultimately be governed by how they think not the other way around. Unfortunately we tend to give a very shallow evaluation of others including leaders especially politicians by getting hung up on what they think.

Consider this 2x2 analysis:

In this framework there should be high stakes if the thinking that went into an eventual thought was thorough (deep/rich), but low stakes if the thinking was not. We are rewarding good thoughts and punishing bad thoughts, but the degree to which we do so is dependent on the thinking (process) that created and supported the thought (conclusion). One implication is that more intelligent people should bear a greater burden for their thoughts. 

Another is that a bad conclusion from a thorough process should carry higher blame than would a bad conclusion from a shallow process--the bigger the inconsistency, the bigger the crime. Don't confuse that with allowing a thinker to get off easy for a bad thought when they should have thought more deeply before forming a conclusion. For that we have to change the framework.

To wit: the framework is transposed a bit when we switch from considering thought accuracy (is the thought right, correct, good, moral, etc.) to considering thought significance.

Now the framework assigns greater scrutiny to the interaction of the level of thinking and the meaningfulness of the thought rather than the level of thinking given the ultimate outcome. One obvious implication is that thoughts of trivial/minor significance deserve low stakes regardless of the reasoning level that goes into forming them. 

It is easy but false to assume all thinking should be deep/rich. That is simply not possible. It is out of our grip most of the time. We either don't have the time or the mental faculty or both. Therefore, one implication is don't hold confidently to high-significance thoughts if you did not employ deep/rich thinking in deriving them. Another implication is don't put deep/rich thinking into trivial/minor thoughts. 

How does this compare to the real world experience? I think level of reasoning is generally a non factor in most people's framework most of the time. Rather it all comes down to does it feel good and is it me or like me:

My claim is that reasoning is given very little credit for most people most of the time. Perhaps this is defensible to a degree given the vast ulterior motives we all possess. While that is an apt explanation, it is not a reasonable justification. 

Related: See Arnold Kling's review of The Mind Club.  

Justifying Bitcoin (and Crypto) Prices

Steve Landsburg recently asked on his blog for anyone to offer plausible reasons for why cryptocurrency should have any value at all beyond just being in a speculative bubble. (Aside, you can tell how behind I am in my reading, etc. by the date of this reply.) 

Here is what I left as a comment serving as my attempts.

Attempt #1: Suppose Steve decides he wants to retire and move to Paradise Island. He plans to liquidate his assets including current real estate to purchase a dream place on the beach. He is not alone as many are contemplating and acting toward just such a move. At the same time current real estate owners on Paradise Island are looking to cash in on the land run by selling existing places including raw land. Unfortunately, many scamsters abound looking to take advantage of a key information asymmetry--namely, that it is extremely difficult to determine who actually holds title to actual land. Fortunately, there is one source (a cryptocurrency ledger) that can validate with complete certainty which of these are legitimate sellers and therefore legitimate potential transactions giving Steve (and all others) good title to any purchase. [Note: While this is an extreme case, adjusting for real-world frictions and the availability of alternative solutions simply lowers rather than extinguishes the value of the ledger.]

Attempt #2: Octan Corporation is a multinational firm with extensive interests throughout the globe. As such it has continual needs to transfer liquid assets (call it money) between subsidiary accounts and with arms-length third-parties all of which can be domiciled in different states and nations with custody at various third-party firms. In the current/old world this is costly in a number of respects: It has limited availability since banking systems are open only at certain times and days of the week, it is slow since the clearing process is built on old architecture with a cumbersome and time-intensive trust/verification procedure, and it is explicitly expense in fees as a result of these prior two reasons as well as the regulatorily-driven limited competition for these services. In the world of cryptocurrency these costs are substantially reduced. Literally Octan can send $1,000,000,000 across the world at 11:59 PM on a Saturday completing the transaction in 10 minutes for <1/100th of current wire costs in fees.

Attempt #3: Steve has many opinions and predictions about the world. Unfortunately, talk is cheap. Many dispute his contentions with vigor. However, Steve is actually very often correct. To his frustration Steve's detractors seem to vanish once the reality plays out in Steve's favor. And even if they are around for Steve to claim victory, they usually move the goalposts rarely admitting defeat. This among so many other facts like lack of liquid collateral or basic counterparty risk means ex ante bets are rarely able to be made. Fortunately, cryptocurrency allows trustless contracts to be written between these parties creating vast potential markets and submarkets for predictions and hedging. 

