Wednesday, October 28, 2009
How often
Do you get wonderful topics: Delayed Gratification, and it's impact on life...and hilarious video
On Taxonomy (?!!)
So...this morning on my way to the train, I walked by a mushroom. Not shocking in the cool wet fall weather we're having now. And I started thinking about teaching bits of taxonomy to my 5 year old daughter. Ya know, Linneus, and his 2-kingdom approach (animals and plants). But mushrooms made me think of it because really, Fungi are separate from animals and plants. And then I was trying to remember the 5th phylum, because mid 20th century, folks noticed that Animals + Plants weren't adequate to explain things. So...Palm Pre + wikipedia and I have information.
Turns out that there are no longer 5 kingdoms. The post--Linnean 5-kingdom approach to Taxonomy ran smack dab into evolutionary theory, which spawned a taxonomic theory called cladistics, and which resulted in the new "3 Domain model" of taxonomy. Who knew that the early 90's to now were a hotbed of innovation in Taxonomy.
Seems that evolutionary theory + Molecular analysis of ribosomal RNA gives us all sorts of great info on taxonomy...and indeed taxonomy makes sense coming from that angle. One more instance of modern Biology not making sense without accepting evolution as a start point. Anyway...turns out that there are 3 major branches of life, all of which are primarily unicellular. These three domains are: Bacteria, Eukarya, and Archaea. Inside domain Eukarya (organisms composed of cells with nuclei) are a pile of kingdoms.
Isn't it cool that cience has quietly advanced to a point wherein not only are humans and greater animals no longer the center of the taxonomic universe, but neither are the insects who had taken over as the center-point of taxonomy when I was in high school, or even the world we can see. It seems that bacteria and other monocellular critters are now understood to constitute most of life and most of life's diversity.
What that means about introducing things to my girl...not sure. But it was interesting. And I learned something new. Prettiest picture of the new theory is here. Note that 99% of everything we as humans see is in 2 tiny little niches in the top right, and 2-3 more niches covers 100% of what we see without a microscope.
Turns out that there are no longer 5 kingdoms. The post--Linnean 5-kingdom approach to Taxonomy ran smack dab into evolutionary theory, which spawned a taxonomic theory called cladistics, and which resulted in the new "3 Domain model" of taxonomy. Who knew that the early 90's to now were a hotbed of innovation in Taxonomy.
Seems that evolutionary theory + Molecular analysis of ribosomal RNA gives us all sorts of great info on taxonomy...and indeed taxonomy makes sense coming from that angle. One more instance of modern Biology not making sense without accepting evolution as a start point. Anyway...turns out that there are 3 major branches of life, all of which are primarily unicellular. These three domains are: Bacteria, Eukarya, and Archaea. Inside domain Eukarya (organisms composed of cells with nuclei) are a pile of kingdoms.
Isn't it cool that cience has quietly advanced to a point wherein not only are humans and greater animals no longer the center of the taxonomic universe, but neither are the insects who had taken over as the center-point of taxonomy when I was in high school, or even the world we can see. It seems that bacteria and other monocellular critters are now understood to constitute most of life and most of life's diversity.
What that means about introducing things to my girl...not sure. But it was interesting. And I learned something new. Prettiest picture of the new theory is here. Note that 99% of everything we as humans see is in 2 tiny little niches in the top right, and 2-3 more niches covers 100% of what we see without a microscope.
Cellphones & My life
So...I use a Palm Pre on the Sprint network. A week ago, Monday, I managed to (I think) leave my phone on the train. In any case, it's gone. A gentleman appears to have picked up the phone, and tried to get in touch with many people on my phone list. However, that contact process failed, not through lack of my trying to reach him, (I think I called so much that the batteries ran out extra-fast) and the phone remains lost. 2 days ago, the new phone arrived, and took several hours to get turned on (Sprint's people are nice even if the website sucks). Today, having owned the phone for 2 days, I ran across a street on my way to work as the light turned red. When I reached the other side, a lady pointed out that my phone had fallen out of its belt-carrier, and it was subsequently run over by 5 cars...I saw 2 wheels on each car run over the phone. When there were no cars coming (This is Chicago, we don't have pedestrian traffic rules), I jogged over, picked up the phone, and came back to my side of the street.
Calls work fine, touchscreen works fine, internet works fine. However, the stupid little plastic piece used to adjust the volume is missing. However, that's a design flaw in the Pre...the piece had fallen out of my other, working, less abused old Pre several times. And the phone has minor, very visible scratches across it's entire face.
My luck...all sorts of bad stuff appears to happen...and net effect on me is...basically nothing. I need to replace a 6 cent part on the phone in order to get fast volume control ( I can do that without the controls as well).
Calls work fine, touchscreen works fine, internet works fine. However, the stupid little plastic piece used to adjust the volume is missing. However, that's a design flaw in the Pre...the piece had fallen out of my other, working, less abused old Pre several times. And the phone has minor, very visible scratches across it's entire face.
My luck...all sorts of bad stuff appears to happen...and net effect on me is...basically nothing. I need to replace a 6 cent part on the phone in order to get fast volume control ( I can do that without the controls as well).
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Confirming the worldview
Two posts from yesterday stand out as mind-bogglingly supportive of the innate Human Bio-Diversity (HBD), economic rational actor model of human behavior.
1. Domestic violence is a strategy (HT: Tyler)
2. Intelligence(g) explains almost everything, and is MOSTLY genetic. (HT: Isegoria)
While neither of these surprise me, the HBD economist-thinker, it's still stunning.
Roughly...your odds of anything bad happening to you (divorce, jail, bankruptcy, unemployment, poverty, welfare, etc.) is mostly about IQ, and your odds of anything good happening (High salary, ) are also mostly about IQ. See the chart. IQ tests are now perfectly normed for race/gender/region of the US...it is a fair test for all native-born Americans. AND they're starting to run studies that show that it's brain-speed issues (physiology-measurements) more than anything else. Turns out that sub-second mental reaction time tests are as good at IQ measurement as full-length psychologist-administered ones. And they track pretty well the (response-time) measured IQ of babies 30 minutes old (not in this article, in another one). Also, IQ tracks achievement...and IQ by age goes like this: (6: 40% genetic, 14: 60% genetic, 50: 80% genetic).
Only issue I didn't seen handled here is willingness to delay gratification. It's only moderately correlated with IQ, and also hugely impactful on life-results. Maybe even more so that IQ.
1. Domestic violence is a strategy (HT: Tyler)
2. Intelligence(g) explains almost everything, and is MOSTLY genetic. (HT: Isegoria)
While neither of these surprise me, the HBD economist-thinker, it's still stunning.
Roughly...your odds of anything bad happening to you (divorce, jail, bankruptcy, unemployment, poverty, welfare, etc.) is mostly about IQ, and your odds of anything good happening (High salary, ) are also mostly about IQ. See the chart. IQ tests are now perfectly normed for race/gender/region of the US...it is a fair test for all native-born Americans. AND they're starting to run studies that show that it's brain-speed issues (physiology-measurements) more than anything else. Turns out that sub-second mental reaction time tests are as good at IQ measurement as full-length psychologist-administered ones. And they track pretty well the (response-time) measured IQ of babies 30 minutes old (not in this article, in another one). Also, IQ tracks achievement...and IQ by age goes like this: (6: 40% genetic, 14: 60% genetic, 50: 80% genetic).
Only issue I didn't seen handled here is willingness to delay gratification. It's only moderately correlated with IQ, and also hugely impactful on life-results. Maybe even more so that IQ.
Monday, October 26, 2009
2 sentence encapsulations -- part 1 -- rent seeking
"When the government is small and relatively weak, the way to make money is to start a successful private-sector business. But the larger the size and scope of government spending, the easier it is to make money by diverting public resources." -- from here (HT Isegoria).
How do you want people to make money? By lobbying, or by making stuff people want? That's the question that we all face.
How do you want people to make money? By lobbying, or by making stuff people want? That's the question that we all face.
Games Theory
So...
It seems clear at this point that the most interesting part of gaming (for most people) is the re-creation of the tribal environment. Small group of people band together, cooperate, achieve a goal.
So far, it seems that the games TEND to be highly themed towards either fantasy (most MMOs), War (most FPS's), or semi-fantasy (Eve Online, City of Heroes).
There are also a number of games (Sims, SecondLife) that give one a social environment, but goal-less.
Given my theory that the primary means by which men bond is to have a goal, and work together to accomplish it...why are there not other games/online activities that promote group problem-solving. Indeed, I'd think that management/team consulting could use this kind of thing to great effect.
Maybe the army is doing something with that? Or maybe I'm not the only one who is having trouble seeing what a cooperative team-based group game that is not war/fantasy/fight-based looks like.
I have a smart commentariat. Thoughts?
It seems clear at this point that the most interesting part of gaming (for most people) is the re-creation of the tribal environment. Small group of people band together, cooperate, achieve a goal.
So far, it seems that the games TEND to be highly themed towards either fantasy (most MMOs), War (most FPS's), or semi-fantasy (Eve Online, City of Heroes).
There are also a number of games (Sims, SecondLife) that give one a social environment, but goal-less.
Given my theory that the primary means by which men bond is to have a goal, and work together to accomplish it...why are there not other games/online activities that promote group problem-solving. Indeed, I'd think that management/team consulting could use this kind of thing to great effect.
Maybe the army is doing something with that? Or maybe I'm not the only one who is having trouble seeing what a cooperative team-based group game that is not war/fantasy/fight-based looks like.
I have a smart commentariat. Thoughts?
Wow. Very important
One of my jobs at work is to interview folks. And so, as my regular readers know, I am a major fan of predictive analysis of job skills.
Indeed, I thought we had pretty good evidence suggesting that the order of predictive strength went:
Self-efficacy > Delayed Gratification > Conscientiousness > IQ > most other stuff, with experience being also a major factor.
Imagine my surprise when I read instead this list (HT: Kling) reporting on a meta-analysis of job success predictivity.
IQ > Work Sample > Integrity(tests) > Conscientiousness > Structured Interview > Unstructured interview >>>> reference checks > years of experience >>> years of education > interests > graphology > age.
Hilarious....handwriting analysis is nearly as impactful as years of education.
Thoughts:
I suppose then it's good that I've been pushing work-samples and more structured interviews as a prereq for IT employment at my company, and making that an integral part of the interviewing process I run.
It's also good that I am a damn fine estimator of IQ, from simple conversation.
However, it seems to demolish my position that Practice/Experience >>> other stuff. I reserve here the right to suggest that skills in many jobs are sufficiently narrow that the measures of years of experience SUCK. On the other hand, this fits well with the widely studied feature of Progammers, for whom there is a 10x variation between efficiency of a top 10% programmer and a bottom 10% programmer, with the same amount of experience. I had thought this wouldn't be as true of other occupations.
Indeed, I thought we had pretty good evidence suggesting that the order of predictive strength went:
Self-efficacy > Delayed Gratification > Conscientiousness > IQ > most other stuff, with experience being also a major factor.
Imagine my surprise when I read instead this list (HT: Kling) reporting on a meta-analysis of job success predictivity.
IQ > Work Sample > Integrity(tests) > Conscientiousness > Structured Interview > Unstructured interview >>>> reference checks > years of experience >>> years of education > interests > graphology > age.
Hilarious....handwriting analysis is nearly as impactful as years of education.
Thoughts:
I suppose then it's good that I've been pushing work-samples and more structured interviews as a prereq for IT employment at my company, and making that an integral part of the interviewing process I run.
It's also good that I am a damn fine estimator of IQ, from simple conversation.
However, it seems to demolish my position that Practice/Experience >>> other stuff. I reserve here the right to suggest that skills in many jobs are sufficiently narrow that the measures of years of experience SUCK. On the other hand, this fits well with the widely studied feature of Progammers, for whom there is a 10x variation between efficiency of a top 10% programmer and a bottom 10% programmer, with the same amount of experience. I had thought this wouldn't be as true of other occupations.
Friday, October 23, 2009
On Being Eco-friendly
Drive an SUV instead of your Prius, lose the dog. Big net benefit. HT. Arnold Kling
Racism?
Isegoria links to a piece on racism and geography.
Final quote:
[Re:] Portland and its “progressive” brethren {minneapolis, austin, etc.). These cities have never been black, and may never be predominately Latino. Perhaps they cannot be blamed for this but they certainly should not be self-congratulatory about it or feel superior about the urban policies a lack of diversity has enabled."
Final quote:
[Re:] Portland and its “progressive” brethren {minneapolis, austin, etc.). These cities have never been black, and may never be predominately Latino. Perhaps they cannot be blamed for this but they certainly should not be self-congratulatory about it or feel superior about the urban policies a lack of diversity has enabled."
Scary Stuff: Derbyshire + Moldbug?
Isegoria points out that John Derbyshire is on the Menicus Moldbug wagon: Modern progressivism is just the "scientistic ... derivative" of Abrahamic thought, and as violently opposed to the Darwinian biological thought as the older Abrahamic thinking.
The religious right and the postmodernist left join together as is common, to denounce basic science, individualist freedom, and actual freedom of speech. Not news to most of us in the objectionist libertarian fringe.
The religious right and the postmodernist left join together as is common, to denounce basic science, individualist freedom, and actual freedom of speech. Not news to most of us in the objectionist libertarian fringe.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Epistemology summary
I think that my basic epistemology is now stable, if a bit elitist.
How do you know things (be certain)? You don't.
Certainty is a feeling, not anything to do with truth values.
