Support for the Aretaevian synthesis

1. Eric Falkenstein hits half a dozen of my favorite points in this post.  College teaches you very little, and even less in the classroom.  College prices are working on absurd.  Any external observer of the world watching 1500-2000 would note that economic growth dominates all other factors into insignificance.
   
   

   Sure, I picked up some things in college, but think about it--it was probably the time in my life when I had the most leisure time, because I wasn't learning as much as other periods in my life. [...]
   
   And for the things [snip] --such as history, political science, and philosophy, it seems like top shelf professors are caricatures of leftist-PC propoganda.

2. Robin Hanson explicates one area of The Grand Delusion (Some groups don't mostly act like monkeys) in his post Non-Conformers Conform:
   
   

   [W]hile people do vary in conformity, this variation is less in how much folks care about others’ evaluations, and more about which others they care about. “Conformists” tend to care about a common standard status audience – a usual mix of people weighted by a standard status. “Non-conformists,” in contrast, “march to the beat of a different drummer” by caring about non-standard status audiences.

3. UPDATE: Ambrose-Evans Pritchard has perhaps the best response (HT: lots of folks) to the Kartik Athreya kerfluffle, where a Federal Reserve economist told econo-bloggers to shut up, because economics should be left to the professionals (the original is hard to find).  Supporting the hypotheses that (a) Macro is Voodoo, (b) the government caused the crisis, (c) elites telling other people what to do is THE problem.  I think he forgets the distinction between Micro and Macro (Two entirely different topics in 1 department).  He does agree with Foseti on Science, though.  Some excerpts:
   
   

   Central banks were the ultimate authors of the credit crisis since it is they who set the price of credit too low, throwing the whole incentive structure of the capitalist system out of kilter, and more or less forcing banks to chase yield and engage in destructive behaviour. [Ed.  Not just the banks though, housing policy as well]
   
   The 20th Century was a horrible litany of absurd experiments and atrocities committed by intellectuals, or by elite groupings that claimed a higher knowledge. Simple folk usually have enough common sense to avoid the worst errors. Sometimes they need to take very stern action to stop intellectuals leading us to ruin. [...]
   
   The root error of the modern academy is to pretend (and perhaps believe, which is even less forgiveable), that economics [Ed -- MACRO!!!] is a science and answers to Newtonian laws [...]
   
   Economics [Ed -- MACRO!!!] should never be treated as a science. Its claims are not falsifiable, which is why economists can disagree so violently among themselves: a rarer spectacle in science, where disputes are usually resolved one way or another by hard data.

4. UPDATE 2: IOZ writes (as is his wont) a considerably more pithy response to the Ron Rosenbaum agnosticism thing than I did yesterday.  IOZ:
   
   

   Now. Insofar as science has explained natural phenomena, it is a useful tool and method. Most atheists would agree. However, science has no opinion on the fundamental nature of being or the meaning of life. The scientific method is a means of inquiry, a system for developing descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive models of natural systems, not a means of answering all the questions that occur to you when you get stoned. Eat some fucking Doritos and chill the fuck out.
   
   Personally, I do not think that human science will ever adequately account for the existence of existence, because I think that the question itself contains a category error. Nothing about this conviction of the limits of human knowledge implies the existence of divinity.

5. UPDATE 3: Roissy is perhaps the most sexist, and least politically correct really smart guy writing on the web.  So much so that Tyler Cowen, the epitome of restraint and eclecticism calls him evil. Today, he finds a study that confirm my analysis of weight and the sexual marketplace. My line:  Men care subconsciously and strongly about fertility, as (primarily) signaled by hip-waist ratio...and if a female has a bad hip-waist ratio, her ability to compete in the sexual marketplace is massively decreased, therefore she is forced into an inferior bargaining position.  Roissy and LJWorld:
   
   

   Scientists say being fat can be bad for the bedroom, especially if you’re a woman.
   
   In a new study, European researchers found obese women had more trouble finding a sexual partner than their normal-weight counterparts, though the same wasn’t true for obese men, and were four times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy. Fat men reported a higher rate of erectile dysfunction. [...]
   
   Obese women were 30 percent less likely than normal-weight women to have had a sexual partner in the last year. In comparison, there was little difference among obese men and normal-weight men as to whether they found a sexual partner. [...]
   
   Previous studies have found similar trends, but researchers were surprised by the discrepancy they found between the genders as to how excess weight affects peoples’ sex lives.[...]
   
   The researchers found that obese women were less likely to ask for birth control services, and thus, four times more likely to accidentally get pregnant. Pregnant fat women and their babies also faced a higher risk of complications and death than normal-weight women.

   “Accidentally” my ass. Fat chicks know that they have fewer chances than slim chicks to bed a man, so when the opportunity arises, they take full advantage [...]