Social Epistemology gone crazy

I've been battered in private email and in public comments here regarding my radical epistemological positions. Let's lay it out in an even more radical position:

Fundamental theory of Social Epistemology:
Your actual probability of being correct is not substantially larger than that of a peer (defined without respect to ANY specific positions).

Fundamental theory of Self-Importance:
You are very likely to over-rate your own reasons for being correct, and devalue others' peer-ness based on their disagreement.

Therefore....

• A rational epistemology assigns AT LEAST 50% of the probability space to social epistemology.
  
• What MOST people believe needs to have weight in your belief system...else you're wrong.
• What most EXPERTS believe needs to have weight in your belief system...else you're wrong.
• What betting markets say needs to have weight in your belief system...else you're wrong.

I don't have a clear picture of how to weight the 3 different belief aggregation systems, excepting that good markets beat all other choices by a lot.

I also don't have any good way of determining how much of total epistemological probability to assign to the total of aggregated opinion.

I am concerned that 100% assigned to social epistemology is actually the ideal situation...but that humans are profoundly unsuited for such approaches...it violates our us-them taboo-driven monkeybrains rather badly.

Ways in which social epistemology fails include places in which folks are holding unusual positions that others have never been exposed to. Formalism constitutes epic fail* on a pure social epistemology line, but when limiting the peerage to folks who've actually heard of formalism...they do far less badly. Ditto the Yudkowskian's.

On the other hand...I consider the job of folks like me to be to

(a) fiddle around on the borders of the option-space opening up new caverns of opinions...providing interesting alternative hypotheses...that once disseminated shift the probability space...Aretaevian education theory, etc.
(b) Mine the hypothesis-space, and rebroadcast important, poorly-known hypotheses: Hanson's Forager/Farmer, Falkenstein's Envy hypothesis, Haidt's Moral Foundations, Aumann Agreement hypothesis, Pirsig's value>truth hypothesis, etc.

Truth-evaluation is actually lower-priority most of the time than exploring interesting approaches that may explain part of the world.


* I am advisedly uncool, and despite the admonitions of some of my hip readers, I remain decidedly square, and willing to use terms that are "so 2007".

Bleg: final cause

Very simply:  most smart folks for the last 2400 years in the west have believed in aristotle's notion of final cause...and smart folks like Feser and the super smart folks like Thomas Aquinas have grounded arguments for God in this notion of Final cause. 

However...the idea of final cause as having metaphysical reality looks to me like pure in(s)anity/category error.  Can any of my smart comenters explain how final cause makes sense at all?

Why Communism?

All widely-held positions have SOME strong power behind them. However, Communism in real life is atrocious, and AFAICT, unsupportable. WTF?

My suggestion: Communism's attraction is an evolved emotional response to hating power-differentials. Communism works beautifully in a scarcity-free economy...like, say, the forager economy that our brains evolved in, and the projected post-singularity economy of 2050 that we are currently teasing around the edges of. In particular, the life of a rich youth (all American youth?) looks suspiciously similar to the post-scarcity world. In the situation that individual effort is a deciding factor in wealth-creation, on the other hand...Communism fails badly.

Just so story that makes a whole section of people make better sense.

Sentence otD

On Global Warming:

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate.

Other PoTD

Just when I say that we only have 3 reliable aumann epistemologists on the web...up comes sonic charmer with a beauty of a post.  Read it.

PoTD

Bleeding heart libertarian rips into moderate leftists.  RTWT.

Aretaevian uncertainty

Sister Y brings it here:

The existence of an epistemic peer who holds a contrary belief is more devastating than any argument.

Of course the standard solution to this obvious truth is to deny peerage to anyone who disagrees with you. As soon as you stop doing that, on reflexive monkeybrain status-management tricks...you have to drop your certainty ranges on roughly all positions into the sub-80% range.

The only people writing on the web that I can think of who appear to take this position seriously are Tyler Cowen, Robin Hanson, and Megan McArdle...hence my immense respect for them.

Others, who ignore this deep and important truth get massively downgraded because of it. No Aumann updating means you're playing in idea-spaces, not seriously chasing truth.

Overheard at the Aretae family Thanksgiving

There's 2 varieties of subjectivism:

• Hayekian subjectivism of limited knowledge, and limited reason, and error, resulting in Bayesian probabilities in the .8 range and below, with required updating, and impact on making +EV decisions...
• Hippie subjectivism of you believe what you want to believe, and I believe what I want to believe.

Hiatus

The big Aretae family thanksgiving is held today. Posting suspended for the day.

PoTD

The ever eloquent IOZ brings the comparisons. Read.

Rawls

So...it bothered me a bit...and I went off and Wik'd Rawls and his book.

Here's the deal: Rawls has 2 principles for organizing a society.

1. First: Liberty: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others
2. Second: Fairness. Equality of opportunity, marginal value (prefer marginal value for poor to MV for rich)

He should have checked with Patri first. Liberty includes liberty to exit the group. And exit means that value producers can bail, unless they're treated well. Full stop. Game over. Rawls is cooked like a goose.

Concept otD

Time Flow of Wisdom.

From Brin. Among his most important ideas. I've linked to Brin before saying roughly the same thing. Is wisdom increasing or decreasing over time.

The deep positive core of the progressive vision is that life has been getting better nearly monotonically for at least the last 500 years in the Anglo-world, and most of the Anglo-influenced world...AND that we should expect it to continue...AND that we should look to the future, not the past for truth/wisdom.

