Anniversary

I've been married 8 years today. Expect no more posts.

Fitness

So far, my basic paleo, re-re-restarted early November, has been going swimmingly, minus a big weekend for thanksgiving. Right now, I don't have a gym membership, so Superslow isn't happening much. However, my 14yo needs to work on upper arm strength so he will have better range for basketball. So, today I started the 100 pushups program with him. Anyone else want to play?

Question

This post at WhyIAmNot suggested an important question came to me. It may reach the core of the Hayekian / Expertist debate....or even the Anarchist/Formalist debate

How well can a planner plan at the level of an economy?

If God removed economic policy from elected officials, and placed it entirely in the hands of the Voodoo Master of Economics...what odds do we have that said Voodoo Master could net make things better than they would be over time said voodoo master did nothing? And by make things better...I mean mostly: Improve Economic Growth Rate

I think that the Hayekians argue that the answer is: No. Activity by the central government has a greater than 50% chance of making things worse, and a less than 25% chance of making things better.

I think that the Expertist has the idea that Prad Krulong or Lee Kuan Yew could make things better with probability greater than 50%.

More interesting, perhaps, is whether the possibility of making things better should or does inform your politics?

At p greater than 75% that Prad Krulong could make things better than no one in charge...it might make sense to be a formalist who wishes to centralize power.

OTOH, at p less than 10%, the idea of centralizing government power looks insane.

Is that a central point of disagreement?

(I mean besides the question of whether it is possible to build a system where elites self-advantage doesn't force the choices to be made entirely for their own benefit...and on which the public choice people and the formalists also disagree)

Discrimination

Bryan Caplan asks a question about discrimination, referencing his prior comments.

Bryan's position, summarized by me:

Discrimination is smart. Don't run from little old ladies walking on dark nights. Run from big teens boys in urban areas. Elsewise you're stupid.

Karl Smith responds intelligently, again summarized by me:

Discrimination is pollution by bad behaving folks and employers. Economics has a standard model of pollution: tax the polluters.

Going all HBD on you...Karl Smith is assuming that the correlation is accidental, not natural. If you start with no liberal/progressive prior belief, you find that being a little old lady massively decreases the likelihood of engaging in assault, being a young man increases the chance of getting into a car accident, and being a young girl massively increases the odds of taking maternity leave. What makes this pollution is Karl's assumption that the correlations are somewhat accidental. And if you remove that barrier...Karl's case falls apart.

Discrimination is indeed pollution by bad behavior of other folks...but the employer is not one of the folks who is polluting. He's just being rational.

The Economist

First time I think it's happened in my life that the Economist's blogger (along with Bartlett and Drum) comes in between uninformed and insane:

...today's deficit problems are to a great extent the legacy of the Reagan and second Bush administration's "starve the beast" philosophy...

Compare this to me earlier today:

Tax Rates Don't Impact Revenue

I'd assume that the Economist blogger is simply not up on the latest research, and Robert Reich who continually beats this drum isn't either. The latest information suggests rather strongly that the problem is ALL spending.

Economics wins (Healthcare edition)

David Henderson discusses the black market in Canadian Health Care.

Tyler Cowen updates on Obamacare.

QoTD

Karl Smith:

...scientists don’t prove, mathematicians and philosophers prove. Scientists accumulate evidence that seems to suggest.

...in the midst of discussing economics.

Tax Rates, WTF?

Tax Rates Don't Impact Revenue.
WHAT!?!?!
Yeah, that again. Here. HT: Insty

Now let's combine with this (pdf) hardcore research from Obama's liberal ex-CEA Chair:

This paper investigates the causes and consequences of changes in the level of taxation in the postwar United States. Our results indicate that tax changes have very large effects on output. Our baseline specification implies that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by almost three percent… and that [capital] investment falls sharply in response to exogenous tax increases.

Tax increases are known to cause decreased output AND they don't increase revenue? And it's basically settled science?

Against "Smarts"

Shortening my prior discussion substantially:

Declarative knowledge is over-rated. Procedural knowledge FTW.

The academic error is to imagine that declarative knowledge is more procedural than it is...and to imagine that the procedural knowledge the non-academic has is somehow less important than the academic's procedural knowledge.

Redistribution

Must read from John Pepple. Wouldn't the principle of ability/need apply also to academic activity every bit as much as it does to economic activity? Why do the top professors agitate for economic redistribution, but not academic redistribution. Some cynical types might suggest that self interest is the whole game here.

The boring teacher model

Aretae's theory of ADHD:

ADHD is a brain pattern wherein a person is habituated to more intense stimulation than was evolutionarily (or historically) customary. Persons suffering from have not developed the mental habits necessary to pay attention to boring stuff.

Since ADHD is normally a problem in classes...what we have encountered is a simple problem: School is way way way out of tune with the modern world. If you use traditional instruction methods (Teacher teaching, students listening), the level of absorption should be even lower than it was historically, as students have not learned to focus their attention on media which do not pull relatively hard. Further, the teacher's powers are diminished as even with threat of punishment, the student has little ability to focus as instructed. Also, the teacher's powers of punishment are also much diminished.

Solution 1: Fix schools: abolish the boring teacher model.

Solution 2: Abolish the electronic media (Social networking, Video games, TV).

Solution 3: Drugs.

Smarts

Sonic Charmer starts a discussion about smarts in politics here, with more here.

Several others have discussed the topic since his original post, but I can't find all those now.

Honestly, since my trip to Belgium in '94, I've had a theory about Americans.

Americans are profoundly anti-intellectual.

What you know simply doesn't matter at all.

How well you think simply doesn't matter at all.

What credentials you have don't matter.

Who your parents are doesn't even matter much.

What you do matters...and only what you do.

This is, as far as I can tell distinctive about America/Americans (certainly as compared to Europe, and as compared to Russia)...and it's probably distinctive to sections of America as well. But I'm inclined to believe that the blue-er sections of America don't know that what you do is the only metric. Certainly the Academy doesn't. Certainly DC doesn't. But the overwhelming position of Americans is this:

What you do is all that matters.

Of course, do is a rather inclusive term. And so...the great error of Academia is to think that what you think or know or are certified in matters. And the rest of us...even those of us who have escaped the Academy's clutches have discovered...not so much.

Other thinkers on this topic:

• TJIC finds an Althouse commenter.
• Hanson talks creativity.
• Patri talks ideas.

Smarts and $2 might get you a cup of Starbucks coffee...unless you're too smart to drink regular coffee.

Work, focus, dilligence, funding, throwing away bad ideas, and ... more work is what matters. Smarts is the other tenth of a percent.