Certainty is a biological construct that exists in order to create action in complex situations, and cut off further calculation. This is a very important feature of getting stuff done...but is very poorly correlated with truth.
The ONLY thing you can have for actual certainty levels is statistical reasoning, a la Bayes. And if you don't speak mathematical statistics, you have nothing. Indeed, if you don't speak Bayesian, then you probably, incorrectly, think there is nothing you can do to find truthiness. In reality, you can find real, hard probabilistic truth statements (probabilistic is as hard as it gets).
Several caveats.
1. Intuition.
Intuition is effectively the subconscious delivering a conclusion to the conscious mind. This is very frequently more correct than the conscious information.
2. Overestimation
If you don't have statistics running, you are overestimating your chances of being right. Split the difference with 50%. Then split it again. Most people when asked for 90% accurate guess ranges hit their 90% accuracy roughly 60% of the time. 90% accurate probably means 60% accurate. 99% accurate probably means 75% accurate.
3. Overestimation is particularly likely to be applied to intuitions. Be extra-super careful relying on this. Bayes with record-keeping is godly here.
4. You are underestimating the chance of your logic being wrong. Universally.
5. Hume is very easy to refute now. How does one get certainty/proof in the inductive space? One doesn't. And since certainty is a feeling, one doesn't need to. Give up your silly quest for certainty/truth. What you have is "best guesses". Anyone claiming otherwise is effectively selling something. Anyone claiming against certainty, and then not qualifying their own opinions with either statistics or equi-uncertainty is also selling something.
6. Thank goodness for the brain's certainty module, or else we wouldn't ever get anything done.
Bayesian-ness is next to godliness.
How do you know things (be certain)? You don't.
Certainty is a feeling, not anything to do with truth values.
Certainty is a biological construct that exists in order to create action in complex situations, and cut off further calculation. This is a very important feature of getting stuff done...but is very poorly correlated with truth.
The ONLY thing you can have for actual certainty levels is statistical reasoning, a la Bayes. And if you don't speak mathematical statistics, you have nothing. Indeed, if you don't speak Bayesian, then you probably, incorrectly, think there is nothing you can do to find truthiness. In reality, you can find real, hard probabilistic truth statements (probabilistic is as hard as it gets).
Several caveats.
1. Intuition.
Intuition is effectively the subconscious delivering a conclusion to the conscious mind. This is very frequently more correct than the conscious information.
2. Overestimation
If you don't have statistics running, you are overestimating your chances of being right. Split the difference with 50%. Then split it again. Most people when asked for 90% accurate guess ranges hit their 90% accuracy roughly 60% of the time. 90% accurate probably means 60% accurate. 99% accurate probably means 75% accurate.
3. Overestimation is particularly likely to be applied to intuitions. Be extra-super careful relying on this. Bayes with record-keeping is godly here.
4. You are underestimating the chance of your logic being wrong. Universally.
5. Hume is very easy to refute now. How does one get certainty/proof in the inductive space? One doesn't. And since certainty is a feeling, one doesn't need to. Give up your silly quest for certainty/truth. What you have is "best guesses". Anyone claiming otherwise is effectively selling something. Anyone claiming against certainty, and then not qualifying their own opinions with either statistics or equi-uncertainty is also selling something.
6. Thank goodness for the brain's certainty module, or else we wouldn't ever get anything done.
Bayesian-ness is next to godliness.
Book Report: On being certain
On Being Certain is among the most useful books I read this year. I am not putting it on my best-of-the-year list, because the list is already too long, and the book is longer than its topic is.
On being certain is a tour of what people now know about how the mind works. There's all sorts of interesting stuff in there, but the summary comes down to...the mind doesn't work how you think it does. It doesn't even work in a way that is compatible with how you experience the world.
Perhaps the most interesting factoid in the book: The mind is well known to actively re-arrange the time-order of events in your head. If you see a kid fall in the water, you think about it, then jump in to save. If you see a baseball coming towards you, the batter, you decide whether to swing, then swing. Nonsense. The decision to swing, or to jump in the water after a kid is made and acted upon before the thinking part of the brain receives the message. After the fact, the brain fills in the explanation for why one did what one did. And then you, the actor, think and tell other people what your brain made up to cover for your acting first and thinking second. This applies to all sorts of stuff.
The target point of the book, finished after nearly 200 pages of discussion about how the mind doesn't work how you think it does, is that certainty is not a cognitive state. It is an emotional state. And the emotional experience of certainty is managed entirely separately from the cognitive understanding. Which means that certainty can be felt (very easily) without truth, and truth can be apprehended clearly without feelings of certainty. Takeaway: the sense of certainty tells you NOTHING useful about the truthiness of a proposition.
Lots of other good info in the book. The religious-experience center of the brain is hit on.
Question for the reader: assume that if you act/decide quickly, your brain is lying to you about whether you acted first or thought first. Assume also that the "why" constructed after the action is a semi-pure fabrication. How does that change your life?
On being certain is a tour of what people now know about how the mind works. There's all sorts of interesting stuff in there, but the summary comes down to...the mind doesn't work how you think it does. It doesn't even work in a way that is compatible with how you experience the world.
Perhaps the most interesting factoid in the book: The mind is well known to actively re-arrange the time-order of events in your head. If you see a kid fall in the water, you think about it, then jump in to save. If you see a baseball coming towards you, the batter, you decide whether to swing, then swing. Nonsense. The decision to swing, or to jump in the water after a kid is made and acted upon before the thinking part of the brain receives the message. After the fact, the brain fills in the explanation for why one did what one did. And then you, the actor, think and tell other people what your brain made up to cover for your acting first and thinking second. This applies to all sorts of stuff.
The target point of the book, finished after nearly 200 pages of discussion about how the mind doesn't work how you think it does, is that certainty is not a cognitive state. It is an emotional state. And the emotional experience of certainty is managed entirely separately from the cognitive understanding. Which means that certainty can be felt (very easily) without truth, and truth can be apprehended clearly without feelings of certainty. Takeaway: the sense of certainty tells you NOTHING useful about the truthiness of a proposition.
Lots of other good info in the book. The religious-experience center of the brain is hit on.
Question for the reader: assume that if you act/decide quickly, your brain is lying to you about whether you acted first or thought first. Assume also that the "why" constructed after the action is a semi-pure fabrication. How does that change your life?
More Education
Isegoria today posts a pile of education links.
My favorite line:
"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning."
I had a fight (read almost cordial disagreement) with someone recently on precisely this point. I argued...people don't learn until they know that their current pattern isn't good enough. Give them a test to fail. They disagreed. I was right.
My favorite line:
"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning."
I had a fight (read almost cordial disagreement) with someone recently on precisely this point. I argued...people don't learn until they know that their current pattern isn't good enough. Give them a test to fail. They disagreed. I was right.
Value from classes
Turns out the request is to Tyler, not to me, but I think I have something valuable to say.
"Everything else being equal, are there subjects that lend itself to better teaching by professors? I've always chosen classes mostly on professor teaching quality as measured by anonymous student surveys, but was wondering if there are certain classes of subjects where one could find better or worse teachers?" -- Joanne
Education in school (as opposed to solo) is good for several things...and if one is going to take classes, one should target classes that are more amenable to teaching than otherwise.
Value from education:
"Everything else being equal, are there subjects that lend itself to better teaching by professors? I've always chosen classes mostly on professor teaching quality as measured by anonymous student surveys, but was wondering if there are certain classes of subjects where one could find better or worse teachers?" -- Joanne
Education in school (as opposed to solo) is good for several things...and if one is going to take classes, one should target classes that are more amenable to teaching than otherwise.
Value from education:
- Motivation. It is easier (measurably, even with same hours spent) to learn something if it is interesting, and the fastest way to make something interesting is to have an interesting instructor whose personal aura of interestingness leaks onto the subject.
- Motivation. Most of learning is practice. Most of practice is motivation. If you have someone motivating you to learn, and providing a schedule, you tend to do more, which results in better learning.
- Feedback. Since most of learning is practice, a major component of your education will be greatly improved if you can ask questions/figure out where you're going wrong. Think office hours.
- Concepts. The things that are the hardest to learn solo (apart from ones that simply require excessive practice) are the ones which ask you to think differently. Programming (esp. OO), Calculus (Math in general), Microecon, Experimental Science, Statistics and Lit/Writing all jump out at me as topics wherein a great teacher can push you into the new thinking process tremendously better than doing things solo would.
Line of the day
HT Tyler Cowen, HT Mark Thoma:
"That attitude contrasts with the skepticism I once heard from a Russian reporter about her early days on the job. “Whenever we read an article about the health dangers of butter, we would immediately run out and buy as much butter as we could find,” she told me. “We knew it meant there was about to be a butter shortage.” In other words, Russians looked only for the agenda, the motivation behind the assertion. The actual truth was irrelevant. "
"That attitude contrasts with the skepticism I once heard from a Russian reporter about her early days on the job. “Whenever we read an article about the health dangers of butter, we would immediately run out and buy as much butter as we could find,” she told me. “We knew it meant there was about to be a butter shortage.” In other words, Russians looked only for the agenda, the motivation behind the assertion. The actual truth was irrelevant. "
Monday, October 19, 2009
Picking fights with my betters Part 2
Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying
"How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?" - Albert Einstein
He's wrong.
Mathematics is what happens when you observe that the world is regular and works in a regular fashion. Two eggs, and two eggs more always make four eggs, except when you drop one. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, Algebra, Calculus...all these are things we SEE in the world, and were developed (theoretically) in order to correspond to the world we live in. Why is it that all these crazy scientists/mathematicians think that just because we took an idea (algebra -- what's still true if I don't tell you what numbers you're using) and extended it a little (abstract algebra--what happens when I don't tell you which operators/number systems you're using) that it wouldn't still be talking about the elements of the world? Are they surprised to find out that because the things we work (eggs, apples, $) with and the operators we normally care about (+,-,*) exhibit regularity (Commutativity, Associativity), that there are other parts of the world (electromagnetism, Relativity, QM, QCD) that exhibit the same conformance to mathematics that mathematics was originally designed to reproduce? It's not like we can't learn almost everything we needed to know about Groups/Rings/Cohomologies from basically looking at numbers of eggs or apples. Reimann geometry is just regular Geometric theorizing, applied to a sphere (or hyperbola) rather than to rectilinear space. So what's shocking?
What's shocking to me is the number of people who think that deduction is more certain/reliable than induction, or that induction isn't the base of our collective comprehension of the world. I mean, I suppose that there are some folks who gain some status from assuming that their abstract theorizing is somehow higher/better/purer than the observational induction made by a car mechanic. But their status aside, it doesn't make it true.
"How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?" - Albert Einstein
He's wrong.
Mathematics is what happens when you observe that the world is regular and works in a regular fashion. Two eggs, and two eggs more always make four eggs, except when you drop one. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, Algebra, Calculus...all these are things we SEE in the world, and were developed (theoretically) in order to correspond to the world we live in. Why is it that all these crazy scientists/mathematicians think that just because we took an idea (algebra -- what's still true if I don't tell you what numbers you're using) and extended it a little (abstract algebra--what happens when I don't tell you which operators/number systems you're using) that it wouldn't still be talking about the elements of the world? Are they surprised to find out that because the things we work (eggs, apples, $) with and the operators we normally care about (+,-,*) exhibit regularity (Commutativity, Associativity), that there are other parts of the world (electromagnetism, Relativity, QM, QCD) that exhibit the same conformance to mathematics that mathematics was originally designed to reproduce? It's not like we can't learn almost everything we needed to know about Groups/Rings/Cohomologies from basically looking at numbers of eggs or apples. Reimann geometry is just regular Geometric theorizing, applied to a sphere (or hyperbola) rather than to rectilinear space. So what's shocking?
What's shocking to me is the number of people who think that deduction is more certain/reliable than induction, or that induction isn't the base of our collective comprehension of the world. I mean, I suppose that there are some folks who gain some status from assuming that their abstract theorizing is somehow higher/better/purer than the observational induction made by a car mechanic. But their status aside, it doesn't make it true.
Picking intellectual fights with people smarter than me Part 1.
It is (relatively) beyond dispute that if one were ranking the intellectual virtuosos in the West (all I can rank, personally) of the last 300 years, David Hume would be on the top 50 list. However, in this scrape, I am liable to appear at least more victorious than I would naturally be, due to his being dead.
Hume basically defines modern philosophy past 1750. Kant attempts (unconvincingly, IMO) to answer him, and the remainder of philosophy comes down to folks who extend Hume (Logical Positivists, Karl Popper, etc.) folks who extend Kant (Hegel, Marx, etc.), and folks who find Hume so unanswerable that they take philosophy in a different direction (Neitzche, Sartre). Hume defines modern philosphy, and is in many extents unsurpassed. [Blatantly over-brief moderately unfair summary of modern philosophy. Got it.]
I think I can answer Hume on one of his most important points: The problem of induction... one of the fundamental (largely unanswered) points in philosophy.
Hume says: we cannot justify induction. From the above link: "In general, it is not necessary that causal relation in the future resemble causal relations in the past, as it is always conceivable otherwise; for Hume, this is because the negation of the claim does not lead to a contradiction."
My translation (?) Induction assumes that the future resembles the past...and since this is an unjustified, and unjustifiable (outside of Berkeley/CS Lewis's creator-justification) premise, induction is merely useful, not deductively true.
My response: Deduction is justified by induction, not the other way around.
Hume starts his position with the idea that deduction is more solid than induction. That position is both epistemically unfounded AND does not conform to what we see in the world.