I agree (p ~= 90%).

Thanksgiving

Here on America's left coast, it's Thanksgiving. While I personally have very little patience for holidays and celebrations of any sort...I do have a great fondness for good food. And so we have a fairly standard Thanksgiving, if not usually on the normal day.

I would like to pause and point out to all the rationalists out there...As far as we've been able to tell, among the strongest predictors of happiness yet discovered is the extent to which one feels regularly grateful. Exercise and friends are also near the top of the list.

And so, if nothing else...use today to actively experience the emotion of gratitude, and perhaps even set in motion the beginnings of a habit.

Relevant to this blog, I am grateful for the luxury of a truly excellent commentariat and readership. Civilized and always thoughtful, even in disagreement, is most of what a body could want.

EDIT: Tabarrok brings the science (really, just one of many studies. I'd strongly recommend the book: Destructive Emotions).

EDIT: John Tierney in the NYT on the same topic. HT: Adler @ Volokh

QoTD -- Power edition

Illka quotes his finnish friend:

The essential difference between the nuclear power and the coal power is that if the worst possible disaster takes place in a nuclear plant, it will create about as much pollution as the equal coal plant when it functions normally.

This is especially interesting, given that for price-efficient electricity, there are exactly 2 choices: Coal, and Nuclear. 20 years from now, we expect to see solar in there. But now? 2.

p(lying)

We know a couple things about probability games...

1. Most folks aren't real good at math. 1/10,000 and 1/100,000 are roughly equivalent in their heads.

2. People cheat. Think 3-card Monte, or rigged poker games, unfair dice, etc.

If you accept both of these lines...then for all small probabilities (< 1/20), the likelihood that you're being cheated is higher than the likelihood that you'll win the fair game. Hence...the behavior of the arbitrary math-free person (treat all small probabilities as equal, and near 5%) is more correct in most real world cases than the behavior of a math-friendly person lilke myself.

More specifically, the natural ability of we math-geeks to abstract out the rest of the circumstances is mostly wrong in most cases. Only the rest of the circumstances make the situation itself make sense.

Correct response: Roughly all probabilities should be undestrood to be probability ranges, with a +/- 5% edge. Example: The recent lawsuit suggesting that for ~20 years, the McDonalds Monopoly game was rigged, and the grand prize always went to relatives of a McD. lottery employee.

ZNMP & related thoughts

There's a big hullabaloo going on at the Mason econoblogs about Zero Marginal Product workers. Roughly, Tyler Cowen and Arnold Kling are arguing the ZMP line: There are a number of workers who are nearly unemployable. The other side: Caplan, Henderson, and Boudreaux is arguing that we have pretty good idea from basic economics that there isn't actually any ZMP work. I chimed in on the pro-ZMP side on a post from Henderson a few days ago. Here's Caplan's last, approvingly quoted by Boudreax:

Are a few years of recession really sufficient reason to begin to believe that human labor has become – and will indefinitely remain – unprecedentedly inflexible? Are we to think that entrepreneurs have finally exhausted their capacity to creatively figure out ways to profitably employ the vast majority of adult human beings willing to work?

Now I'd like to expand. Seems to me that there are several reasons to believe that the conventional economist wisdom is now, or soon will be no longer applicable. My analysis:

1. Activities wherein low-skilled workers can add value likely suffer from Cowen's low-hanging fruit problem. The easy things to find that low-skill workers can do have been found. And...we're using most of the capacity of those workers for available wages now. It may be that the number of people with zero skill that can be paid $20/hr ($10 wages, and $10 regulatory costs) is approaching saturation, given current realities. While the value of a worker keeps increasing, the time it takes for a low-/no- skill worker to move from $20/hr value to $21/hr value may be far higher than the time it took for the worker to move from $19/hr value to $20/hr value.

2. Innovation is costly. It may be that the risk of creating new categories of jobs in a bad economy is too high to even try the new paths, but that one the economy recovers, the risk inherent in building new types of jobs decreases sufficiently that new categories of work for low-skill workers will be created.

3. Regulatory cost is monotonically increasing. It could be that the costs of regulation are increasing faster than the value of low-skill workers is increasing. The functions could well have crossed in the last 5 years.

4. Up until 50 years ago, there were NO substitute goods for labor. Just recently, with the advent of the computer, instant global communication and global supply chains...the number of substitute goods for labor has increased drastically. It may be that for now, there is a glut of surplus labor-substitutes, that are MUCH cheaper than labor, and no one has found the $20 cases where local labor is semi-required yet.

5. Same scenario as #4...but labor is infinitely (or near-) substitutable. Effectively, computers/robots can now (or soon) do EVERYTHING a low-skill worker used to be able to do. The infinite supply of new jobs is contingent on there being NO substitutes for labor. Now that there are substitutes for labor, we should no longer expect an infinite use for labor, any more than we should expect an infinite use for whale oil (or an infinite use for petroleum, after the solar price point in ~2030).

6. Of course, the real choice is some combination of factors 1-5. I'd bet that suspending a pile of laws (Health care laws, Minimum wage laws, welfare laws, sue-the-boss laws) could decrease the cost of employing a zero skill worker from $20/hr down to $5/hr. I'd bet that a good economy, and decreased licensing/patent regulation could increase the cost/benefit/risk ratio around trying new approaches. Certainly banning computers/robots, immigration, and/or foreign trade could make the employability of many folks increase...of course the cure costs more than the disease in all 3 cases, so that sucks.