The economically literate libertarian consensus

1. Economic growth is THE metric. Over time, all other metrics suck when comparing societies. Economic growth is it. (Basic Math)
2. Innovation is THE factor that promotes economic growth. (Paul Romer).
3. Most innovation, and most of economic growth/improvement is boring to outsiders and comes from on-the-shop-floor small improvements. (Lean/Theory of Constraints)
4. Most radical category-busting innovation comes from small, upstart entities. (see Google, Amazon, Nucor)
5. Tax rates/redistribution, on the other hand, do not seem to hinder growth all that much by themselves, until the government agencies start using the $ to make regulations. (see Scandanavia)
6. Planners CANNOT know enough (Hayek)
7. Transaction costs are the root of much evil (Coase).
8. Rules / Incentives can promote or hinder growth. 90+% of all regulation hinders growth. Usually, by favoring large entities over small, and existing power over upstarts, or by creating transaction costs. (Public Choice)

See for instance,

DiA on Regulation

Patri on HFT

Links

• Most important post of the day goes to Tyler Cowen:

  In a nutshell, we're watching the most pitched, highest-stakes, most determined battle between politics and finance which has been staged. I am expecting finance to win. It's not just about PIGS and the future of the eurozone, it's settling a very general question about the relative power of politics and finance. Either way, it is an event of momentous importance.

  Kling follows up.
• Very close second, for speculation is: Consistency loses? from Robin Hanson:

  time inconsistent subjects earn significantly more money, in statistical and economic terms. So do expected utility violators. Positive returns to inconsistency extend outside the domain in which inconsistencies occurs, with time-inconsistent subjects earning more on risky choice items, and expected utility violators earning more on time-tradeoff items. The results seem to call into question whether axioms of internal consistency—and violations of these axioms that behavioral economists frequently focus on—are economically relevant criteria for evaluating the quality of decision making in human populations.

• Isegoria and Don Boudreaux address the original Thanksgiving. Pilgirms gave up the communism that they started with, and therefore didn't starve. Thanks be to private property.
• Athol Kay discusses the failure of marriage counseling from an HBD standpoint, ending with this lovely line:

  [...] one of the vocations with the highest divorce rates is marriage counselors! Isn't talking to a marriage counselor about your marriage like going to a dentist that has crappy teeth?

• The interview illusion by Dan Heath
• Monkeybrains predicts this result easily: Upper class folks see emotion less. HT: Insty

The big disagreement

Where is the biggest factual disagreement between the modern libertarian and a modern American liberal?

I think that the simplest point of disagreement is over what the effect of government on commerce.

I read a "how we could have used political power to silence Rupert Murdoch early" article in Harpers magazine (from my quite liberal dad), which for the 3rd time this week demonstrated the contemporary liberal's commitment to free speech that they disagree with. In that article, these sentences appear:

Murdoch wants the same thing for News Corp. that any CEO would want for his company: to get as many favors, subsidies, and tax breaks out of Washington as possible, while at the same tiem stripping the government of the power to place any checks on corporate behavior. From the tax code to environmental legislation to financial regulation, companies like News Corp. have been alternately grabbing from and slapping away the heavy hand of Uncle Sam for decades.

Here's our disagreement. Empirical question.

Do large companies prefer MORE regulation or LESS.

The liberal claim: large companies prefer less regulation, as it allows them to screw the customer.

The libertarian claim: large companies prefer more regulation, as it is a very effective way to choke off competition. Aretae's 3rd law: Scarcity determines power. Competition destroys power.

Which is empirically true? I think it's brain-dead obvious...but I'm a libertarian.

Giving Thanks

As per many prior discussions on this blog, the practice of thankfulness is among the most important practices in your control for having a happy life. Indeed, were I to have my way, Thanksgiving might be approached as a weekly affair, rather than just an annual one. For the audience who reads this blog, this may be the most important thing I say on this blog. Be thankful for the good things in your life.

What is good in my life that I am fortunate to have, rather than responsible for?

• My genetic gifts. I've been lucky to be both smarter and somewhat more naturally athletic than you average bear, and relatively attractive as well. I am responsible for NONE of that. And I am tremendously thankful that I landed this set of gifts in the genetic lottery.
• My family. I am not responsible for how attractive or generally wonderful my wife is. I am grateful to have found someone so well-suited for me. My kids are a delight as well. And that is genetic lottery as well. Not in my control.
• My temporal/spatial location. I live now in the time that is the best time to live in human history, in one of the best places ever. The United States is among the richest countries ever, it is among the free-est, it is among the highest HDI locations, and is generally a MUCH better place to live than almost any other place in the world, or in all of human history. If you count between 8 and 20 billion people in the history of the world...Noting that I am in the most fortunate 600 million persons ever to live on the planet....that's wonderful and amazing. And again...it's complete luck on my part.
• I am lucky to have enjoyed a profession that allows me to live in a beautiful location, work occasionally, and support my family.

I am a lucky guy. And I am thankful for it.

Thanksgiving

We have a lot of Thanksgiving traditions...and an awful lot of them involve my cooking:

Today, I'm doing much of the cooking for Thanksgiving with my dad and his girlfriend. I'm making:

• Cheesecakes (done yesterday)
• stuffed pork loin (Onions, Garlic, Green Apples, Craisins, Yams, apple-chicken sausage)
• greens with bacon, vinegar, honey and spice
• Mashed Potatoes
• Turkey Gravy

Wife, dad, dad's gf are responsible for:

• Turkey
• Stuffing
• Bread(s)
• Beverages
• Pumpkin pie
• Cranberry sauce

It's uncertain who will cook the Yams.

Saturday is Thanksgiving with mom and a few friends.

Unified Cognitive Model

My prior discussion of human cognition was heartily incomplete, though focused. This serves to expand a bit into a single, lower focus, position.

The human mind is organized as a government. We operate with several brain modules serving as legislators. The modules appear to be organized in something of a neural net, wherein in any given binary decision, a weighted majority rules. The conscious mind is almost exclusively a ex-post-facto justifier of decisions made by the unconscious process like a US President. Can't get anything done solo. Can't make any decisions, but he can execute vetos that mostly say...think longer. Of course, the veto can be overridden too.

Almost everyone massively underweights the Monkeybrains (evolved) caucus in human minds, and especially of their own mind, which are perhaps the largest component of most decisions. In particular, the western intellectual wants to hide from the tribal-Status module and the Sexual Attraction module...which together explain most human behavior better than alternative explanations. Of course, they are only some percentage of the total motivation. The important factor, though, is that most activity has almost nothing to do with dispassionate reasoning.

Willpower is the practice of using the presidential prerogative in order to get something done. Usually, it's a veto for an action that the conscious module does not prefer. Overusing the veto will eventually get you over-ridden by the assembly in your brain.

The best thing that the president can do is use the office to get the assembly to consider certain topics. And sometimes, but not always, he can use his attentional ability to consider topics in different orders, which can change the outcome.

Also...by habitually leaning in the direction of one module or other, the president can add weight to that module's decisions, thus making a module stronger over time. This is commonly known as habit or training.

Also, semi-obviously, the modules that get involved in immediate decisions (about what to do now), and the relative strengths of immediate decisions are different than the modules involved in decisions made for the future.

Similarly, the modules involved in evaluating current experience are different and differently weighted than the modules involved in evaluating remembered experience. (For one, the memory module is part of the game).

Expertise (in doing a type of thing) is simply the process of having built an artificial module that handles a specific type of decisions, and then giving that module enough authority (formed through habit) to make decisions in the correct context. If it is not automatic (still conscious), it doesn't constitute expertise. This is probably the core of my educational model. Subconscious correctness is the core of expertise. If it's not subconscious, you haven't learned it yet. I have a strong disdain at this point for knowledge that requires thinking to retrieve it.