Point 1: In the real world, MOST ideas, theories, and cogitations end up being wrong. If you get much more complicated than 2+2=5, the pure reasoning approach tends to fail. Contrarily, perceptions are much more reliable. "Is that thing blue?" gives correct results much more often than the (relatively simple) monty haul problem. Indeed, so too does induction: "Will this pencil look bent when partially inserted into a glass of water?" Hence, the fundamental underpinnings of Hume's problem of induction are flawed.
Point 2: Deductive truths are learned by induction. 2+2=4 is not learned as true by anyone using deducation, all of Bertrand Russell's work aside. It is learned by induction. And then the rules of deduction are learned by induction. And then you start using them. What you truly know is inductive knowledge.
Point 3: Hume's actual text is difficult for me to search, but I seem to remember his use of a counterfactual: Why would I not believe that the future will be different from the past? If not him, then a later expositor on hume suggested as much. This is silly. Bayes disposes of that rather rapidly. Unless one embraces radical skepticism (why should I believe in the past at all?), Bayesian statistics takes both theses (the future is different than/same as the past) and applies updating. What is left standing is the future resembles the past.
Point 4: Hume frequently refers to a priori "impossible to believe other than" propositions. This is a cognitive error that comes from Descartes. In a paper, Diana Hsieh references David Kelley and proceeds to eviscerate this position. Roughly: "why is it believed that what pictures you can make in your head, and what is true or necessarily true are terribly well connected?" If there is not a substantial connection between the (necessarily) true and your conception of the (necessarily) true, then Hume's argument goes up in smoke.
Point 5: The evolutionary purpose of the conscious brain is somewhere between (a) be sexier by means of culture/joke/tricks and (b) be more effective by predicting the future/making plans. The goal of reason is to make the individual more effective. If the brain is built in order to be effective (one can consider "a" to be a subset of this), then criticizing induction is silly, and his entire endeavor is wrong.
Point 6: My new reading material points out that certainty is an emotion, not an indicator of truth. The quest for certainty is no longer an appropriate goal.
Overall...Hume assumes a lot about minds, deduction and induction, and certainty. I argue that with most (all) of Hume's assumptions being wrong, his question fails on many points. On the other hand...he is right that you can't justify induction from deduction...He's just wrong that you should want to. You might, on the other hand, be able to justify deduction by means of induction, if you're careful enough and pick the right examples.
Hume basically defines modern philosophy past 1750. Kant attempts (unconvincingly, IMO) to answer him, and the remainder of philosophy comes down to folks who extend Hume (Logical Positivists, Karl Popper, etc.) folks who extend Kant (Hegel, Marx, etc.), and folks who find Hume so unanswerable that they take philosophy in a different direction (Neitzche, Sartre). Hume defines modern philosphy, and is in many extents unsurpassed. [Blatantly over-brief moderately unfair summary of modern philosophy. Got it.]
I think I can answer Hume on one of his most important points: The problem of induction... one of the fundamental (largely unanswered) points in philosophy.
Hume says: we cannot justify induction. From the above link: "In general, it is not necessary that causal relation in the future resemble causal relations in the past, as it is always conceivable otherwise; for Hume, this is because the negation of the claim does not lead to a contradiction."
My translation (?) Induction assumes that the future resembles the past...and since this is an unjustified, and unjustifiable (outside of Berkeley/CS Lewis's creator-justification) premise, induction is merely useful, not deductively true.
My response: Deduction is justified by induction, not the other way around.
Hume starts his position with the idea that deduction is more solid than induction. That position is both epistemically unfounded AND does not conform to what we see in the world.
Point 1: In the real world, MOST ideas, theories, and cogitations end up being wrong. If you get much more complicated than 2+2=5, the pure reasoning approach tends to fail. Contrarily, perceptions are much more reliable. "Is that thing blue?" gives correct results much more often than the (relatively simple) monty haul problem. Indeed, so too does induction: "Will this pencil look bent when partially inserted into a glass of water?" Hence, the fundamental underpinnings of Hume's problem of induction are flawed.
Point 2: Deductive truths are learned by induction. 2+2=4 is not learned as true by anyone using deducation, all of Bertrand Russell's work aside. It is learned by induction. And then the rules of deduction are learned by induction. And then you start using them. What you truly know is inductive knowledge.
Point 3: Hume's actual text is difficult for me to search, but I seem to remember his use of a counterfactual: Why would I not believe that the future will be different from the past? If not him, then a later expositor on hume suggested as much. This is silly. Bayes disposes of that rather rapidly. Unless one embraces radical skepticism (why should I believe in the past at all?), Bayesian statistics takes both theses (the future is different than/same as the past) and applies updating. What is left standing is the future resembles the past.
Point 4: Hume frequently refers to a priori "impossible to believe other than" propositions. This is a cognitive error that comes from Descartes. In a paper, Diana Hsieh references David Kelley and proceeds to eviscerate this position. Roughly: "why is it believed that what pictures you can make in your head, and what is true or necessarily true are terribly well connected?" If there is not a substantial connection between the (necessarily) true and your conception of the (necessarily) true, then Hume's argument goes up in smoke.
Point 5: The evolutionary purpose of the conscious brain is somewhere between (a) be sexier by means of culture/joke/tricks and (b) be more effective by predicting the future/making plans. The goal of reason is to make the individual more effective. If the brain is built in order to be effective (one can consider "a" to be a subset of this), then criticizing induction is silly, and his entire endeavor is wrong.
Point 6: My new reading material points out that certainty is an emotion, not an indicator of truth. The quest for certainty is no longer an appropriate goal.
Overall...Hume assumes a lot about minds, deduction and induction, and certainty. I argue that with most (all) of Hume's assumptions being wrong, his question fails on many points. On the other hand...he is right that you can't justify induction from deduction...He's just wrong that you should want to. You might, on the other hand, be able to justify deduction by means of induction, if you're careful enough and pick the right examples.
Yudkowsky & Rationality
Eliezer asks a question at the bottom of his post about rationality. Having been trying to phrase the answer to that question for almost twenty years, let's try it the way I've been saying it.
If your theory doesn't work (over time, statistically), it isn't right.
or
Bad effectiveness implies bad theory.
Mostly...rational does not mean book-learned but practical-dumb. Rational means figuring out how to ACTUALLY do it.
Amusingly, this is self-referentially problematic. In real life, the moderately sucessful rationalist (as in thinking rationally, not as per Bishop Berkeley), has become a successful rationalist by using, and mostly over-using her reason. The mental habits she has acquired over time do not permit (well) some successes. For instance, humans are evolved to have highly complex social behaviors. In general, success in the social realm involves (mostly) relying on pre-conscious clues and patterns vaguely observed that most modern rationalists have learned effectively to ignore in favor of conscious overrides. The business of being rational has led us to be worse at some activities that require less conscious behavior. And it's not actually an option to go back to age 3 and decide that in the social realm to act like everyone else...but leave high geekery on for intellectual tasks.
Of course, the proper rationalist response is: Yeah we suck...but we're not competing against average, we're competing against our baseline. Which is a good point...but nonetheless...while I agree about 85% with what Eliezer said, I need to point out that the business of pursuing rationality from a young age (nearly?) necessarily causes other failures.
One more try at his question:
Real world failure suggests bad theory, but statistics matter.
If your theory doesn't work (over time, statistically), it isn't right.
or
Bad effectiveness implies bad theory.
Mostly...rational does not mean book-learned but practical-dumb. Rational means figuring out how to ACTUALLY do it.
Amusingly, this is self-referentially problematic. In real life, the moderately sucessful rationalist (as in thinking rationally, not as per Bishop Berkeley), has become a successful rationalist by using, and mostly over-using her reason. The mental habits she has acquired over time do not permit (well) some successes. For instance, humans are evolved to have highly complex social behaviors. In general, success in the social realm involves (mostly) relying on pre-conscious clues and patterns vaguely observed that most modern rationalists have learned effectively to ignore in favor of conscious overrides. The business of being rational has led us to be worse at some activities that require less conscious behavior. And it's not actually an option to go back to age 3 and decide that in the social realm to act like everyone else...but leave high geekery on for intellectual tasks.
Of course, the proper rationalist response is: Yeah we suck...but we're not competing against average, we're competing against our baseline. Which is a good point...but nonetheless...while I agree about 85% with what Eliezer said, I need to point out that the business of pursuing rationality from a young age (nearly?) necessarily causes other failures.
One more try at his question:
Real world failure suggests bad theory, but statistics matter.
Inequality
Tyler posts on inequality. I get confused, and think he's about to talk like Robin on inequality. Or even about beauty inequality or personality or inequality of rights concern. Inequality of intelligence appears to be being addressedBut no...it's post about coming cataclysm if inequality of savings equalizes.
Robin's question is more interesting to me, though. Why is it that all these folks want to edit wealth inequality, which is far more a question of an individual's choices, than the non-wealth inequalities (looks, personality, intelligence) that are far more impactful on folks lives (above $5k annual)?
Robin's question is more interesting to me, though. Why is it that all these folks want to edit wealth inequality, which is far more a question of an individual's choices, than the non-wealth inequalities (looks, personality, intelligence) that are far more impactful on folks lives (above $5k annual)?
Book Report: Supercapitalism
Supercapitalism is a fabulous book. I, a hardcore anarcho-capitalistic-left-libertarian, agree with in excess of 95% of what Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor says about the causes of the problems we are facing in the world. This is stunning. I'm not certain I've ever agreed with 95% of any 3 consecutive sentences spoken by a political figure before. I agree with about 70% of what he says about the direction of the solutions as well, which boggles my mind.
In this book, Robert Reich takes an economists Hayekian approach to understanding the world, with a liberal sensibility about what is desireable. Roughly, he suggests that our decisions as consumers and investors have made live amazingly better for us as consumers and investors (insert mountain of data). He also suggests that changes in our consumer/investor behavior (seeking low prices/better deals) has forced companies to either change or go out of business. Finally, these changes have led to a much less pleasant (as compared to the "Not Quite Golden Age" of the '50s) work (qua work, not qua social enlightenment) environment, wherein stability has been sacrificed to the gods of economics.
His next line is tremendously powerful: We didn't collectively decide to go this way. Rather...this is where we got to on accident. Then his liberalism comes out, but in a remarkably difficult to oppose fashion. We need to, as a country, have the conversation of "Is this where we want to be/want to be going?" and we're not having that conversation. He argues (persuasively) that we probably don't want to be going quite so far down this road as we are going. The fabulous (barely comprehensible) wealth generated by our consumerism and our investing are not enough to offset the stability lost by the consequences of said consumerism and investing. To paraphrase him, capitalism seems to have eaten democracy.
He then, not unfairly, places a lot of the blame for our current hyper-economic situation on the institution of corporations. As Milton Friedman said what drives corporations is making money. Corporations are not, should not be, and indeed CANNOT be, in the modern world, anything but money-making, law-following engines. If you want different behavior from the corporation, change the law. If you donn't change the law, don't expect diffferent behavior.
Currently, in fact, and he has some beautiful charts showing this, corporations and corporate lobbyists own Washington (and probably most of the statehouses as well). A tremendous amount of law is made by or in order to benefit the various (mostly corporate) lobbying interests. And this intrusion of corporate money into politics is causing huge issues.
Fine. I agree with nearly everything said up to this point. But then he and I part company. Dr. Reich proposes solutions. I like them (remove the legal status of the corporation as a fake-person) but think that his solutions are impracticable (too much $ against this), and wouldn't work even if enacted. I think we should instead try the libertarian solutions (decrease the power which government so that corporate manipulation is relatively useless ) which are differently impracticable and which wouldn't work in some other fashion.
Libertarians and conservatives who wish to understand liberals...read this book. It's the only book I've seen that even comes close to explaining the liberal point of view from a sufficiently "realist" perspective that even makes sense to a libertarian. Liberals who want to know what the hell the libertarians (and libertarian conservatives) are talking about? Read this book. It is written by a prominent, solidly realist liberal, who doesn't pretend any of our current problems are easy, or that unintended consequences wouldn't bite us in the behinds. Be warned, though. Any of you trying to scare us with hobgoblins, either Reagan/Thatcher-ism or Al Gore-ist AGW, are bound to be horrified. Your favorite "blame the enemy" picture will be methodologically dismembered with a very sharp dataset.
This is not my favorite book of the year (Jane Jacobs or Grant McCracken), because it doesn't give me that many fabulous new thinkings to do. However, I will probably recommend this book to more people than any other book I've read this year (even my new fascinating read), as it might help to civilize the political discourse, and it's reading should effectively prohibit many groups from calling out entire other groups as "heartless/afraid/economically illiterate".
As they say, read the whole thing.
In this book, Robert Reich takes an economists Hayekian approach to understanding the world, with a liberal sensibility about what is desireable. Roughly, he suggests that our decisions as consumers and investors have made live amazingly better for us as consumers and investors (insert mountain of data). He also suggests that changes in our consumer/investor behavior (seeking low prices/better deals) has forced companies to either change or go out of business. Finally, these changes have led to a much less pleasant (as compared to the "Not Quite Golden Age" of the '50s) work (qua work, not qua social enlightenment) environment, wherein stability has been sacrificed to the gods of economics.
His next line is tremendously powerful: We didn't collectively decide to go this way. Rather...this is where we got to on accident. Then his liberalism comes out, but in a remarkably difficult to oppose fashion. We need to, as a country, have the conversation of "Is this where we want to be/want to be going?" and we're not having that conversation. He argues (persuasively) that we probably don't want to be going quite so far down this road as we are going. The fabulous (barely comprehensible) wealth generated by our consumerism and our investing are not enough to offset the stability lost by the consequences of said consumerism and investing. To paraphrase him, capitalism seems to have eaten democracy.