7. We should expect that #6, especially computer/robot #6 wins massively over time...and so even if today, there's no ZMP, we have no reason to believe that the future holds no ZMP...indeed, we have reason to suspect that ALL of us become ZMP workers sometime in the next 50-200 years...roughly as soon as desktop computers cross our particular IQ/EQ threshold.

8. This shouldn't worry us as much as it might, because one of the major defining limiters on wealth is that unlike most other natural resources, energy is presently expensive. On the other hand, as suggested before...inside of roughly 20 years (depending other factors), we expect that solar crosses the petroleum price point...and within another 20 years, energy in general starts costing what light costs us today...almost nothing. Free energy is probably as big of a difference as the other 4 big singularity-builders: AI/Cyborgization/Nanotech/Genetic Engineering.

Financial regulation, 2 points

1. RWCG: Regulation is not Fungible. You should have already read it. If not. Here. Now.

2. One of the great modern theorist of feedback is John Boyd, USAF. He is known less well than his famous term: the OODA loop...which was created as a predictive measure in Air Combat. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (& repeat). He who cycles faster wins (by getting inside the other guy's OODA loop). It's why (IIRC) our airforce was suspiciously outmanned in Korea, while in Vietnam we catapulted ahead. In Korea, our planes were faster than the soviet planes, but less able to turn (??)...while in Vietnam, our planes (thanks to Boyd, partially) were better able to maneuver, if less fast comparatively on a straighaway.

Assertion: Financial firms necessarily always outwit regulators because of the OODA loop. Regulations take time to craft. Financial direction changes don't.

Definingly libertarian

A libertarian is someone who believes that the government should GTFO. However, an awful lot of the GTFO that libertarians want is strongly beneficial to the libertarian demographic (young, nerdy boys). What then should the libertarian position on polygamy be? Here's Illka reminding us what David Friedman taught us 20 years ago in (The Machinery of Freedom ED: David Friedman suggests that I picked the wrong book) Hidden Order: Polygamy is good for women...it bids up the price of a woman, thus ensuring she get's a greater share of net good. Should we make separation of marriage and state a defining plank of the libertarian radical position?

What is the positive purpose of democracy?

Given that there are smart people on most sides fo most issues...there is, certainly, a good reason for Democracy. That doesn't make it ideal, nor do I personally like it much...but any position that has many smart defenders hs a strong positive reason to exist. What is democracy's reason?

To constrain the executive. 2000-10000 years of history demonstrate that roughly all kings all the time are horrid. They range from uninterested, and therefore only minimally oppressive to interested and(theref0re) atrocious. Democracy is an attempt to constrain the power of kings, whose power is known to be dangerous on a level somewhere between forest fires and Cthulhu.

I assert that while democracy has tried to prevent oppressive kings, it has failed, and seated instead oppressive "elected" leaders. Given that...the founders of the US seem to have understsood the problem better than anyone else. First, set up a power-tension between the states and the federal government...with purse-strings at the state level. Then set up a power-tension between the branches of government. And finally, set up a democratic system, so that the losers who don't accomplish what is actually preferred by the electorate can be thrown out. The problem is oppressive government...and republican federalism with democratic elections is the first large-scale attempt to solve the problem. Seems clearly to have failed...but it is never wise to try to dispose of a system without attempting to understand the problem the system was attempting to solve.

Intellectual Sanity

It is roughly true that there are substantial numbers of super-smart folks, even super-smart non-neurotypical (4+ sigma) on most sides of most issues.

Any even marginal analysis of this fact with non-megalomaniac epistemology leads very abruptly to the position that you are not (much??) more likely to be right than your intellectual opposition, regardless your strong feelings, and "proofs" of a topic. They are highly unimpressed by your proofs, and you are unimpressed by theirs.

Conclusion: For any position with a counterpoint held by multiple people...the other side is pursuing an important truth. Until you can articulate, argue for, and feel the importance of that truth, arguing against it on the basis of it being obviously stupid simply makes you look silly to neutral observers. (opinion generated recently by reading Moldbug on Rawls...or historically, reading Leonard Piekoff on any topic).

Rawls

Stupid question from someone who still hasn't read either Rawls or Nozick...though I've read an awful lot about both...

Doesn't Rawls get himself all confused pretty early on...and doesn't his asking the wrong question cause all manner of problems?

Several issues:

1. If there is ONE principle that most/all political philosophers agree upon it is the idea that it is illegitimate for one person to own another person. Kant is there, Rand is there, and almost everyone in between. Most kings /lords /etc. disagree strongly.

IF a person/country (yes, I just extended) cannot own another...then the premise at the top of Rawls list...that countries are fixed in population, and that there is no e-/i- mmigration.

2. Rawls is hyper-focused on the present. IF one were to weight future lives really at all, one has to address the question of what kinds of social organization create good futures as well...and Rawls doesn't.

3. Real differences. As per my prior post...many folks have real differences in preferences, specifically, differences in ethical strengths, and there's some evidence it's built-in. Liberals (like Rawls) have a super-focus on harm/care, a peculiar notion of "fairness" that is distinctly liberal, and a peculiar notion of "freedom" (usually positive freedom to, rather than freedom from). Conservatives tend to have a much broader ethical base, with 5-6 principles in play. Harm/care is only one of the important features, the conservative notion of justice has a great deal more in common with just desserts and consequences than does the liberal notion of fairness....and the conservative recognizes 3 additional topics as ethical (authority, purity, and loyalty), which the leftis denies. If you are born someone with strong preferences around purity, your ideal society is one structured around that...while if you are someone who thinks that purity preferences are equivalent to tribal taboos...you'd prefer an ideal society which ignores the topic. The notion that there is no one baest form of organization does not seem to have occured to Rawls.