One model, unified theory of mind. Explains an awful lot. Will be used by most people who take it seriously to critique others' decisions...and not to evaluate their own.

Links

• Funny OTD: I am Harry Potter (HT: Geekpress)
• Regulatory Hurdle OTD: Spaceship 1 is licensed by FAA. (HT: Insty)
• Arugment OTD: Politics as Charity? Klein, Kling, Hanson
• Bad arguments against pacifism from Caplan. Sonic Charmer argues that our needs for air security have dropped since 9/11.
• "the notion that alarming warming is settled science should be offensive to any sentient individual." -- CoyoteBlog
• Arnold finds Moldbug and Sailer channeled by others. Tyler calls out personal vs. political conservativism from that post.
• Sebastian Marshall finds powerful quotes from Hakugare. Here are two:

Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like. But it is important never to tell this to young people as it is something that would be harmful if incorrectly misunderstood.

When you are listening to the stories of accomplished men and the like, you should listen with deep sincerity, even if it’s something about which you already know. If in listening to the same thing ten or twenty times it happens that you come to an unexpected understanding, that moment will be very special. Within the tedious talk of old folks are their meritorious deeds.

NGDP Targeting / QE2

So...I've been following Sumner writing about the topic for a long while now. Here's my attempt at a summary:

There are some cases where rational expectations about who is going to spend what in the next several months are low. In those cases, it's smart for businesses also not to spend much. This cycle is self-reinforcing.

The fastest/best thing the government can do to get people in a better mood about buying is to increase expectations of inflation, thus marginally changing the incentives for folks, especially businesses and banks, to spend.

Sumner finds all of this via data and historical study. Aretae has a just-so story about why it might be true that helps him understand.

In theory, one could do something fiscal instead...TARP (which suffers from massive government incentive problems) or Social Security Tax holiday. Research seems to say that Tax cuts are much more effective stimulants than actual government spending...but neither fundamentally alters the business incentives like QE (Spend, or lose value).

Do it later

Alrenous asks me to expand upon this:

Rather, it's substantially easier to plan to start something next Monday (and then follow through) than it is to start something now.

I recently read an exposition of a study on consumption habits ( Of course I can't find it now). Some nice folks studied what folks did with movie planning.

If given a set of movies to choose from to watch right now, people would choose lowbrow, comedic movies in general that did not challenge them at all. However, when choosing from the same set of movies, given that they would be watched once-a-day for the next 3 days, the set of movies chosen very often included something difficult or educational.

Loose conclusion. Right now, you want your 3-days-from-now self to do stuff that is in general in your long term self interest. However, if pressed to do stuff right now, your present-self strongly prefers immediate gratification. For most people, then, you can probably buy effective willpower at a discount by committing to do things starting later (not right now).

Small study, big conclusion? Yeah...but the multi-self model is rather stable across fields...and this was just the 57th nail in the coffin of the model of the unitary self, and the 14th in the model of the time-invariant self.

Linky

• Sanity in Politics again?!?! What is the world coming to?
• Monkeybrains watch. Chez Borepatch.
• Arborism and economics. Kling. Karl Smith.
• Conservativism confused.
• Patri on exit.
• Growth is the key.
• High Speed Rail in the US
• The DREAM Act.

Another Aphorism

In systems...particularly Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)...the key feature of the feedback loop is length. The most important specific type feedback available is allowing bad/less efficient solutions to fail/cease to exist.

American job creation is primarily about starting new enterprises...but the key feature of a good system is allowing bad enterprises to fail. This is how evolution works too...individuals and species that are poorly adapted die off. That's the Natural Selection part of evolution.

The key feature in effective economies is their ability to allow things to fail when they need to fail.

My biggest complaint about government intervention in the economy is that government action is almost universally used to create regulations with the primary purpose of propping up bad solutions. Indeed, the public choice critique argues that the ONLY way to prevent this kind of behavior is to prohibit the government from making economic decisions, and to get the heck out of the way.

Three Selves

In the course of doing other stuff today, I tripped over a clearer understanding of time preference.

It's become a pretty stable psychological truth that "you" now and "you" next week have different preferences. Indeed, a major portion of self-discipline is the conflict between the self of now vs. the self of yesterday (when you decided what to do), or vs the self of tomorrow (who will have to follow through on todays commitments).

I've seen it in happiness research (Kahneman, linked here for the 47th time). I've seen, recently, an analysis of folks picking movies which demonstrates it. I've read about it for years in philosophy texts, and Eastern religions. And I've now watched it in person and in my life so much that as per the Aretae theory of learning (understanding requires action/feedback, not just theory), I now have a handle on what's being said.

Fundamentally, a person making decisions about the present is a very very different creature than a person making decisions about next week, month, or year.

One might then do well (in Aretae-speak, that's equivalent to: you should) to make decisions a three-person committee. One's past self, one's present self, and one's future self.

The past self has perspective...the present self weights immediate costs and benefits much differently than the past the future self ...the future self will not remember 95% of what happened, and will be impacted only by effects.

Will this approach make much of a difference? Not sure. I certainly goes up against a pile of self-help and GTD-style advice, arguing that human psychology isn't constructed for GTD. Rather, it's substantially easier to plan to start something next Monday (and then follow through) than it is to start something now. It explains the New-Year's resolution reasoning better than do any of the books which dismiss it.

But as per all Aretaevianisms...experience wins. So try it. Enlist your past self and your future self together in agreeing to start something that is both good for you and mildly (but not seriously) unpleasant ... but not immediately. Rather, start it next week. See if the combined force of the two other selves perspectives can overwhelm the desires of the present-self.

Link Farm

• Gender and Income -- Insty has links. 110% of the difference between male and female income is choices. Women get the better deal on income/hour worked. More from DiA. UPDATE: The Slate article linked is good too.
• Economics of sex -- Those with market power win, those without market power lose.
• Incentives win -- TSA explained.
• California is extra-broken. Privatization is illegal?
• Public employees overpaid? How does an economist understand the problem?
• Who likes liberty? No one political. Neither conservatives nor liberals.
• Reverse Causation? how about a brilliant better explanation?
• I once suggested that the health of an economy can be measured adequately by comparing the Expected Value (EV) of a dollar spent buying government favors vs. a dollar spent making a better product. Here's an answer.
• Great line by Sonic Charmer:

  I’ve come to realize that the reason I do not share their concerns is not so much that I think someone like Palin would too make a ‘good President’ as that for the most part I find the concept of ‘good President’ to be near-oxymoronic in the first place. I think of a ‘President’ as someone whom we strap into the driver’s seat of a giant-sized steamroller (=the U.S. government) that is running loose in the middle of a beautiful, Edenic paradise, with the gearshift permanently stuck in ‘drive’ – and we tell him/her to steer. This can’t be done in a ‘good’ way because no matter which direction the President drives, things will get trampled, beautiful things. So there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ President. Presidents can only minimize the damage the steamroller causes. And that’s all I want.