He then, not unfairly, places a lot of the blame for our current hyper-economic situation on the institution of corporations. As Milton Friedman said what drives corporations is making money. Corporations are not, should not be, and indeed CANNOT be, in the modern world, anything but money-making, law-following engines. If you want different behavior from the corporation, change the law. If you donn't change the law, don't expect diffferent behavior.
Currently, in fact, and he has some beautiful charts showing this, corporations and corporate lobbyists own Washington (and probably most of the statehouses as well). A tremendous amount of law is made by or in order to benefit the various (mostly corporate) lobbying interests. And this intrusion of corporate money into politics is causing huge issues.
Fine. I agree with nearly everything said up to this point. But then he and I part company. Dr. Reich proposes solutions. I like them (remove the legal status of the corporation as a fake-person) but think that his solutions are impracticable (too much $ against this), and wouldn't work even if enacted. I think we should instead try the libertarian solutions (decrease the power which government so that corporate manipulation is relatively useless ) which are differently impracticable and which wouldn't work in some other fashion.
Libertarians and conservatives who wish to understand liberals...read this book. It's the only book I've seen that even comes close to explaining the liberal point of view from a sufficiently "realist" perspective that even makes sense to a libertarian. Liberals who want to know what the hell the libertarians (and libertarian conservatives) are talking about? Read this book. It is written by a prominent, solidly realist liberal, who doesn't pretend any of our current problems are easy, or that unintended consequences wouldn't bite us in the behinds. Be warned, though. Any of you trying to scare us with hobgoblins, either Reagan/Thatcher-ism or Al Gore-ist AGW, are bound to be horrified. Your favorite "blame the enemy" picture will be methodologically dismembered with a very sharp dataset.
This is not my favorite book of the year (Jane Jacobs or Grant McCracken), because it doesn't give me that many fabulous new thinkings to do. However, I will probably recommend this book to more people than any other book I've read this year (even my new fascinating read), as it might help to civilize the political discourse, and it's reading should effectively prohibit many groups from calling out entire other groups as "heartless/afraid/economically illiterate".
As they say, read the whole thing.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Some things especially piss me off
I think lynchings are out of fashion these days, but otherwise...look.
Kling on Insurance Industry study
Kling points out two relevant pieces of information about the insurance industry (disclaimer...I work in the insurance industry, but I think Singapore's health system {mandatory HSA's, with only catastrophic insurance} is best-in-class).
1. "If the Democrats had solid evidence that their reform bill will not substantially raise insurance rates, then they would just give us that proof and dispose of the issue that way. Instead, punishing the insurance companies for releasing the study suggests to me that the study has some validity to it."
2. "I am not a fan of the health insurance industry. But I am even less of a fan of enacting taxes solely for the purpose of punishing one's political opponents. Morally, it is on the same level as throwing your enemies in jail."
1. "If the Democrats had solid evidence that their reform bill will not substantially raise insurance rates, then they would just give us that proof and dispose of the issue that way. Instead, punishing the insurance companies for releasing the study suggests to me that the study has some validity to it."
2. "I am not a fan of the health insurance industry. But I am even less of a fan of enacting taxes solely for the purpose of punishing one's political opponents. Morally, it is on the same level as throwing your enemies in jail."
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Darn Kling (et. al)
So here I am, getting ready to write a big post on conservativism...trying to wrap my arms around the fundamentals of conservativism. It goes something like this:
Most new stuff is wrong/bad. This is not news. See: Belts (wherein aretae emulates a conservative).
Belts to keep your pants up is a good thing, because then your smelly butt doesn't hang out for the rest of the world to see and smell. Also, pants around your waist let you move properly fast. Newfangled fashion trends where your jeans are worn around your ankles both restrict movement, and air out your bottom. OK if you're a supermodel. Not so good if you're not. This is a trend worth skipping.
The thing that conservatives have figured out, which others seem not to have, is that most ideas, even most good-sounding ideas, have bad consequences. Overall, the change will make life worse. It may take 30 years for the consequences to show up (no fault divorce, Roe v. Wade), or 80 (AFDC), or it may be immediate (TARP/Stimulus), but the consequences (Much lower rates of 2-parent family stability, and out-of-wedlock birth, leading to seriously increased child poverty and overall poor child development, or tanking dollar) are real, and bad.
Given that human the ingenuity of creating solutions basically sucks at sussing out the unintended consequences of changes, we should, on principle, oppose MOST of them. If you are going to support any solution, you need to try it on a small scale, demonstrate that it works, and then attempt to try it on a slightly larger scale (to demonstrate that it scales), and then we could talk about maybe trying it at a whole-state level. Of course, this kind of thing takes decades to make real changes...but that's the price you pay to not break the things that work.
Since the most important things we have are our family (Child development), our community (cooperative neighborhoods make MUCH better places for kids), and our culture (superior anglo norms, rights tradition) we must especially be worried about doing things that can further erode the already massively weakened institutions. Anything that might potentially weaken our culture, our families, or our communities (by raising up other cultures, opposing WASP culture, promoting non-traditional families, or disallowing community choice in many cases) should be vigorously or even violently opposed, as that is the core of what makes this a good place to live.
Changes are usually misguided, and sometimes actively promoted by folks who would prefer to weaken our norms (family, community, neighborhood). While their solution may have some value, their solutions would often be terribly destructive to those things we value most.
If we can't rely on new ideas to solve problems, what then can we rely on? Wisdom and authority. Sure there are sometimes problems with both wisdom and authority, but with the basic human incapability of using reason to solve problems, we have nothing else, and certainly nothing better. Furthermore, both wisdom and authority are good brakes on the general human tendency towards (for lack of a better word) sin.
Conformity is not necessarily the best possible option. However, for weak, easily-mistaken human beings, it leads to much smaller problems than the other available options.
As with most basic positions, this view of the world has a great deal of power. I find it highly convincing in general. And I am constitutionally incapable of being a conservative, regardless the strength of its positions. I personally love the new. A slightly reimagined (kindler gentler) Arioch (MM) is my patron deity.
So...I had that all planned out...and then Kling comes along, and posts about conservativism. Worse, he's largely referencing other posts and an essay, which are drawing a big bold line between conservativism and libertarianism. I find myself somewhat (but not too much) chastened in my attempt to outline conservativism in the face of all the serious thinkers arrayed here, but perhaps this libertarian's view of the good in conservativism is useful to someone.
Most new stuff is wrong/bad. This is not news. See: Belts (wherein aretae emulates a conservative).
Belts to keep your pants up is a good thing, because then your smelly butt doesn't hang out for the rest of the world to see and smell. Also, pants around your waist let you move properly fast. Newfangled fashion trends where your jeans are worn around your ankles both restrict movement, and air out your bottom. OK if you're a supermodel. Not so good if you're not. This is a trend worth skipping.
The thing that conservatives have figured out, which others seem not to have, is that most ideas, even most good-sounding ideas, have bad consequences. Overall, the change will make life worse. It may take 30 years for the consequences to show up (no fault divorce, Roe v. Wade), or 80 (AFDC), or it may be immediate (TARP/Stimulus), but the consequences (Much lower rates of 2-parent family stability, and out-of-wedlock birth, leading to seriously increased child poverty and overall poor child development, or tanking dollar) are real, and bad.
Given that human the ingenuity of creating solutions basically sucks at sussing out the unintended consequences of changes, we should, on principle, oppose MOST of them. If you are going to support any solution, you need to try it on a small scale, demonstrate that it works, and then attempt to try it on a slightly larger scale (to demonstrate that it scales), and then we could talk about maybe trying it at a whole-state level. Of course, this kind of thing takes decades to make real changes...but that's the price you pay to not break the things that work.
Since the most important things we have are our family (Child development), our community (cooperative neighborhoods make MUCH better places for kids), and our culture (superior anglo norms, rights tradition) we must especially be worried about doing things that can further erode the already massively weakened institutions. Anything that might potentially weaken our culture, our families, or our communities (by raising up other cultures, opposing WASP culture, promoting non-traditional families, or disallowing community choice in many cases) should be vigorously or even violently opposed, as that is the core of what makes this a good place to live.
Changes are usually misguided, and sometimes actively promoted by folks who would prefer to weaken our norms (family, community, neighborhood). While their solution may have some value, their solutions would often be terribly destructive to those things we value most.
If we can't rely on new ideas to solve problems, what then can we rely on? Wisdom and authority. Sure there are sometimes problems with both wisdom and authority, but with the basic human incapability of using reason to solve problems, we have nothing else, and certainly nothing better. Furthermore, both wisdom and authority are good brakes on the general human tendency towards (for lack of a better word) sin.
Conformity is not necessarily the best possible option. However, for weak, easily-mistaken human beings, it leads to much smaller problems than the other available options.
As with most basic positions, this view of the world has a great deal of power. I find it highly convincing in general. And I am constitutionally incapable of being a conservative, regardless the strength of its positions. I personally love the new. A slightly reimagined (kindler gentler) Arioch (MM) is my patron deity.
So...I had that all planned out...and then Kling comes along, and posts about conservativism. Worse, he's largely referencing other posts and an essay, which are drawing a big bold line between conservativism and libertarianism. I find myself somewhat (but not too much) chastened in my attempt to outline conservativism in the face of all the serious thinkers arrayed here, but perhaps this libertarian's view of the good in conservativism is useful to someone.
Probability, Game theory
Game theorists always talk about the proper rational Expected Value of games.
For instance, if you put $3 down, and get paid the $ value of 1 six sided die, you have 1/6 chance of $1, 1/6 chance of $2, etc. This works out to an expected value of $0.50. Mathematically almost certain. If it's a fair 6-sided die. $(1/6 + 2/6 + 3/6 +4/6 + 5/6 + 6/6) = $21/6 = $3.50 minus the $3 you put in, is +$0.50 expected to win. In Craps, running all the math, if you put down $1, and play perfectly (betting right) gives you an EV of something like negative 3 cents (.4985 chance of winning). Again if the dice are fair.
It seems to me that all the experimental game theory discussion I've read deals only with the case where the probabilities are known, rather than unknown. And I am wondering whether, when people are playing these games, they know the probabilities, or are just using hedges. If I were a probabilistic brain module, I'd probably not be worrying about precision in probabilities. Heck...I might even only natively support 5 probabilities. About even, one time in 4, one time in ten, maybe once, Never. How is it that people with their clearly evolved brains are supposed to make decent probabilistic decisions? I think the answer is rather simple. We're not.
Casinos are fabulously profitable for just this reason. We've got a lot of red horseshit in our political/scientific discourse because of the same thing.
How about this as a research proposition...
Suppose that people, when told a probability, put sizeable error-bars around it, and that those error bars don't change linearly based on the absolute probability. Now how much of people's risk-taking behavior makes sense?
Borrowing from Gintis's book...
a = $5
b = $5@89% + $25@10%+ 0@1%
c = $5@11% + $0@89%
d= $25@10% + $0@90%
The claim made by Gintis is that the relationship between A + B is the same as the realttionship between C and D.
In either case, you trade 11% chance of $5 for (10% chance of 25 and 1% chance of nothing). Basically, in either case, it's an EV of +$1.95 (+$2.50-$0.55).
Experimentally, what we find, though, is that while people do (as they should) prefer D to C, they also tend to prefer A to B. And this is confusing folks. I don't think this result is all that confusing, if we just assume that folks don't believe exact probability estimates.
Rewriting the problem with Error bars:
A: $5
B: $5@(85-95%) + $25@(1-10%) + $0@(1-5%)
In this case....it's not obvious to the probabilistic component that it's even a good deal.
if the numbers are 94,1, and 5%...then it's a loss.
C: $5@(5-20%) + $0@(80-95%)
D: $25@(5-20%) + $0@(80-95%)
The chances here are roughly indistinguishable, except the win amounts are larger.
My hypothesis is that changing the numbers from inside the range of (roughly) 0.2% up to 3-4% should make NO difference at all, because people don't work that way. This, by the way, is why poker pros can make money. They care about the 2% vs. 0.2% that most people can't distinguish.
For instance, if you put $3 down, and get paid the $ value of 1 six sided die, you have 1/6 chance of $1, 1/6 chance of $2, etc. This works out to an expected value of $0.50. Mathematically almost certain. If it's a fair 6-sided die. $(1/6 + 2/6 + 3/6 +4/6 + 5/6 + 6/6) = $21/6 = $3.50 minus the $3 you put in, is +$0.50 expected to win. In Craps, running all the math, if you put down $1, and play perfectly (betting right) gives you an EV of something like negative 3 cents (.4985 chance of winning). Again if the dice are fair.
It seems to me that all the experimental game theory discussion I've read deals only with the case where the probabilities are known, rather than unknown. And I am wondering whether, when people are playing these games, they know the probabilities, or are just using hedges. If I were a probabilistic brain module, I'd probably not be worrying about precision in probabilities. Heck...I might even only natively support 5 probabilities. About even, one time in 4, one time in ten, maybe once, Never. How is it that people with their clearly evolved brains are supposed to make decent probabilistic decisions? I think the answer is rather simple. We're not.
Casinos are fabulously profitable for just this reason. We've got a lot of red horseshit in our political/scientific discourse because of the same thing.
How about this as a research proposition...
Suppose that people, when told a probability, put sizeable error-bars around it, and that those error bars don't change linearly based on the absolute probability. Now how much of people's risk-taking behavior makes sense?