Do any of my readers know this topic well enough to advise if I'm strawmanning Rawls? Or whether any of these are addressed decently?

Differing values

We've seen recent screeds by some HBD-/PUA-/Formalist- sphere bloggers suggesting, not quite jokingly, that women shouldn't vote. Similarly, we've seen for years the Progressives suggesting that rednecks and conservatives should be disenfranchised. Without going very far into the topic....this is a standard position, throughout politics, throughout history. AND it seems to be rhetorically effective. And it displays either stunning amouts of ignorance, or just simple sociopathy.

THe positive theory behind voting is that different people have different values. The claim that group X shouldn't vote is basically the claim that their values shoudln't count. While I recognize that this is the normal idiotic human position...it's also fundamentally broken. Different people have different values. This is positions ONE.

It's one reason to read actual political scientists, and political philosophers. They understand (in general), that the core problem is how to deal with the fact that different people have REAL different values...and that the position that we can ingore everyone else's values and just try to implement our own, while attractive to the immature, skips the hard problem in politics.

Differing values

We've seen recent screeds by some HBD-/PUA-/Formalist- sphere bloggers suggesting, not quite jokingly, that women shouldn't vote. Similarly, we've seen for years the Progressives suggesting that rednecks and conservatives should be disenfranchised. Without going very far into the topic....this is a standard position, throughout politics, throughout history. AND it seems to be rhetorically effective. And it displays either stunning amouts of ignorance, or just simple sociopathy.

THe positive theory behind voting is that different people have different values. The claim that group X shouldn't vote is basically the claim that their values shoudln't count. While I recognize that this is the normal idiotic human position...it's also fundamentally broken. Different people have different values. This is positions ONE.

It's one reason to read actual political scientists, and political philosophers. They understand (in general), that the core problem is how to deal with the fact that different people have REAL different values...and that the position that we can ingore everyone else's values and just try to implement our own, while attractive to the immature, skips the hard problem in politics.

Tino rocks (as usual)

Tino brings the big data stick to another myth: Middle class income stagnation

PoTD

Instapundit: Abolish Drunk Driving Laws? I don't drink at all...but I agree. RTWT.

Perry

In the comments, during my excessive travels, Starling reminded my of my prediction re: perry, and asked if I thought he was still the next president.

2 factors in play:

A. Ignore the ups and downs of polls...who's pulling in REAL $. A political campaign is a money-raising exercise, not a popularity contest. There's still only two candidates in play for the $. Perry and Romney.

B. There are 2.5 choices in the Republican field.

1. Romney
2. Paul
3. Not-Romney

Romney has about 25% of the vote

Paul has about 10% of the vote

Not-Romney has about 40% of the vote.

25% undecided.

Roughly...if the Not-Romney vote gets behind a single candidate, that candidate wins. If not, Romney wins. Perry is now, and always has been the most likely of the not-Romney candidates. The question is whether Cain and Gingrich shoot themselves in the foot well enough to turn it back into the 2-candidate race that it probably actually is before they siphon a lot of votes from Perry, or after.

FWIW, I think Romney loses to Obama, and Perry or Cain wins. Gingrich is a vanity candidate who doesn't count.

My opinions are HIGHLY influenced by reading The Monkey Cage and A Plain Blog About Politics.

On Government

Pre-historically, there was no government. Individual human beings, in tribes, worked together, and worked scrupulously hard NOT to be too much of a leader, as leader-pretenders had a habit of having their heads go missing.

Later...the leaders were able to amass enough wealth to purchase the loyalty of guards, and with enough people purchased, they were able to unilaterally screw everyone else. This is the natural state of leader-systems.

Later, there were some number of cases where the leaders were (a) thrown off, (b) released some amount of control, of (c) partially constrained.

The best of times where a leader was thrown off, or constrained were: Athens, Roman Republic, Venice, Portugal 1400s, Netherlands 1500s, England 1600s, America 1700s. These times are collectively known as civilization.

However, in all the cases, the throwing off of the control of a leader eventually collapsed back into a state as bad as when there was a leader before. USUALLY, the throwing off didn't result in as crappy of a situation as the super-bad leader situations (North Korea), but it sucked pretty much.

Also...not all throwing off of leaders resulted in civilization. French Revolution. Russian Revolution. Vietnam. Etc. Any case where the mob took MORE control than the leader had seems to have turned out badly.

I've advocated the position before that the CORE of what is good in all of history was a weakening of the central power, and the ability for new, better institutions to evolve. AND that the eventual decline was when central power became a lever that could be used by others.

I think myself and MOST of the formalists would agree that most new institutions fail... and so, I think I have a proposition that is at least interesting to the formalists.

What historically observed long-lasting system of government has the correct balance of MOST stable, and MOST beneficial to the citizens? No fair choosing something that only lasted 70 years, like the pre-civil war US federalism.

Hmm...how about the swiss system. Stable, except for Napoleon since 1291. Massive devolution of power to effectively the COUNTY (Canton) level (1/2 million people each). Substantial differences between cantons (Hell, neighboring counties speak different languages). Moderate, non-war competition between cantons. Near zero federal power. Direct democracy inside the cantons.

IF we were going to try to design a system that was both stable, and good for the citizenry, I'd suggest that something resembling the Swiss system is the best thing we have in the world today. There is some question of whether it's TOO conservative...but regardless, it's awful good.