• Innovation is amazing. Bacteria to fix concrete cracks?
• Wilkinson has a great discussion of Robert Frank on inequality and a solution (Progressive Consumption Tax to replace income tax).
• Robin Hanson and then Adam Ozimek discuss sophistication versus obsessiveness. I am naturally an obsessive who tries also to be sophisticated. Note: Sophistication is a social strategy, while obsession is a problem-solving strategy. Sophisticates are particularly useful so that the obsessives have someone to talk to about their obsessions. Obliquely relevant here is Seth on evolution of education.

Shocker of the Day

WTF? Deficit commission proposes semi-real solution for medicare? Did someone slip something in my coffee?

Are they acting like Scandinavian Socialists, and embracing sustainable government activity?

Oddly, the plan proposes that infinite medical care for free is unsustainable....and suggests something else.

Free Trade

Foseti has again pulled out Frederick List and advocated Protectionism. While I could just reference the arguments against List from the late 1800s. Or one can address the topic directly.

As normal here, I will address it directly.

Several arguments:

1. Alan grows Apples and Betty raises Beef. Since Alan has so darn many apples, and Betty is drowning in cow patties, Alan and Betty will both benefit by trading some apples for some beef. Chuck raises cows, but his cows are far more expensive to raise than Betty's beef. Free trade says: Let Betty and Alan trade. Alan is better off, and so is Betty. Protectionism says that since Betty lives in Canada, we should prohibit Alan from trading with Betty, and instead make Alan trade with Chuck. In this case, Chuck is better off, Alan is worse off, and Betty is worse off. More specifically, the welfare of rich Chuck is up rather significantly, the welfare of rich Betty is down significantly, and the welfare of poor Alan is down a fair bit. Overall, Tariffs are a transfer from rich foreigners and poor locals to rich locals. See research suggesting that WalMart lowered the cost of living for the average American by ~$2,500 by lowering prices.

2. Who gets protectionist policies? Politically connected folks. Duh. Are there any other choices? Protectionism is a transfer of control from free market decisioning into the political realm. ALL transfers of power from individual decisionmaking into the political realm are (a) net-destructive of liberty, and (b) creating inequality, and (c) generally welfare destroying.

3. Blatantly stealing ideas from others: Did you know we have a huge floating factory in the Pacific that takes corn and turns it into cars? The factory happens to be called Japan...so we don't think about it properly...but it's really just a factory. Indeed, to an American, foreign trade is EXACTLY, 100% equivalent to a factory or process that does something better than how it is currently done. Indeed, I seem to remember a story ( I think I heard from Paul Hsieh ) about a doctor who invented a new device to do automated analysis of X-Rays, in order to find tumors. He was hailed as a genius. After several months, it came out that it wasn't a machine, but rather a telephone line...he was scanning and emailing the X-Ray scans to India, where they would diagnose, fill in a form, and send back a response. From the point of view of the American...the two processes are 100% identical. Both of them make for lower wages for American radiologists, both of them help the consumer, and radiologists will agitate for prohibitions on both. You cannot distinguish between the two activities by looking at the activity in one country. The only way of distinguishing between a labor-saving device (machine) and foreign trade is by noticing that the other country is also benefiting. Prohibiting foreign trade damages both my country and the other country. My consumers and the other country's producers lose. My producers win.

4. Hayek. 'nuff said. Actually, most folks don't understand Hayek yet. Hayek says, correctly, that the primary problem with government action is that there is high uncertainty, and even an uncorruptible superhuman central planner cannot make decent decisions about which industries will prosper if given protection, and which ones won't. Indeed, empirical studies, which I've linked to in the past, but can't find now, indicate that Infant Industry protection does not make for competitive industries any better than does no protection. Turns out that central planners suffer from Hayek's knowledge problem in planning infant industry protection as well.

Overall, Protectionism is about the politically connected and not the truly needy (regardless of political system), is never better than guessing about what needs protection vs. doesn't, hurts local consumers, transfers money from poor to rich, and gives excuses to the government to become more interventionist in the economy. All bad, all the time.

UPDATE: Foseti responds.

Geekery of the Day

TJIC links to teh funnies. If you're not quite as geeky as I am...it might take you a few seconds to get it....

QoTD

Sonic Charmer:

Free Love movements die out because their practitioners, inevitably, turn old and yucky. And movements, whatever they are, just can’t be old and yucky and still hope to attract new followers.

Voting vs. Liberty

TJIC starts it.
Coyote Blog continues.

It's not news that libertarians are more worried about liberty than about the right to order other folks around...nor that libertarians think that voting is primarily about voting to order other folks around...nor even that a lot of libertarians find voting offensive because it is voting to order folks around.

OTOH, My personal evolution has drifted in a different direction, which puts me in a rather conflicted position.

Liberty > Voting. For sure, no questions.
The big question for me is:
Wealth > simple negative Liberty?

As a libertarian, I want to claim liberty as the primary value. However...as far as I've been able to tell, human happiness is more predicated on wealth than on liberty...and therefore the compassionate person will prefer wealth (societal) over liberty in many cases.

Wealth, Health and Autonomy seem to be the big 3 (non-status, positive-sum) factors in human happiness.

And finally I reach the economist position:
Liberty is good, but growth is better. Given that we don't know exactly what causes growth and what inhibits it, it is still a reasonable guess that imperfect liberty is net-better for people than perfect liberty.

Practice

Sebastian Marshall is on my side with feedback and practice. Read it. He (and I) disagree with the WSJ article here. FWIW, There is a major factor that none of the folks are paying attention to.

Returning to the Aretaevian theory of learning/expertise...

90% of learning is motivation (active/eager engagement)
9% is practice
1% is other stuff -- Talent, etc.

When everyone has similar motivation and practice, then talent takes over...and until everyone has reached the same levels of practice and motivation, talent is halfway to irrelevant...at least for folks in the first 4-sigma above average.

What is missing from the discussion is a quality-of-practice issue...Practice is part quantity and part quality. Shooting 1 million baskets does not make you a basketball star...but it is very likely to make you able to hit the basket when you shoot (without pressure, from at least most of the places on the court where you practiced). On the other hand, if you're throwing those baskets up underhanded, around the back, and goofing about, even 1M baskets shot won't necessarily make you a good shooter. What makes you a good shooter is the adjustment on shot 2 after shot 1 misses...and the attempt to recreate shot 2 with shot 3 if shot 2 goes in.

On the other hand...your chances of being a basketball expert if you haven't taken the couple hundred thousand shots required is near zero. Practice is necessary, even if not sufficient.

Similarly, Arithmetic expertise is not gained by just getting a math worksheet with 300 problems, and writing something down every day for 10 years (300+ 365*10 ~= 1M) Arithmetic expertise is gained by working on improvements in speed, and dealing with the feedback. If you write 7*8=54, and never get it checked, you're making yourself LESS good at math.

On the other hand, if you don't have addition/multiplication math facts in your head for instant recall, you can barely learn fractions because you have too many steps to think about. Proper fractions analysis is: What is 1/2 + 2/3 ... well, thats 3/6+4/6 = 7/6 = 1 1/6...if you pause to ask what's 2*3 or 3+4...you cannot do fractions...and you certainly can't use fractions for anything that takes cognitive effort.