Borrowing from Gintis's book...
a = $5
b = $5@89% + $25@10%+ 0@1%
c = $5@11% + $0@89%
d= $25@10% + $0@90%
The claim made by Gintis is that the relationship between A + B is the same as the realttionship between C and D.
In either case, you trade 11% chance of $5 for (10% chance of 25 and 1% chance of nothing). Basically, in either case, it's an EV of +$1.95 (+$2.50-$0.55).
Experimentally, what we find, though, is that while people do (as they should) prefer D to C, they also tend to prefer A to B. And this is confusing folks. I don't think this result is all that confusing, if we just assume that folks don't believe exact probability estimates.
Rewriting the problem with Error bars:
A: $5
B: $5@(85-95%) + $25@(1-10%) + $0@(1-5%)
In this case....it's not obvious to the probabilistic component that it's even a good deal.
if the numbers are 94,1, and 5%...then it's a loss.
C: $5@(5-20%) + $0@(80-95%)
D: $25@(5-20%) + $0@(80-95%)
The chances here are roughly indistinguishable, except the win amounts are larger.
My hypothesis is that changing the numbers from inside the range of (roughly) 0.2% up to 3-4% should make NO difference at all, because people don't work that way. This, by the way, is why poker pros can make money. They care about the 2% vs. 0.2% that most people can't distinguish.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Interesting points about science
1. From a book I'm reading:
Modern Science is no longer mostly about simple cause and effect.
Rather, the situations we see are usually sufficiently complex (dare one say chaotic or non-linear) that we care (primarily) about correlations. If one increases the quantity of X, one increases the chances of Y. This makes for much more interesting discussions. And it means that the primary activity of science is doing statistical analysis on experimental data.
Unfortunately, this means that when talking to the statistically ignorant, one can paint horseshit red, and call it apples. The statistically ignorant tend to either know this or learn it real fast...so they (properly) distrust ALL statistical work. Results: People decide what they want to believe, then accept all supportive statistical/probabilistic evidence, and discount all the other stuff.
Funny thing is...1st Sophomore science lab at school, I learned that much of physics was about doing statistical analysis on my (crappy) data. However, I learned that without having learned all the statistics up front, and without having a theoretical appreciation for why we were doing what we were doing. It's why I stopped pursuing science, and went math instead...I wasn't interested either in the statistical analysis of crappy data or in doing experiments. Mostly, I'm still not. And most of undergrad statistics (personal experience here) was the kind of "this works but doesn't make sense" approach that I detest from differential equations.
But...the information you can extract from statistics is fascinating. And it really is the core of the modern academy (At least science, social science, applied science {Medicine, Engineering,etc.} depts). And much like how actually understanding limits (in calculus), or evolution (especially the math of evolution), or spontaneous order (Econ) changes how one is capable of thinking about the world...a proper comprehension of statistics does as well.
2. From Seth Roberts:
Modern Applied science has massive structural problems, due in large part to the academic reward structure, and academic funding
Rather than rambling, I'll quote the end:
"...because studying [useful things like disease/depression prevention] (a) will make money for no one, (b) won’t produce a steady stream of published papers and (c) is useful (= low status), they are nearly impossible to study"
Modern Science is no longer mostly about simple cause and effect.
Rather, the situations we see are usually sufficiently complex (dare one say chaotic or non-linear) that we care (primarily) about correlations. If one increases the quantity of X, one increases the chances of Y. This makes for much more interesting discussions. And it means that the primary activity of science is doing statistical analysis on experimental data.
Unfortunately, this means that when talking to the statistically ignorant, one can paint horseshit red, and call it apples. The statistically ignorant tend to either know this or learn it real fast...so they (properly) distrust ALL statistical work. Results: People decide what they want to believe, then accept all supportive statistical/probabilistic evidence, and discount all the other stuff.
Funny thing is...1st Sophomore science lab at school, I learned that much of physics was about doing statistical analysis on my (crappy) data. However, I learned that without having learned all the statistics up front, and without having a theoretical appreciation for why we were doing what we were doing. It's why I stopped pursuing science, and went math instead...I wasn't interested either in the statistical analysis of crappy data or in doing experiments. Mostly, I'm still not. And most of undergrad statistics (personal experience here) was the kind of "this works but doesn't make sense" approach that I detest from differential equations.
But...the information you can extract from statistics is fascinating. And it really is the core of the modern academy (At least science, social science, applied science {Medicine, Engineering,etc.} depts). And much like how actually understanding limits (in calculus), or evolution (especially the math of evolution), or spontaneous order (Econ) changes how one is capable of thinking about the world...a proper comprehension of statistics does as well.
2. From Seth Roberts:
Modern Applied science has massive structural problems, due in large part to the academic reward structure, and academic funding
Rather than rambling, I'll quote the end:
"...because studying [useful things like disease/depression prevention] (a) will make money for no one, (b) won’t produce a steady stream of published papers and (c) is useful (= low status), they are nearly impossible to study"
Monday, October 12, 2009
Inequality
Not quite aligned with my last post, Will starts off a Cato Unbound on inequality. Although he's been beating this drum for years, it's a good collection of the reality of the situation. Unsurprisingly, his 3 main points are:
- The level of real economic inequality is lower than popular treatments of the issue have led many of us to think.
- The level of economic inequality is an unreliable indicator of a society’s justice or injustice.
- Inequality distracts us from real injustices that are given too little attention.
There’s ample of reason to suspect that the gap in standards of living has widened a whole lot less than Paul Krugman and most everybody thought. My point is, So what? That fact doesn’t tell us what we need to know.
What’s really interesting is why inequality has been overestimated. If, for example, large systemic economic forces — expanded trade with China, Wal-Mart’s downward pressure on prices — helped make poorer Americans a good deal richer than we had thought they were…. Well, that’s terrific. And informative. This story suggests who might get hurt if the United States gets in a trade war in China, or if Wal-Mart unionizes and shifts some gains from trade away from consumers and toward its employees. Getting the story straight is the first step in making a better story.
Economic inequality is too easy. It makes us lazy in our quest to sniff out injustice, which, after all, is not so hard to find. There is overwhelming reason to believe that in the United States the deck really is stacked against some people. As a consequence, many millions are doing much less well than they might be.
Legions of inner-city kids consigned to abysmal public schools are systematically denied a fair chance to develop the capacities need to participate fully in our institutions, or to enjoy their potentially ample rewards. The United States imprisons a larger share of its citizens than any country on Earth, literally disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of men and women (though they are mostly men) and leaving hundreds of thousands more dispirited and damaged. Undocumented immigrant workers increasingly constitute a permanent economic underclass explicitly denied many of the basic legal protections of citizens, inviting both government and private abuse. And, at the level of culture, patterns of private discrimination continue to constitute for millions a web of real, seemingly inescapable barriers to opportunity and achievement, and help to generate self-reproducing patterns of diminished expectations and wasted potential. We should focus our attention and energy to the task of rectifying these vicious injustices.
Maybe fixing all this would decrease the variance in national incomes. But the idea that fixing all this somehow requires “fixing” the pattern of incomes is an excellent way to avoid the real problems and fix nothing.
Praxeology
There are lots of bits of economics that one could talk about. Everyone else is talking about Elinor Ostrom or Oliver Williamson, the new Nobelists. I want to wander off down a side road, and talk again about the beauty of economics.
I tend to think of econ as two entirely separate fields:
If we're looking at only micro, we need to understand what the topic is. For that, I turn to Ludwig von Mises, and his exposition of Praxeology (you could go to wikipedia instead, for a less colorful explanation). Roughly, praxeology is the study of human action that can be grasped a priory (or without even looking at the world). What MUST be true about people. Without arguing about the validity of a priori-ism at all, it is interesting to note that a great deal of economics, and the core of Austrian econ is rooted in the same kind of truths as math. If you have A,B,C, then D must be true. But in econ, A,B,and C are rather relevant to the actualities in the world. Von Mises here has a more complete Explanation.
If one pursue a priori econ just a little ways, one gets beautiful results like:
I tend to think of econ as two entirely separate fields:
- Macro (once political economy), which is currently in a massive state of disarray.
- Micro (once just economics).
If we're looking at only micro, we need to understand what the topic is. For that, I turn to Ludwig von Mises, and his exposition of Praxeology (you could go to wikipedia instead, for a less colorful explanation). Roughly, praxeology is the study of human action that can be grasped a priory (or without even looking at the world). What MUST be true about people. Without arguing about the validity of a priori-ism at all, it is interesting to note that a great deal of economics, and the core of Austrian econ is rooted in the same kind of truths as math. If you have A,B,C, then D must be true. But in econ, A,B,and C are rather relevant to the actualities in the world. Von Mises here has a more complete Explanation.
If one pursue a priori econ just a little ways, one gets beautiful results like:
- The tobacco settlement was necessarily (based on how it was levied) paid entirely by current smokers, and the tobacco companies were (effectively) not impacted at all.
- There is some point (without knowing where we are relative to that point) where raising taxes will make tax revenue go down.
- People not knowing much about politics/(macro-)economics is a rational decision for them.
- Taxes cause notable losses in total value, well beyond the taxes collected. (even though in theory, the losses might be made up by multiplier spending)
More responses
I said:
The business of politics is, at its core, guardianism. The thing that distinguishes libertarians from other participants in the political process is that they are fundamentally opposed to guardianism in all/most of its flavors. It is as if the libertarians are pacifist arguing to two warring nations that they should stop the war. From the libertarian POV, it is the war that is the problem. However, both sides have reasons why they think it is worthwhile to continue the fight. Not surprising, then, that the libertarians were among the founders of antiwar.com.
It also explains why the libertarians are unable to win, and why libertarians are disillusioned with politics. If libertarians want (primary goal) less political action, and in order to get elected, one needs to do lots of political acting...it's not going to work out that well. Libertarians are shifting into the Romer/Friedman/Anarchist camp rather rapidly now as well...also because of the (now seemingly-) obvious position that doing politics won't reduce the amount of politics that gets done. The liberals have been saying for years: you can't stop violence with more violence. The anti-voting libertarian argues: you can't stop political violence with more political violence.
I think that this is where Andrew and I agree, but perhaps it wasn't called out previously.
Conservativism: Protect especially against threats to the status quo (which is good).Andrew partially disagreed, in a different post:
Progressivism: Protect especially against threats to the poor.
Libertarianism: Protection is the wrong approach. Let's create instead.
Every political arguer is in roughly guardian mode while advocating, even if he's arguing for pure trade liberty!And I wanted to answer that. I don't think Andrew and I disagree massively, here, so there must be some communication difficulty.
The business of politics is, at its core, guardianism. The thing that distinguishes libertarians from other participants in the political process is that they are fundamentally opposed to guardianism in all/most of its flavors. It is as if the libertarians are pacifist arguing to two warring nations that they should stop the war. From the libertarian POV, it is the war that is the problem. However, both sides have reasons why they think it is worthwhile to continue the fight. Not surprising, then, that the libertarians were among the founders of antiwar.com.
It also explains why the libertarians are unable to win, and why libertarians are disillusioned with politics. If libertarians want (primary goal) less political action, and in order to get elected, one needs to do lots of political acting...it's not going to work out that well. Libertarians are shifting into the Romer/Friedman/Anarchist camp rather rapidly now as well...also because of the (now seemingly-) obvious position that doing politics won't reduce the amount of politics that gets done. The liberals have been saying for years: you can't stop violence with more violence. The anti-voting libertarian argues: you can't stop political violence with more political violence.
I think that this is where Andrew and I agree, but perhaps it wasn't called out previously.
Answering a question
Melanie asks:
I will try to answer.
The calculus that each person has to do in order to answer Melanie's question is: Does the evil of taxation outweigh the very real benefit of helping the poor.
This is a fundamental disagreement about the nature of government between libertarians and others. The non-libertarian tends to accept the government's right to tax. The libertarian does not accept that as a right of the government.
To the non-libertarian, the question is Melanie's: "What do you do with the people who cannot afford to pay, but need something for survival?" It's a good question.
To the libertarian, the question heard is: "Are you willing to steal/take by force/threaten (all equivalent to tax) a productive citizen, in order to take his stuff and give it to someone less fortunate."
A libertarian fundamentally does not believe in a special moral category of government/the majority/the elect/senators/the emporer/etc. who can morally do stuff that would be immoral if a private citizen did it. In my new favorite paradigm, the libertarian does not believe that the moral perspective of Guardians (I protect with or without your consent) is moral. They think that anyone taxing people to give to the less fortunate is morally equivalent to a Thug or the Mafia doing the same thing. Sure, it may be smart to pay protection money, but it isn't just. So the libertarian don't care what you do with money, if the money was stolen/extorted/taxed. If you tax/steal/extort, it's bad.
So...back to the question.
The progressive considers helping the (starving) poor to be more important than any silly notion of property rights.
The libertarian considers the evil of stealing worse than the benefit of helping the poor.
In summary, the libertarian isn't really capable of addressing the question at all. Because the question seems to assume that there is some right of the government to steal, by virtue of its being the government.
Now...I will attempt to address your actual question, rather than the one the libertarians hear when you ask the question you started with.
"What do you do with the people who cannot afford to pay, but need something for survival? "
The more nuanced libertarian answer...
1. Human beings CANNOT solve this problem. Scarcity is not invented. Medical procedures/drugs/etc. are expensive to create. And, fundamentally, we are all mostly unwilling to spend more than a certain amount for survival, or even for thriving, for either ourselves or our kids.