Law vs. Markets

Eric Crampton brings some righteous comparisons. Fundamentally, in a free market, it is very difficult for a majority to oppress a minority. It's even harder for a minority to oppress the majority. In a legal system, the level is much larger, and it is much easier to get access to. Why couldn't southern racists get streetcar and bus companies to segregate by means of the market? Because the streetcars couldn't make money in segregated busses. Therefore, law was used to segregate. Law screws minority positions. Markets, much less so.

ALWAYS, in your arguments, remember that both slavery and segregation were legal institutions created by the government to oppress the people they wanted to oppress...because the market couldn't do it for them.

Minorities are protected by markets.

Book Report: Thinking Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, is an excellent book for folks like me who are interested in the failings of human rationality. He draws on ALL the authors on this topic that I like a lot...and (surprisingly to me) even adds stuff I hadn't known. Stanovich, Haidt, Seligman, Cziksentmihalyi, Gilbert, etc. All the happiness research I've read. All the

As always, the line is:

Your brain doesn't work how you think/wish it did:

• Rationality is nowhere near as strong as you want it to be.
• You are FAR more suggestible than you think
• Rationality is primarily about getting what you want, not finding truth.
• Your memory of an experience and the experience itself differ substantially.
• Resource constraints on attention and willpower matter.

Without invoking Freud, Kahneman's core thesis is: Your brain has two distinct systems (stolen with attribution from Stanovitch):

1. slow, deliberate, rational
2. fast, intuitive, emotional.

Naturally, 2 dominates unless you're super-extra careful. And then we pretend that 1 was involved somehow.

Two items struck me in the book, one very important...and one highly suspicious.

1. There are places where experts are expert, and useful. The discussion of experts and Kahneman's collaboration with a pro-experts expert is wonderful. One useful result: intuitive general appraisals by interviewers are a surprisingly good measure of future results. Our natural, people-awareness is awful good. Roughly as good, indeed, as the predictive success of the best designed system we could find. Hence...someone who is an intuitive expert. So...my wife who's insanely good (>4 σ )in the intuitive expert category gets science supporting her intuition.
2. Kahneman's closing chapter says: So now we've examined like 6000 pages of evidence that says people are NOT rational. Therefore the government should fix things. (ed: Especially the non-rational folks in government) To my mind, that's like saying the moon's orbit will eventually decay, therefore we should blow it up. Very fast, very unsupported.

The book is a careful, long, discussion of failure modes in human rationality. It includes prospect theory (Roughly: we don't care about state as much as about delta).

Standing questions:

• How to update prospect theory with the falkenstein/hanson status/envy line.
• Why do the researchers believe that people believe the researchers on probabilities. While Kahneman notes some issues near this...I believe that people brains have no intuitive grasp of actual probability...but rather an intuitive grasp of probability categories. There are (roughly) 7 probability gradations (per side): Certain. Almost certain. high probability. about even chances. Low probability. Almost never. Never. I'm relatively convinced that these categories of intuitive probability go a long way towards explaining how people actually act. Why would osmeone be so insane as to pay (as Kahneman demonstrates) $10 per bottle of bug spray to decrease the chance of adverse effects from 15/100,000 to 5/100,000? Why, contrarily will they not accept any similar amount of money to change from 15/100,000 to 16/100,000. Prospect theory handles it a bit, but doesn't seem to completely.

Transparent Society Watch

Comic edition.

Quiz otD

Angus

PoTD

It's not common that you find someone skewering sacred cows from multiple mutually-hating groups, all in one paragraph. However...most folks aren't Illka. Anti-Christian, Anti-liberal, and Anti-group selectionist. And well said.

Again?

Chateau Heartiste again lands on the same side as Aretae on the observation of reality matrix...with somewhat different levels of vehemence and valuation. Aretae's translation:

On Haidt's 6 moral axes...women are quite heavily invested in harm/care, and don't care as much about 4 of the other 5 axes: respect/authority, ingroup/tradition, purity/sanctity, and liberty/freedom. Not at all shocking. I've been tracking for a while, now (mostly due to my most excellent commenters) what appears to be a LARGE gap between different folks on the justice/fairness axis. I'm becoming convinced that the justice/fairness axis is not properly a single axis, but multiple axes. Perhaps Haidt has looked into that.

WHO Agrees with me?

Roissy?!?!?

Marriage is obviously (to all serious observers) a phenomenon that was created in a poor agricultural society, with scarce property, where folks didn't have options. IF folks have options, it's a clearly second best arrangement, and the only way to generate it is to force folks into it. Some folks (Alpha women, Beta men according to R) are better off, and would like to force everyone else to accept marriage as a norm... Everyone else...not so much.

Roissy says that if the government acts enough as a "provider-beta", marriage is dead. I agree 100%. But with increasing wealth...we don't even need the government Beta...wealth will have done the same thing. And that's < 2 generations out.

Note...this is NOT a value judgement. It's a prediction of future states. The question is...then what. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer. Hopefully, we'll hit singularity space before then or concurrently.

What folks want -- Marriage

I've been moderately well maligned throughout the tiny corner of the blogosphere that I inhabit for my aggressively anti-marriage line. One of the friends I've seen recently suggested/confirmed to me that perhaps I haven't been as clear as I could. Here's a clarification, with Math/Econ.

Marriage=permanent (very long term) exclusive sexual child-rearing partnership.