On the gripping hand, if you do your 1M problems of arithmetic...that still doesn't make you good at Algebra (though you're MUCH MUCH better prepared).

Practice: Quantity, Topic, and Feedback are all huge. Insufficient attention to any of those and you won't get good at whatever you're trying to learn or become good at.

Hypothesis...IQ allows you to better self-manage your next steps...but almost never as well as a coach could.

Links

• Arnold Kling in a careful academic paper (pdf) on budget/entitlement sanity points out that the entirety of the GDP difference between America and France is in # of hours worked, and the entirety of difference in # of hours worked (per person per year) is tax rates. Also...taking all the income from all of the rich (top 1%) simply is only a drop in the bucked for the deficit, much less the debt, and that doesn't count how good folks are at changing behavior to avoid taxes.
• Jason Kuznicki quotes Hayek on incentives:

  It is also possible for reasonable people to argue that the ideals of democracy would be better served if, say, all the servants of government or all recipients of public charity were excluded from the vote.

• Sheldon Richman has a good reality check. You can't be serious about the deficit/debt while also being serious about exporting military force. Empire is too expensive. Of course, the other-side corollary is that you can't actually be serious about the debt/deficit and about maintaining entitlements. Social Security AND Medicare are zombies.

Robert Reich again

Robert Reich, as usual, has an excellent essay up that explains everything VERY clearly up until the point where he gets to solutioning...at which point, I'd swear that he switched personalities from economist to liberal lunatic.

Deficits aren't the problem, Growth is the problem. Health care costs are the primary problem, but the budget proposal ignores that.

I find him difficult to understand because his problem locator is so good, and his solution-proposer is so bad...is he just overlooking public choice?

Climate Change -- Deniers win

Seth Roberts points at a Mother Jones article where the whole (hyper-progressive/communist) commentariat thinks climate change is a hoax. Game over, skeptics like me win.

UPDATE: Now that this one is at best a zombie, the game is: Pick which urgent risk requires massive government action next...I've bet already -- it's food. Your guesses?

QoTD & Nazis

Falkenstein notes that it comes from Jonah Goldberg:

If you leave out the parts about killing all the Jews and invading Poland, what specifically about the Nazi political platform do you disagree with?

And for reference, the Nazi political platform was:

Proto-Keynesian socialist economist Joan Robinson wrote that "Hitler found a cure against unemployment before Keynes was finished explaining it."

What were those economic policies? He suspended the gold standard, embarked on huge public works programs like Autobahns, protected industry from foreign competition, expanded credit, instituted jobs programs, bullied the private sector on prices and production decisions, vastly expanded the military, enforced capital controls, instituted family planning, penalized smoking, brought about national health care and unemployment insurance, imposed education standards, and eventually ran huge deficits. The Nazi interventionist program was essential to the regime's rejection of the market economy and its embrace of socialism in one country.

And on top of all that....it seems like the whole Nazi's were economically efficient thing...not so much. Their economic strength was 1/3 funded by stealing from the rich Jews. That's why they were called the National SOCIALIST party. Also...it would therefore have run out, just like Chavez's did...though the war of expansion was an attempt to avoid that.

Deficit Commission

Basically, it seems as if a bunch of policy wonks got together and created an intelligent proposal about government finances. As Patri said, this most likely means that it will be implemented NOT AT ALL. However, the recommendations are by and large good...and have been sitting on most policy wonks desks for at least 10 years. AFAIK, nothing new, nothing surprising, nothing feasible. Here's tpm. Here's McArdle.

• Social Security: eligibility to 69, means-test, and increase contributions cap above $106K.
• Medicare: Co-pays + more medicaid + auto-correcting growth cap.
• Taxes: SIMPLIFY! Reduce base rate, elimnate deductions, kill expat & corporate taxes, add gas tax. 3 plans for how. Cap @21% GDP.
  
• Federal Workers: Spending on federal employees: "Freeze federal worker wage increases through 2014; eliminate 200,000 federal jobs by 2020; and eliminate 250,000 federal non-defense contractor jobs by 2015."
• Other spending cuts: Farm subsidies, Student loan subsidization, Earmarks, NPR funding,
  
• Military spending cuts too. -- no vet. pension before 60, etc.

I think ALL the sacred cows from ALL sides are gored in the report. Bad news for implementation. McArdle says the same thing:

I doubt that this is the final plan, but I suspect that it is like the final plan in most essential respects--most especially in that it will make almost everyone ferociously angry, and politicians will not be eager to vote for it.

UPDATE: MS @ DiA has intelligent things to say, including this very important thing:

I'm hoping some of you read my initial comment about wanting to retweet what Kevin Drum wrote on this and thought, "Well obviously a liberal who writes for Mother Jones would be saying that in the long term massive budget deficits threaten our future, and the only way to seriously reduce that long-term deficit is [what Kevin Drum wrote:]

To put this more succinctly: any serious long-term deficit plan will spend about 1% of its time on the discretionary budget, 1% on Social Security, and 98% on healthcare. Any proposal that doesn't maintain approximately that ratio shouldn't be considered serious.

BBdM again

I finished the Predictioneer's Game. I expect now I have to read his whole corpus. The book is tremendously fascinating, and I vote it the best book on how political science really works. If you like politics, history, game theory, or predictioneering...you should read it. Full review to come.

A quote from the book that indicates that BBdM has looked at many of the same issues:

From this starting point, we might assume that the outcome in the business world would be the same as that in the political: "autocratic" leadership leads to corruption (fraud), while more "democratic" leadership does not. This is not the case. Perversely, as we will see, the strong loyalty engendered by relatively autocratic corporate styles helps reduce the risk of fraud.

Links

• RWCG calls out another case (like the last one) where a nominal value and the actual value don't line up in the progressive world. Diversity. I personally find that diverse experience and diverse problem-solving methodology helps in solving problems. OTOH, that's not what RWCG says Progressive diversity is...and it's a bit hard to disagree.
• Sailer asks offensive, interesting questions about creativity and women.
• Susan Walsh, one of my favorite new finds online, brings perspective on the Duke Frats.
• Phil Goetz at LessWrong calls out one of the ultimate monkeybrain problems. In theory he has a solution too.
• TJIC notes that Obama did something right. And that he's getting shit for that too. Well called, TJIC.
• Michelle Malkin calls Bush to the carpet for being as bad of a socialist as Obama. The (R) doesn't mean he wasn't a socialist, just that he was a Republican Socialist. Again...good call criticizing the folks "on your side". Those of us here in libertarian-world might say something about Coke + Pepsi....
• Patri calls out the folks who understand public choice who are still doing things that public choice proves are stupid (Rather than trying to engineer exit...the only even potentially workable choice). Boundreaux and McArdle are named specifically. I think he misunderstands the purpose of Boudreaux's letter writing campaign...or he mildly overstates the public choice case (which I incidentally agree with about 98%). Many funny lines in his article. RTWT.
• German Minster of Women is going anti-Feminist. Oz has the story.
• Eric Crampton talks about real "Nudge"-ing, which is a lot less pleasant than a theoretical Nudge.
• Felix Salmon discusses buying your way out of a felony.
• C4SS on terrorist motivations...from the terrorists mouths. What would you do if you'd been born in Afghanistan? It ain't like it's obvious that the US is full of good guys.
• Doc List on Body Language. 7% of communication is words? Bogus.
• M.S. @ DiA asks about built to last. Does capitalism promote short term thinking?
• Richard Nikoley calls BS on the McDonalds rot-less burger story. I love truth-calling when it might hurt your cause. Indicates truth matters.
• Robin Hanson has the most interesting post I've read in a while. It's about SEX!. Strong hypergamy evidence. Women care about sex more than men do?