2. If we are talking only about a very narrow area of survival (food, shelter), and excluding medicine, then we have to figure out what country we're talking about.
3. If we're talking about the United States, The US spends roughly $1Trillion/year on social programs for 40M people who are below the US Poverty line or about $25,000 per person.
4. If we're talking about India, the poverty line is $12/month in Urban areas. This problem is bigger, and more of a moral imperative than folks in the US making only $10K/year (100x the Indian guy). Should we tax to solve this problem?
5. The question seems to assume that in the case of public programs, people do not fall through the cracks, while in the case of private charity, people do. I am unconvinced that this is an legitimate assumption.
6. $1T spent by the government on care for the poor is a lot of money. Currently, we also spend on the order of $300M in private charity in the US as well. Not all of this is spent on the poor. If the $1T were refunded to the taxpayer, an awful lot of the Charity spent by the feds would instead be spent by individuals.
7. There is a tradeoff between growth and government activity as well. Growth happens via private profit. Taxation hurts growth (See Obama's CEA Chair Christina Romer's paper on growth+taxes). If you want the situation we see in the US, with almost everyone fabulously wealthy as compared to somewhere like India, then you should worry about growth instead of charity. In order to provide for the children of 30 years from now. Charity is largely the perogative of the wealthy...which indicates that getting wealthy is a primary (or even meta-) goal
8. That $1T spent on 40M people in the US does not make them all $25000 richer. It's mostly bureaucratic expenditure.
9. Growth is HUGE. 25 years at 3/5/8% GDP per capita growth is 2x/4x/8x improvement in standard of living in those 8 years. India, growing at 8% for 25 years would have a poverty line of $100/month, not $12.month. HUGE difference. Governments should get out of the damn way, and let people get rich, or at least not poor.
Summary: Even with government programs, folks fall through the cracks. Lots of forms to fill out. No reason to expect private charity would be worse. Probably better. Also, the $1T spent by the US on poor-focussed care would obviously be better spent by a private (results-focused) foundation (Gates?). If we care seriously about poverty, we wouldn't even be focused on the US, we'd be focused overseas, anyhow. Current poverty programs in US are mostly politics and bureaucracy. And for reducing poverty, a high economic growth rate tends to beat out just about any other anti-poverty program inside of about 25 years...and government programs (with taxes) reduce the growth rate.
"What do you do with the people who cannot afford to pay, but need something for survival?This is a wonderful question. It calls out the single point on which the libertarians lose any hope of connecting with a liberal audience.
The impression pro-business libertarians give is "tough shit." Other libertarians claim that the market will take care of it. But no system is perfect. There will always be outliers. How does the market handle outliers?"
I will try to answer.
The calculus that each person has to do in order to answer Melanie's question is: Does the evil of taxation outweigh the very real benefit of helping the poor.
This is a fundamental disagreement about the nature of government between libertarians and others. The non-libertarian tends to accept the government's right to tax. The libertarian does not accept that as a right of the government.
To the non-libertarian, the question is Melanie's: "What do you do with the people who cannot afford to pay, but need something for survival?" It's a good question.
To the libertarian, the question heard is: "Are you willing to steal/take by force/threaten (all equivalent to tax) a productive citizen, in order to take his stuff and give it to someone less fortunate."
A libertarian fundamentally does not believe in a special moral category of government/the majority/the elect/senators/the emporer/etc. who can morally do stuff that would be immoral if a private citizen did it. In my new favorite paradigm, the libertarian does not believe that the moral perspective of Guardians (I protect with or without your consent) is moral. They think that anyone taxing people to give to the less fortunate is morally equivalent to a Thug or the Mafia doing the same thing. Sure, it may be smart to pay protection money, but it isn't just. So the libertarian don't care what you do with money, if the money was stolen/extorted/taxed. If you tax/steal/extort, it's bad.
So...back to the question.
The progressive considers helping the (starving) poor to be more important than any silly notion of property rights.
The libertarian considers the evil of stealing worse than the benefit of helping the poor.
In summary, the libertarian isn't really capable of addressing the question at all. Because the question seems to assume that there is some right of the government to steal, by virtue of its being the government.
Now...I will attempt to address your actual question, rather than the one the libertarians hear when you ask the question you started with.
"What do you do with the people who cannot afford to pay, but need something for survival? "
The more nuanced libertarian answer...
1. Human beings CANNOT solve this problem. Scarcity is not invented. Medical procedures/drugs/etc. are expensive to create. And, fundamentally, we are all mostly unwilling to spend more than a certain amount for survival, or even for thriving, for either ourselves or our kids.
2. If we are talking only about a very narrow area of survival (food, shelter), and excluding medicine, then we have to figure out what country we're talking about.
3. If we're talking about the United States, The US spends roughly $1Trillion/year on social programs for 40M people who are below the US Poverty line or about $25,000 per person.
4. If we're talking about India, the poverty line is $12/month in Urban areas. This problem is bigger, and more of a moral imperative than folks in the US making only $10K/year (100x the Indian guy). Should we tax to solve this problem?
5. The question seems to assume that in the case of public programs, people do not fall through the cracks, while in the case of private charity, people do. I am unconvinced that this is an legitimate assumption.
6. $1T spent by the government on care for the poor is a lot of money. Currently, we also spend on the order of $300M in private charity in the US as well. Not all of this is spent on the poor. If the $1T were refunded to the taxpayer, an awful lot of the Charity spent by the feds would instead be spent by individuals.
7. There is a tradeoff between growth and government activity as well. Growth happens via private profit. Taxation hurts growth (See Obama's CEA Chair Christina Romer's paper on growth+taxes). If you want the situation we see in the US, with almost everyone fabulously wealthy as compared to somewhere like India, then you should worry about growth instead of charity. In order to provide for the children of 30 years from now. Charity is largely the perogative of the wealthy...which indicates that getting wealthy is a primary (or even meta-) goal
8. That $1T spent on 40M people in the US does not make them all $25000 richer. It's mostly bureaucratic expenditure.
9. Growth is HUGE. 25 years at 3/5/8% GDP per capita growth is 2x/4x/8x improvement in standard of living in those 8 years. India, growing at 8% for 25 years would have a poverty line of $100/month, not $12.month. HUGE difference. Governments should get out of the damn way, and let people get rich, or at least not poor.
Summary: Even with government programs, folks fall through the cracks. Lots of forms to fill out. No reason to expect private charity would be worse. Probably better. Also, the $1T spent by the US on poor-focussed care would obviously be better spent by a private (results-focused) foundation (Gates?). If we care seriously about poverty, we wouldn't even be focused on the US, we'd be focused overseas, anyhow. Current poverty programs in US are mostly politics and bureaucracy. And for reducing poverty, a high economic growth rate tends to beat out just about any other anti-poverty program inside of about 25 years...and government programs (with taxes) reduce the growth rate.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Word of the Day
Booboisie -- Coined by Mencken to explain the curious coincidence between the bourgeoisie (middle to upper-middle class) and the boob(-y/-ie) (moron, not female breast).
Used just now here (HT Isegoria), to reference people who have opinions and philosophies that are both touted as superior to yours, and which are 100% impracticable in anything resembling the real world. People who think that you're unenlightened unless you admit that the world is only an illusion, but who still actively avoid getting run over by trucks are among the most egregious offenders here.
The post referenced above not only has a wonderful opinion, it also has a lovely question. Does flaunting a highly impractical, hard-to-live-by ethics constitute conspicuous consumption? Where's Robin Hanson when you need him?
The highly opinionated author also suggests that the only way out of this absurdity ethics trap is to laugh heartily at (and mock) such silliness. According to Saul Alinsky, ridicule is a potent weapon.
Used just now here (HT Isegoria), to reference people who have opinions and philosophies that are both touted as superior to yours, and which are 100% impracticable in anything resembling the real world. People who think that you're unenlightened unless you admit that the world is only an illusion, but who still actively avoid getting run over by trucks are among the most egregious offenders here.
The post referenced above not only has a wonderful opinion, it also has a lovely question. Does flaunting a highly impractical, hard-to-live-by ethics constitute conspicuous consumption? Where's Robin Hanson when you need him?
The highly opinionated author also suggests that the only way out of this absurdity ethics trap is to laugh heartily at (and mock) such silliness. According to Saul Alinsky, ridicule is a potent weapon.
Status and Guardianism
As per Jane Jacobs book, I am wholly sold on the 2 systems of survival explanation. However, this ties in nicely to another topic that I focus on heavily: Status.
Quick, off-the-cuff hypothesizing:
Status applies only to guardian culture.
Trading culture is status-free, to the extent that it's trading culture.
In my just so story, rapacity, plunder, and war have been a respected part of culture for SO much longer than has trading (low caste, almost everywhere you look), that it is near-genetic to look for guardian-type status markers, rather than to trading-type efficiencies. The difficulty a lot of libertarians (and other geeks :) ) have with the modern world is that by observation, life is better to the extent that we can work in a trading context. However, we're all hardwired, and our culture promotes (though maybe not as much as some cultures) the guardian context almost exclusively through status, corporate life, government, military, theater/movies, etc.
Status is inimical to trading culture...and vice versa. To win, a person has to be able to swap back and forth between cultures, and sometimes mix them. (look at my thought process here...I just assumed that trading culture is the only legitimate approach, but that folks must address guardian culture to succeed in the world... This marks me as irredeemably libertarian. However, I now at least understand that not everyone thinks that)
Quick, off-the-cuff hypothesizing:
Status applies only to guardian culture.
Trading culture is status-free, to the extent that it's trading culture.
In my just so story, rapacity, plunder, and war have been a respected part of culture for SO much longer than has trading (low caste, almost everywhere you look), that it is near-genetic to look for guardian-type status markers, rather than to trading-type efficiencies. The difficulty a lot of libertarians (and other geeks :) ) have with the modern world is that by observation, life is better to the extent that we can work in a trading context. However, we're all hardwired, and our culture promotes (though maybe not as much as some cultures) the guardian context almost exclusively through status, corporate life, government, military, theater/movies, etc.
Status is inimical to trading culture...and vice versa. To win, a person has to be able to swap back and forth between cultures, and sometimes mix them. (look at my thought process here...I just assumed that trading culture is the only legitimate approach, but that folks must address guardian culture to succeed in the world... This marks me as irredeemably libertarian. However, I now at least understand that not everyone thinks that)
PUA and Game Theory
Question:
How much of the whole PUA root theory (as opposed to methods) can be explained by Game Theory?
It seems as if the basic PUA line, translated into Game Theory terms is that the normal state of affairs is a game (yes, a technical term from game theory) wherein the woman is choosing between men. Half (2/3) of the goal of PUA is to switch the game so as to have the woman competing for a man. The simple swich of what game is being played switches all the incentives. If the incentives all switch, then all of the misogynistic crap that comes out of PUA sites can be properly ignored. The goal is JUST to switch the game from I compete for you to you compete for me. If this is done, game over.
How much of the whole PUA root theory (as opposed to methods) can be explained by Game Theory?
It seems as if the basic PUA line, translated into Game Theory terms is that the normal state of affairs is a game (yes, a technical term from game theory) wherein the woman is choosing between men. Half (2/3) of the goal of PUA is to switch the game so as to have the woman competing for a man. The simple swich of what game is being played switches all the incentives. If the incentives all switch, then all of the misogynistic crap that comes out of PUA sites can be properly ignored. The goal is JUST to switch the game from I compete for you to you compete for me. If this is done, game over.
Pursue the Meta
AnomalyUK's post I referenced twice yesterday got me thinking.
Adam Smith showed that (basically) if a corporation's goal is other than to make money...competing corporations TEND to drive it out of business, without serious restraint. The money-making impulse drives growth, and growth gives more ability to pursue the goal desired. Hence businesses who WANT to do something else need to make money first...and indeed the money making goal crowds out other goals.
AnomalyUK pointed out that in politics an analagous result applies. Effective politicians are necessarily the ones who pursue power most nakedly. Power, because it is a necessary means to any political goal, becomes the penultimate goal in theory, and the ultimate goal in practice.
David Schmitz, a moral philosopher, points out in a great, but complex book, that Randian-style egoism (not his words) falls out of ANY goal-based start point, because it's meta-level necessity (again, my words). It is not hard to argue that Ron Merrill's book argues the same thing, but Schmidtz lays it out more carefully.
To what extent is it true that in all long-term, dynamic, success-uncertain systems, the instrumental goal substitutes for the final goal?
I'm convinced on Theory of the Firm, Public Choice Econ, Ethics. What else?
Adam Smith showed that (basically) if a corporation's goal is other than to make money...competing corporations TEND to drive it out of business, without serious restraint. The money-making impulse drives growth, and growth gives more ability to pursue the goal desired. Hence businesses who WANT to do something else need to make money first...and indeed the money making goal crowds out other goals.
AnomalyUK pointed out that in politics an analagous result applies. Effective politicians are necessarily the ones who pursue power most nakedly. Power, because it is a necessary means to any political goal, becomes the penultimate goal in theory, and the ultimate goal in practice.
David Schmitz, a moral philosopher, points out in a great, but complex book, that Randian-style egoism (not his words) falls out of ANY goal-based start point, because it's meta-level necessity (again, my words). It is not hard to argue that Ron Merrill's book argues the same thing, but Schmidtz lays it out more carefully.
To what extent is it true that in all long-term, dynamic, success-uncertain systems, the instrumental goal substitutes for the final goal?
I'm convinced on Theory of the Firm, Public Choice Econ, Ethics. What else?