In the pre-historical world, we didn't have much marriage...at least in terms of long-term single-partner stuff. There was, due to the relatively communal nature of life, no need for marriage. In math:

Value (pre-history marriage) < Cost (pre-history marriage)

In the historical world, the value of the permanent sexual entanglement went up, as compared to the value in pre-history. Property changed the whole game.

Value (pre-1970 marriage) > Cost (pre-1970 marriage)

for all but far 3+Sigma outliers on various dimensions

However...the aretae claim is that the world is changing again.

Roughly, the value of a marriage is dropping for men:

Free sex outside marriage

Housekeeping is down from 80 hours a week to ~20. Fewer, if you eat out a lot.

Also, the cost of marriage is increasing for men:

Very costly, very frequent divorce, almost always initiated by the woman

Exclusivity, as compared to the free, varied sex available when not married.

Perhaps if the value to men of marriage WAS 100 units, and the cost was 60 units...perhaps now the value to the average man is 85 units, and the cost to the average man is 80 units.

Also...the value to women of marriage is decreasing:

A single woman can make a substantial income, and hire housekeepers. Male as breadwinner still valuable, but not necessary any longer.

Also...the cost to women of marriage is increasing:

solo, single, fun vs. stuck with a specific guy.

More experienced sexually at the time of marriage makes marriage less good.

So...probably as of today...for the median middle class american...

Value (Marriage) ~= Cost (Marriage).

The Aretae claim is very simple...the vectors for both Cost and Value for both men and women are pointing in obvious, non-marriage directions, for obvious reasons. Therefore, It's not far from today when it is a net loss for the average person to get married. At that point, marriage is dead. And believing that point is more than 50 years in the future looks unsupportable.

Linky

Catching up on some links, and quotes:

• David Brin on Sparta vs. Athens. Vicious. Beautiful.
• Kevin Carson on the 53%. Also viciously pretty.
• Christian Wignall on Hong Kong. Fits the Aretae hypothesis on growth well. (HT: LaTNB)
• Blunt Object on Karl Smith on recessions. RTWT:

  "Prices clear markets. If there is a recession, something is wrong with prices."

• Seth Roberts on Education. Only person besides Maria Montessori, my personal education guru (Bob Blodget), and me that I've ever heard say/understand this. The 2nd hardest problem in education...perhaps the most important. Aretae summary: Given that motivation is the whole of education, how do we ensure that we don't impart too much motivation? Read Seth.
• Elmo Iscariot: Government is like a rifle? I'm not so friendly to gov't as he is...but it's nicely said.
• Tyler Cowen finding a public choice sentence: Predictive validity rocks.

  It found that in 1979, households in the bottom quintile received more than 50 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, similar households received about 35 percent of transfers.

• Kn@ppster on OWS:

  Occupy has a bigger per capita percentage of "problem children" to deal with than the state does, many of them produced by the state itself.

• Orphan Wilde on Success.
• Foseti and I agree that the drug war is an excuse for police power, not a valid thing in and of itself. On the other hand, we disagree over the value of this police power. I say strongly negative, he says otherwise. Here's data supporting our shared position. Blacks abuse drugs less than whites, arrested for drug use more.
• via Media on identity wars. RTWT
• Palin channels Buchanan...the nobel prize winner.
• I have a poorly followed policy of not linking to Hanson, because he's so universally good, that I can't ever pick individual posts. He's still good this week.

Slow Posting

In the last 2 weeks, I've driven from Chicago to Houston, flown from Houston to LA and back, driven from Houston to Phoenix, flown from Phoenix to Indianapolis, and then from Indianapolis to my home in SLO...and then again from SLO to Santa Barbara and back (200 mile round trip, hardly seems worth mentioning). All the driving was done with the whole family, except the last leg. Also in that time, I've had some time to breathe, but not much.

That makes my 2-month trip (since Sept 15) worth 10200 miles on the rental car, and almost the same amount in the air.

Good things on this last leg of the trip:

I got to see a great-aunt and uncle I hadn't seen since the youngest was born.

I got to meet the blogger Borepatch in person. Summary estimate: The gruffness is a facade. He is, in person, one of the most genuinely kind human beings one is liable to run into in a year.

I saw a good friend in LA, and talked demigod cats, and met a new potential programmer-buddy.

I met an online-only programmer buddy in person finally in Indianapolis.

I got to see some good friends in Phoenix...who I haven't seen in a year.

It's a real shame that my friends (the closest thing I have to a community) are scattered all over the USA...and I only see them once in a while. And it's a shame that I've been so in a hurry that I was unable to stop for the 2 extra days it'd take to do the Texas Blogshoot, or even to announce where I was going to be in time to meet folks who might have been on the route.

Insane numbers

Here:

we use fifty years of data and modern econometric methods to provide an estimate of the relationship between government spending on regulatory activity and economic growth and job recovery. We estimate that reducing the size of the regulatory bureaucracy may grow the economy and invigorate the labor market. Even a small 5% reduction in the regulatory budget (about $2.8 billion) is estimated to result in about $75 billion in expanded private-sector GDP each year, with an increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually. On average, eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private sector jobs annually. Conversely, each million dollar increase in the regulatory budget costs the economy 420 private sector jobs.

Someone is insane. I am not certain whether it's the authors of the paper, or the folks in government, but the numbers boggle. Can anyone provide further analysis of the insanity?