Comics

• Hard to link to original, so TJIC has this one.
• Dilbert a couple days back. And Saturday.
• I wanted to link Baby Blues for today, because it was a riot...but their online presence is 2 weeks behind current.

Good Links

• Winning vs. Having Fun. (HT: Insty) So long as you take this as only about half the story, it's a great article. My wife and I used to co-coach the kid's soccer team(from age 7-8, I think)...and our first season was ~1 win, 8 losses, while in our second season we won the league championship 8 and 1 with basically all the same kids. Winning isn't everything. Winning is some of the thing, though.
• Matt Ridley hits almost the entire climate change skeptic corpus in a friendly response letter to a climate change advocate. Worth reading to get a handle on the data detail. Of course, Borepatch has a whole category for that. And I still think my epistemological approach is very important, and not EVER talked about.
• Tyler Cowen links to folks doing what leftish-libertarians think you should do to help the poor. And it works. No paternalism, just help.
• Sonic Charmer links to a very insightful, and very politically incorrect piece by Whiskey on status and politics and white women. Fits the monkeybrains hypothesis to a Tee.
• Warren Meyer on how the whales got saved.
• Sebastian Marshall: Don't wait for permission
• Meditation improves Cellular (?!?) Health. Psychology effects physiology. (HT: Insty)
• Virgin Mary reincarnated as a snake. Snake Jesus incoming?

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita explains

I finally got The Predictioneer's Game on the my Kindle, which I incidentally LOVE. Changes how I CAN read. It's a google-like game-changer in book consumption.

BBdM, early in the book, makes his fundamental claim, which I think more or less captures the dispute between me and my friends the formalists. Of course, BBdM has a better working track record than me and all the formalists put together...so I'm inclined to take his positions far more seriously than I take anyone else's. Here are major portions of the theses on which BBdM bases his insanely good ability to predict global politics.

All rulers depend on some subset of the population to stay in control. The interesting question is how large this subset (the selectorate) is.

"When Rulers need the support of many [...] the best way to rule is by creating good policies. When leaders rely only on a few to stay in control [...] their best bet is to make the few fat and happy even if that means making everyone else miserable. "

Simple, ex-post facto obvious, game-theoretically necessary with basic public-choice self-interest of political actors.

Conclusion: Large democracies are so unwieldy as to be only nominally democratic. In reality, their bad policy is easily explicable by the fact that they rely only on a few to stay in control (pundits, corporations). Smaller democracies (Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, and especially Switzerland, where real control is at the half-million person canton) can be functional.

Devolution + Direct Democracy is the answer. Centralization into large units is the problem.

FWIW, Unchecked and Unbalanced says very similar things, while pointing out exactly how the Hayek's coordination problem + increasing scale is not only responsible for all sorts of messes, but also largely responsible for the financial crisis.

Smart and Wrong

I've read a bunch of real smart stuff from real smart folks recently that is just wrong. I figured I'd give a quick rundown.

1. RWCG: The Shallowness of Multicultural Values: Is this issue even important? Really important? So important that it, alone, determines a large portion of a person’s or people’s ‘sophisticatedness’?
   
   Aretae: Yes, it is. Living in other countries gives you a chance to view the way other folks think about the world...and see how it's different from Americans. If you have only lived in one country, or egads, only one state/metro area/neighborhood your whole life, you have NO G**D*** CLUE how the world works. You think the world works like your neighborhood works, and you're wrong. I've spent a summer in Brussels, a short, cold half-year in Moscow, traveled outside the states for work some, and traveled inside the states for work a lot. And...the assumptions about the way the world works that are shared even by Texans and Californians and Chicagoans...but which are deemed bat-shit crazy by everyone who lives outside America...those are things you simply cannot get by staying in one place. Not with the way the monkeybrain actually works. Fundamentally, the world is NOT like your neighborhood, your state, or your country assumes it is. And until you get out and notice another 90% of the world who sees it differently...you cannot understand how limited your own point of view is. For my children...for educational value (perspective)...1 year overseas is worth substantially more than 4 years of college.


2. TJIC: You’re going to worship something, either God or Government.
   
   Aretae: Bogosity. Some of us think worshipers of either are insane.
   


3. Sebastian Marshall: Brilliant series of discussions on luck. His summary: Luck Doesn't Exist.
   
   Aretae: But...he's wrong. Bill Gates was LUCKY. Brin + Page were lucky. Vioxx takers were unlucky. As an overall approach to life, operating as if there is no such thing as luck is FAR FAR and away the best strategy. It's been said as far back as memory goes...let's use the Thomas Jefferson version: I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it...
   
   This is the proper way to view one's own life. And around 80%* of other folks' lives as well. If someone is in situation X it is their fault. Of course...one can meta- out of that, and say...did I choose well in growing up in a middle class household with +3sigma parents in a crime-and-trouble free town where all my friends parents were business-owners or university professors?
   
   The biggest error made by people in bad situations is to say: I had bad luck. However, the biggest error made by successful people is to say: Luck had nothing to do with it. Or one could say...the big liberal error and the big conservative error.
   


4. Devin: How to reform the banking system in 12 points.
   
   Aretae: Wrong on 3 counts.
   
   • The banking firms are smarter (collectively) than any possible regulator or regulators. The financial firms have more money at stake, and they are necessarily smarter. Read Kling on the regulatory chess game.
   • Anything of this sort is politically impossible anyhow.
   • If you were doing something...abolishing Freddie, Fannie, and the FDIC would be a start, while solid positives would come about by just Devin's point #2.

     If the bank cannot redeem a desposit according to its promised terms, the bank goes into default and the equity holders get wiped out.

   Revert to the old system where bank equity holders had double exposure (up to 2x their investment), and life gets real easy real fast.
5. Robert Reich: Excellent article in which he does a magnificent impression of an anti-elitist tea-partier except for the 3rd to last paragraph:

   Inhabitants of the Big Money economy are celebrating Republican wins last week. They figure financial regulations will be rolled back, environmental regulations will be canned, the Bush tax cut will be extended to the top 1 percent, and it will be harder for workers to form unions.

   Aretae: Coke Party, Pepsi party. Regulation is a plus for big business. Unions mostly work WITH big business to make it harder on small businesses and entrepreneurs. Good ID of problems. Crappy solution-pointing.
6. Eric Crampton: I've outsourced #6 to Offsetting Behavior, who discusses the costs of smoking. Short: Governments lie, and smoking is a net health $ benefit for the public.
7. Sebastian Marshall again, as always, very well thought through: Drop the word Fair.
   