Hanson on Software Education
Robin Hanson is incredulous that such poor learning patterns exist. I find this silly. I've been in technical (programming) education for more than 10 years, and this is standard...even though (as Robin suggests) badly wrong.
Bryan disagrees with me
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Macro again
Back when I was looking at Macro, I indicated that I thought Eric Falkenstein's post, bolstered by Tyler Cowen won the argument. Now Falkenstein opines more concisely, in the same vein. I remain underinformed, but rather intrigued by Sumner's monetarist theory, wherein he says (<EDIT>links here and here</EDIT>): during each recession, folks say this one's anomalous. After each recession, folks notice it was exactly the same as the ones before. Sumner is just early saying it's just like the ones before.
My bloggerly obsession
Seems to be around the idea that people who are otherwise really smart, seem to be colossally stupid when it comes time to understand opposing points of view. Having cited Friedman II supporting my position, I now note that Falkenstein does as well. After a discussion of Socrates's famous dictum (I know only that I know nothing), the Money quote:
"In contrast, I note many of today's full-time intellectuals, those writing about ideas, have no such humility. They think everything they believe is simply true; there is no legitimate argument against their beliefs, in the way no one can argue for child porn."
Aretae's opinion. Since there are at least 3 distinct opinions (Progressive, Conservative, Libertarian), none of whom can agree with one another for much more than 10 minutes at a stretch, and all of whom (in general) emulate the position Falkenstein is writing about.
AnomalyUK's depressingness from earlier includes the insightful note:
"One of the most depressing aspects of activism is that on the very few occasions when you get someone onto your side, either by persuading them or just finding them, more often than not they're still wrong. They're persuaded by bad arguments rather than good arguments. Activism would appeal to me on the idea that I will win out in the end because my arguments are good, but in fact not only do my good arguments not win against my opponents' bad arguments, my good arguments do not even win against my allies' bad arguments. The idea that truth is a secret weapon that is destined to win out once assorted exceptional obstacles have been overcome is an utter fantasy."
Between Hanson's Bayesian updating, the fact that most arguments for all positions are highly lacking, and the "...where angels fear to tread" level of discussion of standard (and elite) political discourse, I think there is room for actually trying to understand where the very real differences between very smart people come from.
Not, mind you, that I buy the efficacy of democracy at all....just that I believe that understanding the positions is better than not.
"In contrast, I note many of today's full-time intellectuals, those writing about ideas, have no such humility. They think everything they believe is simply true; there is no legitimate argument against their beliefs, in the way no one can argue for child porn."
Aretae's opinion. Since there are at least 3 distinct opinions (Progressive, Conservative, Libertarian), none of whom can agree with one another for much more than 10 minutes at a stretch, and all of whom (in general) emulate the position Falkenstein is writing about.
AnomalyUK's depressingness from earlier includes the insightful note:
"One of the most depressing aspects of activism is that on the very few occasions when you get someone onto your side, either by persuading them or just finding them, more often than not they're still wrong. They're persuaded by bad arguments rather than good arguments. Activism would appeal to me on the idea that I will win out in the end because my arguments are good, but in fact not only do my good arguments not win against my opponents' bad arguments, my good arguments do not even win against my allies' bad arguments. The idea that truth is a secret weapon that is destined to win out once assorted exceptional obstacles have been overcome is an utter fantasy."
Between Hanson's Bayesian updating, the fact that most arguments for all positions are highly lacking, and the "...where angels fear to tread" level of discussion of standard (and elite) political discourse, I think there is room for actually trying to understand where the very real differences between very smart people come from.
Not, mind you, that I buy the efficacy of democracy at all....just that I believe that understanding the positions is better than not.
Links
- Tyler finds psychology info.
- Isegoria points to something depressing but useful.
- Isegoria also posts twice about kids.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
More Freidmans who agree with me
"I have been arguing politics for a long time. In arguing with people on the left, I find it is very hard to come to an agreement on the assumed facts surrounding the situations we are judging. My imaginary capitalist has capital because he worked hard clearing part of the boundless forest while his employee to be was being lazy and living on what he could gather--so it is entirely just that the capitalist gets part of the output of his land and his employee's labor. But the leftist doesn't like that hypothetical. His imaginary capitalist inherited his capital from a father who stole it. I don't like that hypothetical. I conclude that our moral intuitions are similar enough so that the same assumed facts push both of us in the same direction--and since we want to go in opposite directions we want so assume different facts." -- David Friedman here (HT Micha Ghertner @ Distributed republic).
In the same (beautifully titled) post Micha also refers to a book (partially google-books'ed) which asks a question near the one I've been asking for a long time: how to reconcile the belief that libertarianism is basically correct with the fact that effectively no one else agrees with us. It's a hard problem. 2 good answers in links in this post.
In the same (beautifully titled) post Micha also refers to a book (partially google-books'ed) which asks a question near the one I've been asking for a long time: how to reconcile the belief that libertarianism is basically correct with the fact that effectively no one else agrees with us. It's a hard problem. 2 good answers in links in this post.
Quote of the weekend
"For those of you who do not know, Wesley Mouch is a fictional character in Atlas Shrugged who increases government control over the economy. Herbert Hoover is also a fictional character, whose policies are laissez faire and balanced budgets." -- Arnold Kling
Tidbits I heard this weekend
1. Standard Human Development theory seems to match my learning theory pretty well.
% adult learning done by location
In my words...for doing...experience is the whole thing. Classroom information is almost useless. Practice, practice, practice, then look up info as needed. Heck, I think even my most inveterate anti-practice theory-promoting friends can now agree to that position. At least regarding what they do on a day to day basis. Why education folks haven't done that? See last post. Disclaimer: I am mostly a teacher in my real job.
2. Democracy is measurably inefficient.
Orpheus, a democratic chamber orchestra, has no conductor, and instead does their performances democratically, with all the players contributing conductor-like opinions. By measurement, they spend about 3x more time in rehersal per hour of concert play than do normal orchestras.
Democracy is measureably inefficient. The assumption should be that this is true in regular politics just as well as in orchestral music. Who should like this? The Libertarians. Inefficient government means less government, means less likelihood of really bad law. Who does like it? In theory, both conservatives and progressives. In reality, no one in politics. What a massive coup on the part of the founders to create a system of government that is so bad at getting things done, controlled, etc. that it took 200+ years to degrade to the point it is today, which is still less hideous in many ways than one might expect.
% adult learning done by location
| Classroom | Working | Other |
| 10 | 70 | 20 |
In my words...for doing...experience is the whole thing. Classroom information is almost useless. Practice, practice, practice, then look up info as needed. Heck, I think even my most inveterate anti-practice theory-promoting friends can now agree to that position. At least regarding what they do on a day to day basis. Why education folks haven't done that? See last post. Disclaimer: I am mostly a teacher in my real job.
2. Democracy is measurably inefficient.
Orpheus, a democratic chamber orchestra, has no conductor, and instead does their performances democratically, with all the players contributing conductor-like opinions. By measurement, they spend about 3x more time in rehersal per hour of concert play than do normal orchestras.
Democracy is measureably inefficient. The assumption should be that this is true in regular politics just as well as in orchestral music. Who should like this? The Libertarians. Inefficient government means less government, means less likelihood of really bad law. Who does like it? In theory, both conservatives and progressives. In reality, no one in politics. What a massive coup on the part of the founders to create a system of government that is so bad at getting things done, controlled, etc. that it took 200+ years to degrade to the point it is today, which is still less hideous in many ways than one might expect.
Weekend post maybe missed
Just in case you thought Robin Hanson wasn't skeptical enough about medicine, a Seth Roberts weekend post is here to provide even more skepticism.
David Henderson
The third amigo at econlog has posted a point (not on econlog), that if accepted, would remove a major plank of the progressive position. Hence, I don't think it will be accepted by anyone even moderately progressive.
<EDIT> Money quote:
The vast majority of people who get rich in even a semifree economy such as ours do so by producing goods and services that others value. But because the word "privilege" carries a negative connotation, when we call someone "privileged," we are communicating, even if unintentionally, that this person came by his money dishonestly.
</EDIT>
<EDIT> Money quote:
The vast majority of people who get rich in even a semifree economy such as ours do so by producing goods and services that others value. But because the word "privilege" carries a negative connotation, when we call someone "privileged," we are communicating, even if unintentionally, that this person came by his money dishonestly.
</EDIT>
Jacobs and 3-part politics
Reinterpreting politics from the POV of Ms. Jacobs.
Conservatives are the classic guardian ethos.
They are trying to defend the American way of life (American conservatives anyhow). What is strange (and most of us crazy libertarians still don't understand) is why conservatives have (since '80/'64 depending) been preaching, and sometimes promoting smaller government. This is not part of the guardian ethos. Intelligent libertarians are inclined to think of this as an accident, oftentimes (usually) overturned by other considerations in the ethos (Largesse). Classic guardian. Really good at being guardian.
<EDIT>Progressives are also clearly guardian ethos. </EDIT>
Socialists/Progressives are trying to defend the poor from exploitation.
Environmentalists are trying to defend us/the world from environmental mishaps.
Their approach is 100% appropriate to that of the defender. The target is different of that of the conservative, but their method is appropriate to the task. And their behavior is appropriate.
The ethic involves making other people do what is needed, even if they don't want to.
This is still the defender's creed.
Libertarians are not defenders. Rather, the libertarian suggests that (basically) the encroachment of guardianism into the merchant's sphere is WAY out of hand, and should be scaled back. The libertarian disagreements are all about exactly how far it should be scaled back. Should there be NO scope for guardian ethic/behavior, should there be VERY limited scope, or should there simply be seriously limited scope. The argument is (roughly) that the ethos of commercialism has taken us from the stone age to the information age with almost no help from the guardians. Why don't they get the hell out of the way, and let us continue making the world better. It's an awfully persuasive picture, IF you have a commercial turn of mind (believe that the commercialists have the history right). It's also persuasive if you HATE authority/tradition/etc. By observation, this is a large portion of how most libertarians get to libertarianism: Hating authority. An awful lot of hating authority though (IMO) comes from thinking/seeing that the authority is wrong, and concluding that the institution is the problem.
While the progressive finds the guardian ethos appealing, but argues that the wrong things are being defended, the libertarian tends to disagree with the guardian ethos itself.
Conservativism: Protect especially against threats to the status quo (which is good).
Progressivism: Protect especially against threats to the poor.
Libertarianism: Protection is the wrong approach. Let's create instead.
Conservatives are the classic guardian ethos.
They are trying to defend the American way of life (American conservatives anyhow). What is strange (and most of us crazy libertarians still don't understand) is why conservatives have (since '80/'64 depending) been preaching, and sometimes promoting smaller government. This is not part of the guardian ethos. Intelligent libertarians are inclined to think of this as an accident, oftentimes (usually) overturned by other considerations in the ethos (Largesse). Classic guardian. Really good at being guardian.
<EDIT>Progressives are also clearly guardian ethos. </EDIT>
Socialists/Progressives are trying to defend the poor from exploitation.
Environmentalists are trying to defend us/the world from environmental mishaps.
Their approach is 100% appropriate to that of the defender. The target is different of that of the conservative, but their method is appropriate to the task. And their behavior is appropriate.
The ethic involves making other people do what is needed, even if they don't want to.
This is still the defender's creed.
Libertarians are not defenders. Rather, the libertarian suggests that (basically) the encroachment of guardianism into the merchant's sphere is WAY out of hand, and should be scaled back. The libertarian disagreements are all about exactly how far it should be scaled back. Should there be NO scope for guardian ethic/behavior, should there be VERY limited scope, or should there simply be seriously limited scope. The argument is (roughly) that the ethos of commercialism has taken us from the stone age to the information age with almost no help from the guardians. Why don't they get the hell out of the way, and let us continue making the world better. It's an awfully persuasive picture, IF you have a commercial turn of mind (believe that the commercialists have the history right). It's also persuasive if you HATE authority/tradition/etc. By observation, this is a large portion of how most libertarians get to libertarianism: Hating authority. An awful lot of hating authority though (IMO) comes from thinking/seeing that the authority is wrong, and concluding that the institution is the problem.
While the progressive finds the guardian ethos appealing, but argues that the wrong things are being defended, the libertarian tends to disagree with the guardian ethos itself.
Conservativism: Protect especially against threats to the status quo (which is good).
Progressivism: Protect especially against threats to the poor.
Libertarianism: Protection is the wrong approach. Let's create instead.
Book Report: Systems of Survival
I am becoming worried that I seem overly effusive in my praise of books. I am certain that I get it from my grandmother, who refers to roughly every third item using the absolute superlative. I have, naturally, mitigated the tendency by only refering to the "best this year". I have, however, not had any "best this year" books for roughly 7 of the last 10 years. This makes up for the several this year.
Having said that about books twice so far this year, I am compelled to add a third contender.
While Dr. Sowell's book was tremendously powerful in it's dualistic analysis of pre-philosophical intuitions (Constrained vs. Unconstrained visions of the world), I have belatedly come to the conclusion that I should see his work not as a standalone, but an introduction to Hayek. This, only after I read Chris Sciabarra and Vernon Smith and found most of the ideas presented (very well) by Sowell presented also by the other two authors, each time referencing Hayek as the source. The book is brilliant, and (from memory) easier to read than Hayek...but not that original.