Virginia Postrel has, historically, pointed out the W was nowhere near as bad a socialist as anyone with a brain thought him to be...because of the importance of the reguatory sphere. Since W kept regulation growing slower than any other president in recent memory...even his socialist policies (NCLB, Drugs for bribing seniors, etc.) were relatively unimportant. Regulation, and reining in the regulators was, according to her, the big deal.

Hume Hayek Hanson

I was having a fun evening with a long-time friend the other day, talking about post singularity game theory while varying the parameter of the level at which intelligence scales, and someone at a table nearby piped up: "Did I just hear the words 'demi-god cats?' " Do you mind my asking what you're talking about? And whether you're baked off your asses, or just very unusual people?" (words changed to protect my memory-failings).

After a while, we discovered that our interlocutor was moderately familiar with many of our shared references, and the three of us all tried to outline the tags which would describe us intellectually. After some consideration, my self-explanation was the title of this post. And I'd describe their contributions thusly:

Hume: You don't know what you think you know.
Hayek: Really, you can't know, and not knowing has repercussions, and markets help.
Hanson: Really, thinking you know is bat-shit insane, so how should we get likelier guesses.

If you wanted to toss in some
Hegel: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
...that would be pretty useful as well.

QoTD

Thomas Knapp @ C4SS:

Abuse of personal power and pursuit of political power are just slightly different expressions of the same pathology. In both cases, the intent is to achieve one’s goals through the exercise of authority and the threat of punishment.

Furthermore, it’s not just that power corrupts, it’s that corruption demands feeding. Once corrupted by power, it’s only natural for the powerful to seek ever more power, the better to give wider and more satisfying play to the corruption.

Methodological Individualism explained

Mike Munger on Ilya Somin on Selling Kidneys:

Ilya Somin's strongest point, of course is this: Where's the harm? Compare the two states of the world, one where sales are allowed and the other where they are prohibited. Who is better off under prohibition? To favor prohibition you have to answer "the society," since no individual is better off.

He of course neglects the correct answer: The individuals in government, and those who feel they are voting compassionately. Regardless...this explains methodological individualism rather well...

Q/P oTD

Blunt Object:

Both liberalism and libertarianism stem from the observations that (a) there’s a lot of injustice out there that comes from the powerful abusing the weak, and (b) we should fix that by mitigating the power differential. The only question is how we should go about (b).

Libertarianism, at its best, tries to remove violently coercive tools from the powerful (e.g. Apple’s ability to call the cops on Gizmodo editors, or a sweatshop’s ability to get local cops to beat up union organizers) while increasing the power of the individual by providing better BATNAs. Liberalism, at its best, tries to provide a countervailing power (government) to preempt or punish the worst abuses of the powerful, while increasing the power of the individual through positive government supports.

Libertarianism, at its worst, justifies indifference to the abuses of the powerful in the name of voluntary choice. Liberalism, at its worst, provides the powerful with more tools through regulatory capture.

Traveling

I'll be zooming around the country for the next week and a half.   Posting will be lighter than recent patterns...maybe absent.

Systems and meta-systems

What makes for good government (government that interferes with/steals from its citizens the least)?

We tried constitutional government...and it didn't work over time. The interests of the agents in power (Envy) are at odds with the structure...eventually the structure gives.

Many of the formalists assume that greed is the dominant force in power-hungry bastards...and so a system that aligns the greed of a strong-powered monarch with the prosperity of the country is the best available option. Long term prosperity for all makes the king the richest guy ever.

Others of us believe that ENVY, not greed is the dominant force in power-hungry bastards, and so a strong powered monarch's best long-term interest is to widen the gap between himself and his subjects...which is best done by impoverishing them. This fits the historical record rather well.

The formalists believe that violence is the important power-dynamic. He who has the guns makes the rules.

Others of us believe that economic/cultural power has trumped military power over time in every civilization in history. Without crypto-locks, econ/culture wins over the violent ones.

The formalists believe that they can construct a system in which the normal elites do not have the power to corrupt the system to serve their ends at the expense of others' ends (like putting up tariffs, which mostly force everyone to buy their stuff, instead of other folks stuff, but don't bring in much revenue).

Others of us believe that the normal elites have coopted/corrupted every system yet known to man. It is highly unlikely that some dude at a computer, building a meta-system once, will outwit them and their very-well-paying co-opting skills.

The formalists appear to believe that there is some path from here through collapse to a formalist-like system.

Others of us believe that the power-players are in at the ground floor, because this is an old system that's being rebooted, not a new system. To the extent that a formalist system fails to give (envy) privilege to the elites...it cannot be adopted. To the extent that the formalist system does give (envy) privilege to the elites, it seeds its own destruction.


Those of us who don't believe in system-creation as a viable option tend to be of one of two opinions.

First...that all top-down systems inherently suck...but that some bottom up ones don't.
Second ... that no set of internal constraints can constrain elites...but that external constraints might: The meaningful ability for citizens to exit (to a potentially better place) is the only real constraint that we can have on governments. All governments should be expected to be oppressive, and increasingly so over time, to the extent of their abilities. However, to the extent that citizens have a choice between governments, the governments will be required to act as producers of goods, rather than as mafias. And that it is ONLY the presence of competition, and the threat of all/most of its citizenry leaving that can make a government behave in a civilized fashion.

Axes and Allies

I always wanted to use that title.

In the comments, Joseph links to this post by Den Beste arguing for a series of axes to place folks on political positioning.

Den Beste's post, like almost all his posts, was well argued, and thoughtful. I'm not certain it is the most useful model.

What we know about axes in politics.