   Aretae: Fair is one of 5-6 fundamental/deep moral intuitions folks have. Asking folks to drop "fair" for a more descriptive term is as constructive as asking folks to drop the word "hot" in daily discourse.

QoTDs

I just started finding them....

Friedmans first:

Patri: Life is change, but I don't see how growth can be optional. Not if you want to be a PC - after all PCs level while NPCs are static

David: The Most Expensive Research Project Ever: Economists should be grateful to President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron for arranging something reasonably close to a scientific experiment on the effects of government policy. Other people might look at the matter somewhat differently. Whichever of the two turns out to be wrong will have imposed a very large cost, quite possibly in the trillions of dollars, on the population he is experimenting on.

David: A New Rule of Thumb: Regard with suspicion any historical anecdote that makes a good enough story to have survived on its literary merit.

Don Boudreaux: Back when Paul Krugman was an economist – as recently as the closing years of the 20th century -- ...

Sheldon Richman: If [entitlements + defense] are not on the block, then the opposition is just performing a vacuous pantomime aimed at only one thing: procuring political power.

Joel Grus: On the national level, the Big-Government-and-Business Party suffered a stunning loss at the hands of the Big-Business-and-Government Party, which probably portends all kinds of changes over the next two years, although I couldn’t tell you what they are. Possibly they’ll rebuke the suddenly-unpopular President for his “endless war in Afghanistan” and “assassinate Americans” and “keep the drug war going” and “anti gay marriage” positions.

Links

• I was about to write a response to Isegoria's post showing the VERY junior position of libertarians in the conservative coalition. However, A.McGuinn wrote the post first, so I don't have to. Read it.
• Scott Sumner reminds people that the only effective socialism in the world (the nordic states) has essentially adopted all of the libertarian/economist efficiency positions: hardcore school choice, Fire/Ambulance privatization, decreased traffic, school tracking (college bound vs. not), massive decentralization, super-federalism (27 different nations in an area the size of the USA), etc, etc. #1 issue in good government is small populations? Looking like a better and better hypothesis.
• Richard Nikoley snarks about how natural-minded Vegans could get good B12. Same way gorillas do. Mean, but funny. Point is that B12 isn't available in plants, and is 100% essential to good health.
• 1920s Chicago economist predicts 2008 financial meltdown.
• Big argument on the eventuality of Pot legalization. Drum, Cowen, Sullivan, McArdle, Caplan(Opens a can of data on their hineys).
• Hanson captures the anti-prostitution position, and indeed about 90% of the liberal/conservative position. Many links to the original discussion Chez Robin, so I won't produce them here.
• Illka links to an anti-liberal, but very good Aphorism. I count myself a left-libertarian and find that this REALLY does capture the position of the left. Imagine the most positive spin of the aphorism possible...and I think it's right.
• Cowen finds research supporting Hanson. You're not very different..

PoTD

I already had a must-read...but I can still have a post-of-the-day.

You call that a Drug War?

What part of “illegal” don’t you hypocrites understand? 100 million Americans have admitted to using drugs. Most of them also support prohibitionist politicians. Give them what they asked for.

Tyler Cowen has very interesting things to say on the topic as well. I think he phrased it something like: "Use evidence, not intuitions, you morons." Wait....that sounds more like IOZ than Tyler...here's Tyler.

Must Read

Radley Balko links to Ronald Bailey writing about Jon Haidt's new academic paper on libertarian morality. Here's how libertarians are different. Jon Haidt is a firm liberal...but it seems spot on to me. (He invented a 6th moral axis to help explain libertarians, because his 1st 5 were insufficient). Jon Haidt is STILL my favorite psychologist working today.

Expanding on a Comment -- Epistemology

I was gloating in the comments that Intrade was among the better predictors of the results of the election, and realized that I hadn't talked epistemology in a while when Andrew responded forcefully to my teasing.

Here's the fundamental problem with epistemology.

I have a model of the world (simplified) in my head.

Also, there exists (I model that there exists, anyhow) an external world.

How do you know what the external world is like? There turn out to be few choices.

1. Logic...take your observations, and apply careful reasoning to them -- aka Argument/Rhetoric.
2. Testing...guess, then see if you're right, frequently using statistical technique -- aka Science.
3. Outsourcing...accept someone else's conclusion -- aka Faith.
4. Aggregation...listen to several opinions, accept the middle -- aka Moderation
5. Motivated Aggregation...see what the aggregate of folks do when there's real consequences to being wrong...accept that. AKA Betting/markets.

Andrew accuses me of being over-fond of #5. I'd as soon clarify, than let the accusation stand.

My analysis:

Fundamentally, I hate now, and always have hated #3. It offends my sensibilities, rather unreasonably, but nonetheless it's as acceptable to me as a loud fart during silent prayer at church. I can only accept 4 choices then.

80% of my reading recently has been about how human reason fails, and about how reason is almost universally motivated: Reasoning/argument in almost all people follows conclusions, but does not precede it. Largely, Logic/Rhetoric has been relegated (in my mind) to a hypothesis generation method, and is now counted as Useless in determining truth. FWIW, I will take 5 years before I actually understand my own statement properly.

Motivated Aggregation purely dominates unmotivated Aggregation, so I'll put unmotivated aggregation as a less-good choice.

If you want truth (correspondence to reality), there are 2 paths forward. Tests and Markets. Both are highly subject to initial conditions. Beware when using.

Perspectives on the Election

I'm more or less sitting in the same spot as most of the anarchist/left-lib folks that you can find online: Coke Party, Pepsi Party. Looks like the Coke party picked up almost 70 seats in the House, but only 8-ish in the Senate. The Pepsi party defended its control of the Senate. So what? Ain't no one interested in liberty...even the California hippy electorate couldn't get Marijuana legalized (Disclaimer: I don't drink, smoke or other such, and I'm back in the anti-caffeine fight. Darn near a Mormon).

Here's a bunch of other perspectives on the election, many of them :

Will Wilkinson: Liberaltarian tepidly pro-voting.

Charles Johnson: Left-Anarcho-Libertarian anti-voting.

David Henderson: Libertarian economist Anti-fervent-anti-voting-proselytization.

Richard Nickoley: Libertarian Anti-Zookeeper-support (ungentle language)

Eric Crampton: Libertarian economist: voting as masturbation.

Sheldon Richman: Libertarian economist: opiate of the people.

Patri Friedman: Seasteader. Voting is for identity-building, you morons.

Trevor Bothwell: Anarchist. Not voting.

Borepatch: Standard Recommendation.

Adam Ozmiek: Both parties are anti-liberty.

Mark Steyn: How do you vote out the EPA?

Nick Gillespie: Reason. Election didn't change a thing.

Coyote Blog: Coke vs. Pepsi.

Robin Hanson: Politics as War, NOT problem-solving. The forever narrative.

c4ss: Gridlock? If only. Tea Party? Nice try...now the political machine eats the movement.