Grant McCracken's book was dizzying. The breadth of knowledge presented was amazing. I cannot even identify as many cultures as he casually displays deep understanding of in his book. And the topic is brilliant: identity transformation, which of course leads to identity construction. It is hard to find a book more relevant to life than one that shows how people build and change their conceptions of themselves. Unless, of course, one maintains the notion that the self is somehow not an object of study. I nominate Dr. McCracken as the next participant in the Dalai Lama's regular discussions with scientists, so as to integrate the Buddhist and McCrackenian anthropology interpretations of the self...much like was done with emotion in another brilliant book.
At the risk of blogorrhea, Jane Jacobs book, now the other worthy contender to the throne of best book I read this year, needs explication.
A few months ago, I posted a taxonomy of systems of survival that was responding to Seth Roberts' discussion of doctors, which in turn was riffing off Ms. Jacobs. Roughly speaking, I hadn't read Ms. Jacobs, and had not seen the brilliance of her position. As usual, I will claim to be unable to do justice to the breadth of her discussion of the topic, but in a page, I should be able to at least convey, if not to convince as effectively as she does.
SPOILER ALERT
Her book states basically that there are 2 incompatible ethical systems that we have in the world today, and incidentally, historically as well. There is the code of the guardian (guardian soldier, guardian chieftain, guardian of faith, guardian of knowledge/truth), and there is the code of the trader (maker, doer, merchant). Roughly, and simply, the two ethical codes are conflicting, contradictory, complete, and each necessary. This is not to say that some people or professions don't adopt or try to adopt an intermediate position. However, she argues (effectively) that a trader working under a guardian's code becomes a mess, and clearly unethical. Ditto a guardian working under a trader's code.
Upon examination, it is obvious that the two systems are in conflict. "Adhere to tradition" and "Be open to investment and novelty" are quite incompatible, as are honesty precepts, force precepts, exclusiveness precepts, leisure precepts, and so on. In addition, while Ms. Jacobs has done her homework, and cites from everywhere and everywhen, it is not hard to find these two conflicting sets of values in various cultural spots. The military is a prime example of guardian culture, but the catholic church is too. Small (even individual) business is the ideal picture of commercial culture.
What was surprising, even shocking, to me was the the rather stark contrast in the two systems, and the extent to which each system's ethic is appropriate to it's arena, and poorly appropriate to the other arena.
Commercial ethics' in the military lead to selling of state secrets. Military ethics in business lead to poor innovation. And we simply don't have much in the way of alternative ethical visions. There is do by force and do by trade.
The genius of Ms. Jacobs (or perhaps just my stupidity) is that for the first time, I have been able to see the usefulness of the alternative (guardian) system of ethics. And, I think that this is a better, more fundamental , and more easily understood/explained distinction than that of Hayek and Sowell. The fundamental civilized ways of interacting with people come down to trading with others (in and out of group) or defending the group from outsiders.
Having said that about books twice so far this year, I am compelled to add a third contender.
While Dr. Sowell's book was tremendously powerful in it's dualistic analysis of pre-philosophical intuitions (Constrained vs. Unconstrained visions of the world), I have belatedly come to the conclusion that I should see his work not as a standalone, but an introduction to Hayek. This, only after I read Chris Sciabarra and Vernon Smith and found most of the ideas presented (very well) by Sowell presented also by the other two authors, each time referencing Hayek as the source. The book is brilliant, and (from memory) easier to read than Hayek...but not that original.
Grant McCracken's book was dizzying. The breadth of knowledge presented was amazing. I cannot even identify as many cultures as he casually displays deep understanding of in his book. And the topic is brilliant: identity transformation, which of course leads to identity construction. It is hard to find a book more relevant to life than one that shows how people build and change their conceptions of themselves. Unless, of course, one maintains the notion that the self is somehow not an object of study. I nominate Dr. McCracken as the next participant in the Dalai Lama's regular discussions with scientists, so as to integrate the Buddhist and McCrackenian anthropology interpretations of the self...much like was done with emotion in another brilliant book.
At the risk of blogorrhea, Jane Jacobs book, now the other worthy contender to the throne of best book I read this year, needs explication.
A few months ago, I posted a taxonomy of systems of survival that was responding to Seth Roberts' discussion of doctors, which in turn was riffing off Ms. Jacobs. Roughly speaking, I hadn't read Ms. Jacobs, and had not seen the brilliance of her position. As usual, I will claim to be unable to do justice to the breadth of her discussion of the topic, but in a page, I should be able to at least convey, if not to convince as effectively as she does.
SPOILER ALERT
Her book states basically that there are 2 incompatible ethical systems that we have in the world today, and incidentally, historically as well. There is the code of the guardian (guardian soldier, guardian chieftain, guardian of faith, guardian of knowledge/truth), and there is the code of the trader (maker, doer, merchant). Roughly, and simply, the two ethical codes are conflicting, contradictory, complete, and each necessary. This is not to say that some people or professions don't adopt or try to adopt an intermediate position. However, she argues (effectively) that a trader working under a guardian's code becomes a mess, and clearly unethical. Ditto a guardian working under a trader's code.
Guardianism Syndrome B | Commercialism Syndrome A |
|---|---|
| Shun trading | Shun force |
| Exert prowess | Come to voluntary agreements |
| Be obedient and disciplined | Be honest |
| Adhere to tradition | Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens |
| Respect heirarchy | Compete |
| Be loyal | Respect contracts |
| Take vengeance | Use initiative and enterprise |
| Deceive for the sake of the task | Be open to inventiveness and novelty |
| Make rich use of leisure | Be efficient |
| Be ostentatious | Promote comfort and convenience |
| Dispense largesse | Dissent for the sake of the task |
| Be exclusive | Invest for productive purposes |
| Show fortitude | Be industrious |
| Be fatalistic | Be thrifty |
| Treasure honor | Be optimistic |
Upon examination, it is obvious that the two systems are in conflict. "Adhere to tradition" and "Be open to investment and novelty" are quite incompatible, as are honesty precepts, force precepts, exclusiveness precepts, leisure precepts, and so on. In addition, while Ms. Jacobs has done her homework, and cites from everywhere and everywhen, it is not hard to find these two conflicting sets of values in various cultural spots. The military is a prime example of guardian culture, but the catholic church is too. Small (even individual) business is the ideal picture of commercial culture.
What was surprising, even shocking, to me was the the rather stark contrast in the two systems, and the extent to which each system's ethic is appropriate to it's arena, and poorly appropriate to the other arena.
Commercial ethics' in the military lead to selling of state secrets. Military ethics in business lead to poor innovation. And we simply don't have much in the way of alternative ethical visions. There is do by force and do by trade.
The genius of Ms. Jacobs (or perhaps just my stupidity) is that for the first time, I have been able to see the usefulness of the alternative (guardian) system of ethics. And, I think that this is a better, more fundamental , and more easily understood/explained distinction than that of Hayek and Sowell. The fundamental civilized ways of interacting with people come down to trading with others (in and out of group) or defending the group from outsiders.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
History of the world
While it is common knowledge that beer started civilization, I am not aware of any research that has yet identified the fact that coffee caused the modern world.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Great post
This post by the inimitable Arnold Kling, nails a distinction that I have never before seen done well.
Question about divergence.
So...the ability to delay gratification is among the best predictors of future success. What does that tell us about the world?
Should we treat people who don't delay gratification as being broken, and try to either fix them or constrain their choices? This seems to be Singapore's model, and it seems to work rather well.
Or is it simply a different temperment that is not particularly well suited for the world we live in today? And we should treat it as a different opinion about how to live life?
Please refer to my last two posts, if you don't know much about delayed gratification, and if you can wait that long to comment.
Should we treat people who don't delay gratification as being broken, and try to either fix them or constrain their choices? This seems to be Singapore's model, and it seems to work rather well.
Or is it simply a different temperment that is not particularly well suited for the world we live in today? And we should treat it as a different opinion about how to live life?
Please refer to my last two posts, if you don't know much about delayed gratification, and if you can wait that long to comment.
Success factors
It is well known that among the largest factors impacting IQ is ability to delay gratification. Similarly, the ability to delay gratification is linked with the personality trait Conscientiousness, which predicts success more than does IQ. The third, even more impressive factor in life-success is self-efficacy, or how good you think you are, and I'm not altogether sure whether this fits in my model at all. Finally, some guy did a massive analysis of many traits, and concluded that the biggest deal for success was: a relaxed temperment. And attractiveness came in as significant as well.
Wondering about divergent preferences
One of the fundamental differences between an economic libertarian approach to thinking about the world and a more pro-government approach is around the question of divergent preferences. To what extent do different people actually (and properly) prefer different things?
I think it is not unreasonable that some folks would prefer to use their last $5000 for entertainment rather than health insurance, on the idea that the risk of a young person getting hurt for more than $1000 in a year is fairly low, and further mitigated by the idea that someone with insurance may be a little less careful than someone without.
Now there may be public costs to that choice, if we have overmuch public guaruntee of care. But there is obviously to me some combination of risk/money/catastrophic insurance at which it is a BAD decision for any person to get normal health insurance. It is also obvious (to me) that that threshold is different from person to person (within the constraints of externalities).
I think that if peoples preferences are significantly divergent, policies like a coverage mandate (as opposed to a catastrophic coverage mandate) become an obviously bad idea. Is this not an obvious position, or am I too steeped in my libertarianism.
I think it is not unreasonable that some folks would prefer to use their last $5000 for entertainment rather than health insurance, on the idea that the risk of a young person getting hurt for more than $1000 in a year is fairly low, and further mitigated by the idea that someone with insurance may be a little less careful than someone without.
Now there may be public costs to that choice, if we have overmuch public guaruntee of care. But there is obviously to me some combination of risk/money/catastrophic insurance at which it is a BAD decision for any person to get normal health insurance. It is also obvious (to me) that that threshold is different from person to person (within the constraints of externalities).
I think that if peoples preferences are significantly divergent, policies like a coverage mandate (as opposed to a catastrophic coverage mandate) become an obviously bad idea. Is this not an obvious position, or am I too steeped in my libertarianism.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
How Full of it are you?
Riffing off old posts from both the entire GMU econ blogosphere, as well as Menicus Moldbug, I have a proposal for determining the extent to which an individual should have their ideas taken seriously.
Shortest version: How seriously do your ideas diverge from those of your relevant status group?
We can establish rather firmly that people are willing to hold positions for several reasons. Among those reasons are:
If there is none, then we are indistinguishable from opinions existing purely for group-fit reasons with no thought at all. Hence, one can dismiss most Randians as not thinking much because their opinions diverge in no (costly) way from those of the late author. Because they diverge in no costly way, the assumption should be that they agree for status reasons. The same applies for most Evangelicals and most Environmentalists: they have no costly disagreements inside their groups, so should be treated as not thinking.
The difficult problem to address is distinguishing between Rebel Signalling and Truth-Telling. This is why it's important to reference most costly disagreement, rather than biggest disagreement. If the Environmental caucus wants their caucus-fruit to be an apple, and Bob the environmentalists takes a stand for Watermelon instead...that's low cost. If he argues pro-nuclear power, that's medium cost. If he argues anti-Obama, that's high cost. And if he argues that CAFE regulations hurt the environment, he's probably kicked out of the group. Watermelon bob might well be rebel-signalling. Anti-CAFE Bob is thinking (whether or not he's right).
So what group are you part of, and what belief of yours is costliest to your being accepted in that group ? (The belief cannot be a qualifier for a MORE important group: Joe the conservative-libertarian can't impressively list opposition to the flag-burning amendment as an anti-conservative position, because it is a pro-libertarian position).
Aside: This mechanism points at places where the wisdom of crowds should stink badly.
My most costly position at present? The opposition is saying something worth listening to/taking into account, and dismissing their position is universally wrong. This effectively makes all groups dislike me.
It seems as if Megan McArdle is also in this spot. Tyler Cowen seems to be here, but often veers into the rebel signal camp.
Shortest version: How seriously do your ideas diverge from those of your relevant status group?
We can establish rather firmly that people are willing to hold positions for several reasons. Among those reasons are:
- Group identity/status/taboo (I'd like to fit in).
- Rebel signalling (I'd like to stand out)
- Truth-thinking (I think it's right).
If there is none, then we are indistinguishable from opinions existing purely for group-fit reasons with no thought at all. Hence, one can dismiss most Randians as not thinking much because their opinions diverge in no (costly) way from those of the late author. Because they diverge in no costly way, the assumption should be that they agree for status reasons. The same applies for most Evangelicals and most Environmentalists: they have no costly disagreements inside their groups, so should be treated as not thinking.
The difficult problem to address is distinguishing between Rebel Signalling and Truth-Telling. This is why it's important to reference most costly disagreement, rather than biggest disagreement. If the Environmental caucus wants their caucus-fruit to be an apple, and Bob the environmentalists takes a stand for Watermelon instead...that's low cost. If he argues pro-nuclear power, that's medium cost. If he argues anti-Obama, that's high cost. And if he argues that CAFE regulations hurt the environment, he's probably kicked out of the group. Watermelon bob might well be rebel-signalling. Anti-CAFE Bob is thinking (whether or not he's right).
So what group are you part of, and what belief of yours is costliest to your being accepted in that group ? (The belief cannot be a qualifier for a MORE important group: Joe the conservative-libertarian can't impressively list opposition to the flag-burning amendment as an anti-conservative position, because it is a pro-libertarian position).
Aside: This mechanism points at places where the wisdom of crowds should stink badly.
My most costly position at present? The opposition is saying something worth listening to/taking into account, and dismissing their position is universally wrong. This effectively makes all groups dislike me.
It seems as if Megan McArdle is also in this spot. Tyler Cowen seems to be here, but often veers into the rebel signal camp.
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