Attempt #4: Steve loves using his credit and debit cards. He is a "points guy" who has the obsessive hobby of finding and exploiting all the various opportunities including arbitrages that exist for non-cash transaction rewards programs (e.g., frequent flyer miles bonuses, cash-back rewards, etc.). Steve is like all consumers, though, in that he doesn't like transactions fees. Fortunately for Steve, many of these fees for him are being cross-subsidized by naïve customers who are not maximizing their points if using credit/debit cards at all. The fees are transactions costs representing the true costs of validating and facilitating financial transactions. These add up to hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Fortunately, cryptocurrency offers the potential to cut these costs dramatically by creating "trustless" alternative clearing options. It is trustless in that the two or more parties to the transaction do not have to know each other as the network ledger validates the funds going from A to B are both good and compete (irreversible). [Note: While today transactions on various crypto networks like Bitcoin seem painfully slow (minutes or longer), there are options of subnetworks that can reduce these to seconds. Also in anticipation of a common objection, the price volatility risk can be eliminated by adding entry/exit transactions for both parties on both ends of the crypto exchange (e.g., dollars for Bitcoin for customer A, Bitcoin transfer from A to B, Bitcoin for dollars (or other) for seller B.).]

The Reopening - The View from Hawaii

Earlier this month my family and I spent a week in Maui. In case you haven't heard, it is really, really beautiful--a great vacation spot. Hot take, I know. Here are some observations:

• Two underappreciated qualities that give Hawaii its magical appeal are the remoteness in distance and time. You can go to lots of amazing islands in this world, but almost none are as physically remote as Hawaii. Related to this but not necessarily following except for the particular way our world is populated is the fact that it is very temporally remote. The rest of the world is asleep or done with their day when yours on the island is starting. This forces one to shrink their world down to a few mountains in the vast ocean abyss.
• The reopening from the perspective of Hawaii is perhaps unsurprisingly behind what I've otherwise experienced. Anecdotally this was supported by other travelers who came from places more locked down than Oklahoma such as New York and California. They too were surprised by the policy phase Hawaii was still in.
• Related to this was the part that both caused anxiety for me in preparing for the trip and frustration for me in navigating the travel. This is the Hawaiistan aspects whereby it was as if I were travelling to a third-world country. At the time when we were there (this policy was recently relaxed) the only vaccinations that were meaningful were those given on the island. The same shot from Pfizer, et al. given in another U.S. state gave no privilege--every entrant had to get the same COVID test done before arriving and not more than 72 hours before arrival. Testing in a pandemic is critical, but the various rules laid out for Hawaii, which I won't bother to fully go into here as others have covered this, and the way they were implemented had more to do with health theater and signaling than they did with science.
• This should probably not be a surprise given that the Maui mayor thought it helpful/necessary to beg airlines to bring fewer tourists to the island. I guess that's how they solve for the equilibria in banana republics.
• Speaking of banana republics and their policies, Hawaii generally and Maui specifically suffers from two self-imposed penalties--development restrictions and the Jones Act. 
• On development - I understand that there is a bootleggers (resorts, others in the tourist industry, and current homeowners/developers) and Baptists (current residents who in many cases are self-described natives and who don't want things to change) story going on. I'm not sure everyone close to this issue does understand that. I am sensitive to the good, bad, and sometimes ugly history of how Hawaii is now a U.S. state. Blanket restrictions on and impediments to development imposed by government are not the solution. They are economically harmful making Hawaii poorer than it would otherwise be, which of course harms the poor the most. They are also culturally destructive creating a hostile environment of us versus them as opposed to a constructive environment of negotiated compromise and agreement. Finally they are morally repugnant when they allow the politically powerful to violate property rights.
• On the Jones Act - this is "self-imposed" in that Hawaii is a U.S. state and this is a U.S. federal government policy. Hawaii itself is not responsible for it. However, why isn't the Hawaiian delegation to Washington and Hawaiians as a politically lobby effort not storming the Capitol on this one (figuratively speaking, of course)? 
• Enough griping. Hawaii is awesome. The people I encountered (Hawaiians and tourists alike) were delightful. Aloha is not just a slogan. It is a warm and wonderful way of life that is embraced and practiced everywhere you go. I felt welcomed and appreciated in Hawaii by virtually every person I had the pleasure of engaging with.