It SEEMS as if the libertarians I read are near-uniformly of the opinion that the structure of the system is SO biased against liberty, voting is a joke.

Lamarck makes a comeback?

Matt Ridley talk up epigenetic inheritance in the WSJ, which extends yesterday's link from Tyler Cowen.

Short version: Malnutrition in your grandfather in the 19th century can impact YOUR height today. Height is ~80% heritable...IQ is ~50%. You do the math.

Valuable error

Bryan Caplan brings up the topic of helpful illusions. Earlier today, I'd been planning to blog on the topic as well.

The topic I'd been wondering about was frugality.

In general, it's pretty clearly silly for someone who is relatively well-off to spend any reasonable time separating out the recycling to save the $3 from returning plastic bottles. And yet, it's not uncommon for an average $100K/y SWPL to do precisely that. Coupon clipping (hours spent at $4/h) is often the same, but done by conservative millionaires.

Is this truly nuts though, or is it a habit of mind? Perhaps the time wasted on coupons teaches a reflexive frugality...where the first thought one has when acting is about frugality. Perhaps this habit of frugality is worth the extra time spent on it, and the coupon clipping should be counted as a meditation on frugality rather than as an act of frugality.

Other examples of apparent wasted time that may instead be habit-creation?

Science News

Since I've been out:

• School Choice success explained. Key line:

  The biggest mistake pro-market school reformers have made can thus be put simply: They have mistaken choice for competition. The conviction that school choice constitutes, by itself, a market solution has too often led reformers to skip past the hard work necessary to take advantage of the opportunities that choice-based reform can provide. Choice is merely part of the market equation; equally crucial are the requirements that market conditions permit high-quality or cost-effective suppliers to flourish, that regulation not smother new entrants, and that rules not require inefficient practices or subsidize also-rans

  Improvement requires that bad systems fail as well.


• Everyone I read commented on the Atlantic article about Ioannidis saying that doctors don't know much. Key line: 49 high-fame medical studies examined. 34 re-tested. 14 failed retest. 40% of prestigious medical journal studies were wrong.
• Illka @ 4CR notes that the wage gap is reversed in europe unless you use highly misleading statistics.
• Instapundit finds information on the cognitive changes engendered by the pill. OTOH, all of my most paying-attention girlfriends have been saying things near this for near 20 years.
• David D'Amato argues that liberty and equality are inextricably linked. Both David Brin and Robert Reich beat this drum incessantly, but I admit to finding their state-favoring solutions less impressive than their problem-finding.
• Peter Gray has 2 parts of an article on how school causes cheating (like the Climate Science stuff). Kling Discusses fraud further, and pushes towards a left-libertarian position.
• Joel Grus points at A Fine Theorem discussing the evils of IP. With data.
• Toban @ Higher Thought summarizes Taubes beautifully: "hunger is a physiological, and not a psychological phenomenon." ergo calorie reduction is worse than hormonal management.
• Kling hits his favorite topic: overconfidence, especially in government actors whose bad choices screw us all..
• The Atlantic has another(!!!) great article...this time on how incompetent the terrorists are. While my engineer friends and I have certainly pointed out how incompetent they were since about 1990...it's even more true than ever. Further...it's psychologically valuable. Average terrorist is not a mastermind. Rather, he's a mentally retarded goat-f***er. RTWT. This is the image we want portrayed...not the evil mastermind. (HT: Insty)
• The willpower-points hypothesis is in question.
• 3 posts on excellence, what it takes, and what it doesn't take: Desire/passion, Practice, collaboration are important and "intentions" are worthless.
• Isegoria finds brilliant stuff on Afghanistan.
• Tyler Cowen links to great stuff suggesting (conclusively to me) massive environmental impact on IQ. Foseti links to other stuff on genetic causes of crime.
• Anarchangel discusses the history of Hip-Hop Artistry.
• MM summarizes that elitist/anti-elitist discussion, with source links, giving her customary good weight to both sides' intelligent positions.

Simple distinctions

I've been away for a few weeks, and wanted to tie together some blogthreads I've been watching.

Robin Hanson has argued in the past that there are 2 big differences between folks attitudes about everything: Rich vs. Poor + East vs. West. His recent line, though, is that the Rich/Poor divide might better be understood as Forager/Farmer. Robin doubles down on the Forager Farmer distinction by revising his pre-history towards the Sex At Dawn thesis. And he expands on East/West. Roissy & Sonic Charmer disagree with Robin's line, especially on the FF/SaD line. Robin defends himself here using some pre-defined meta-questions.

Sonic Charmer's return to simple explanations post surveys several different simple explanations, and then offers a contrasting simple explanation that maps quite nicely (If I do say so myself) to Robins FF hypothesis.

Takeaway: Simple distinctions aren't really reliable, though I tend to line up with Robin both on stylistic grounds and evidentiary grounds. OTOH, they're real nice for helping to look at problems from more than one perspective, which is often a good antidote to one-sided views.

Smartest thing I read this weekend.

Robin Hanson on Eliezer and specifically HPMOR(Which I also endorse heartily, BTW):

My main discomfort with Eliezer’s new scientist-hero genre is his beyond-Enders-Game-level over-competent hero, exceptionally moral and vastly smarter than anyone else around. This young teen hero has already mostly assimilated the wisdom of his elders and ancestors and must now mostly single-handedly solve the great mysteries of his world and fight the great evil of his age, while politely ignoring the mostly useless opinions of others. I fear that giving readers more license to imagine they are such a person mostly undoes the rationality lessons they learned. After all, much of real rationality is learning how to learn from others. But it is still a fun read.

I've been trying to make this criticism for a couple years now...and not entirely succeeding, I think. Thankfully, Robin has been working on the problem longer than I have. Indeed, I think I was still captured by the Rand/Heinlein/Dickenson/Card heroic vision when Robin started working on the problem. I'd edit Robin to say "MOST of real rationality", but after that, I have little to add.

Hayek is still my #1 thinker of the 20th Century for having called this out explicitly. Not only DO you not know enough, you CANNOT know enough. Now cope. Incidentally, as a side effect of this, central planning is largely guaranteed to fail.

My fundamental question of rationality (for the highly intelligent): How much do you rely on your own brain to solve problems, and how much do you rely on distributed intelligence. The more you do yourself, and the more you rely on single sources...the LESS rational you are.

AKA argument is orthogonal to truth.

Prediction Markets

I've been watching Intrade for election results on the theory that for complex subjects, motivated group predictions (betting for $) are more reliable than either unmotivated (simple prediction aggregation) or individual (Pundits) methods.

In the last week, Repubs taking the house has climbed from 80-ish to 95-ish, and Dems keeping the senate has fallen from near 60 to near 40. Indeed, even the 60-seat house gain odds is over 50% now. Thus suggesting that the aggregate of folks who will put their money where their mouth is think that the absolute size of the landslide is the only question. ON the other hand, there appears to be an arbitrage opportunity as well, as the "republicans hold 50+ seats in the senate" is down near 35 still.

Is that likely attempted manipulation or just free money? Not for me to know yet.