A few recommendations:

• Do some homework before travelling to decide how much of an activity vacation you want (there is plenty to do) and how much of a relaxation vacation you want (it is easy to not have enough as it takes time to drive, boat, walk to various destinations, everyone moves a bit slower than you might expect, and at every turn there is a siren call to spend more time).
• Because of the odd time zone Hawaii has been placed in (it "should" be a hour or two earlier there when compared to most places) and because of the typical jetlag for U.S. travelers, Hawaii wakes up early and you will too. So it follows that it turns in for the evening before you probably expect. Just chalk it up to following Ben Franklin's advice and hope that it adds some wisdom to your life.
• We stayed in Wailea on the southwestern shore. You can't probably go wrong between this area and the rival northwestern shore, but I do think it is easier to traverse from the SW part of the island. 
• We stayed at The Fairmont, which is highly recommended provided you want a resort experience and a resort bill at the end.
• The Road to Hana is highly demanding but can be highly rewarding. Planning here is key. There are good apps to guide your journey. You won't get it all in--the more you stop, the less distance you'll get. We actually went the entire loop around the "dangerous" undeveloped part of the island. It was truly treacherous at times but still doable for a minivan. Not sure if I'd recommend it as opposed to reversing course to head back home. But doing so wouldn't have saved us any time since I wanted to make it to the half-way point of The Pools at 'Ohe'o. 
• From a prior trip, I can highly recommend biking down Haleakalā. 
• Maui Pineapple Tour was very interesting and fun. I've never seen Dole's operation, but I image it to be on the other end of the production frontier--Maui Gold is charmingly but surprisingly a trip back to farming circa 1950.
• Iao Needle state park is underappreciated. For the intrepid, consider disobeying the signs and hiking the prohibited trails. It is an awesome scenic adventure. 
• Unfortunately I didn't get to try the many famous and/or recommended dining spots that are still on my Want To Go list. The two at the hotel, Kō and Nick's Fishmarket, were very good but . . . did I mention resort prices? The labor shortages were most acutely seen here as perhaps only 1/3rd of Ko was open and service in general throughout the island was poor.
• For the price of airfare (explicit cost, time in the air, and jetlag effects) plan to stay in Hawaii for as long as possible--at least one week. There is always more to do including doing nothing.

Aloha!

What Does NIL Imply for Parity in College Football?

The evil empire known as the NCAA has now finally relaxed its rules on amateurism allowing college athletes to earn compensation off of their name, image, and likeness rights (henceforth, NIL). How sweet of them. It only took a rare 9-0 shutout loss at the Supreme Court to get them to change their ways. 

Cue the pearl clutching as the latest moral fear becomes a moral panic--God forbid someone in America would make money off of their talent.

Yes, times they are a changin', and for the better. There will be losers, though. Eventually, it is likely the ones losing advantage will be all of those who have been profiting off of players not being compensated. This list somewhat in order includes: coaches, administrators, athletes in all sports other than football and men's basketball (mixed bag here as there will be lots of NIL opportunities for many of them), fans, and the universities in general.

For this post I'd like to briefly discuss how this might affect competitive balance (aka, "parity") in college football and men's basketball. 

If by parity we mean anybody can beat anybody (i.e., "any given Sunday"), then the initial and perhaps enduring apparent result will be increased parity.*

If by parity we mean league continuity, then the apparent result will be decreased parity.

Let me explain. Allowing NIL compensation adds a dimension along which teams can compete. A classic analogy is when the CAB under the Carter administration ended price controls allowing airlines to compete on price. This was very good for consumers in the long run and very disruptive to airlines in the short run. 

In this same way NIL comp will add a competitive dimension to the competition for college athletes and thereby increase variance in those athletes' sports. An increase in variance means instability. That instability will have two features:

1. It will give new and added opportunities for lesser, secondary teams to challenge incumbent blue bloods. Potentially Oklahoma State now has more opportunity to challenge Oklahoma in football.
2. It will open up more risk of failure especially for lesser, secondary teams. This failure can be in the more obvious form of shutdown but also in the harder-to-perceive version of loss of status. Hypothetically the difference is Temple dropping football altogether or going down to a lower, true-amateur level versus Penn State falling from prominence. 

The first case will look like more parity. The second case will look like less to the causal observer. This is why I referred above to these being the "apparent result". I would guess that the second will come to dominate the narrative as many will long for the good old days when anybody could compete in college football and men's basketball. You know, back when Alabama always played Clemson for the national title . . .

*If you think complete parity is in any way desirable in sports, you don't understand sports in the least. Nobody gathers around to watch guys flip coins.