1. If the axes chop heads...it's bad.

Wait...no...I'm humor impaired, so that's the best I can do...more seriously:

1. American votes in the Senate are far better modeled as a single-axis than as anything else. There is the left-team, and the right-team...and various players are variously committed to leftness or rightness. If one says what the vote-split was on a political measure (57 yea, 43 nay ... more republicans voted yes...then one can get 90+% predictive value on who voted for and who voted against).


2. Cultural differences between folks in all countries everywhere are very well modeled as a 2-axis system. Rich/poor (Forager/Farmer) and West/East (individual/group). We're all westerners here, so that boils down to a Forager-Farmer distinction (Hanson's words) or a Trader / Guardian distinction (Jane Jacobs).


3. Most people treat politics as a team sport...and support their team independent of positions. Supporting Romneycare and opposing Obamacare. Opposing Bush in Iraq, but supporting Obama's identical policies in Iraq. etc.

Den Beste's model proposes something like a 5-axis system, and places folks on those axes. Stripping overly value-laden words a bit, his axes are similar to:

• individualized/central choices


• stability/change


• suffice/perfect


• tolerate/conform


• equality/freedom

And now, finally, after thinking overnight, I know why I disagree...it's because the axes aren't ranked.

I know folks who care deeply about equality...or at least about extra protection for the poor...and honestly don't give a damn about the rest of the axes.
Most libertarians I know care massively about the autocratic axis...and don't care at all about the rest of them.
And conservatives don't seem to be well represented on this set of axes.

I will restate my line:

• Conservatives are folks whose top political goal is to preserve the existing good. Changing things to make things better is likely to cause more problems than it solves...and so it's better to keep what good we have now...or even sometimes go back to what good we had last week / year / decade. "We live in the best country in the best time in the history of the world...what are you trying to break now?"


• Progressives are folks whose top political goal is to make things better, especially for the poor and weak. The core issue is that the existing system creates losers...and those losers are losers substantially because of the system they're in. "The system itself creates winners & losers...it is our ethical responsibility to mitigate that...and the only way to do that is to tinker with the system."


• Libertarians are folks whose top political goal is more freedom for each individual. The government is an (but not the only) oppressive institution that spends 98+% of it's resources screwing people...nearly always in favor of government insiders...and always doing 10x more harm than good. The goal is to minimize the government footprint on our lives...and replace the government with alternate institutions subject to the checks and balances that come from having to please the customer. "GTFO of my life".


• The elitists are folks whose effective top political goal is to collect more power for the center. Public Choice economics says that upwards of 99% of everyone involved in politics necessarily falls into this category, regardless what their other nominal goals are. The most effective method of collecting more power for themselves is to increase the power available to the government, and decrease the power available to the public. Power is zero-sum. Libertarians mortal enemies are elitists.

I have next to no sympathy for anyone anywhere near the elitist position...and don't do well describing it from the inside, while I have lots of sympathy for all 3 of the other positions. The issue...as per the 2nd aretaevian meta-rule...is value > truth ....NOT where are you on the axes, but what's important. Many progressives would like stability (My 85 year old granmother, for instance), but protecting the poor (and the even weaker animals, or trees) is higher priority. Many conservatives would like to help the weak, but they fear that doing so would break the goodness we have now. And many libertarians like either or both of the other two goals...but think that preventing government intrusion into our lives is a higher priority.

Formalists are hyper-conservatives who think elitism can result in conservation of existing value, or restoration of historical value.

Neocons are conservatives who think that the US position in the world order ca. 1960 is essential to conserving our way of life.

Greens are progressives who have expanded their protection of the weak outside the boundaries of homo sapiens.

Left libertarians anarchists (ME!) are libertarian who think protecting the weak is important and who think the government's primary purpose is to enforce inequality.

Corporations are all elitist, because it's much easier to bribe the government to change the rules, and thereby make money than to deliver value in a competitive market and make money.

A Political Metaphor

Politics is like a game of chance, but with changing rules. Think Fluxx, the card game.

Basic rules are like this....

• there are 100 players in the game in 2 teams (red/Green),


• and a roulette wheel, with 1000 numbers.


• 1/3 are red, 1/3 are green, and 1/3 are black. As per roulette...black pays the house.


• Players can enter and leave the game...and players can switch teams.


• Each turn everyone gets a choice
  
  
  
  
  • Bet your team color for $1.
  
  
  • Bet on a specific number...if it comes up, you personally get $1 extra, and $2 extra is added to the pot every turn from now on.
  
  
  • Switch teams
  
  
  • Side deals.


• And, you can add rules to the game, if 60 players can agree to the rule.

Rules can be of the form:

• Trade two wedges of one color, for one wedge of the other color, and one black wedge.


• "13s don't pay out."

In Aretae (the part-time ex-semi-pro poker player)'s eyes...the primary issue in the game is that the house is reaming everyone who plays. And every time one team plays for advantage to themselves, the house's advantage grows larger.

In all non-libertarians' eyes...the goal is to make sure that our team is getting less screwed...which is best done by changing the rules so the other guys lose.

Note: in the Aretaevian metaphor, there's no way to decrease the number of black wedges. Mancur Olson agrees, as do most of the Public Choice folks. So...folks like Jehu argue that it's crazy to NOT be spending your $1 trying to make sure your team wins. Hard to disagree inside the system...except that the long term effect of playing is to screw everyone.

Bad systems are ones that encourage betting your team color, and trying to change the rules.
An almost livable system is one wherein the value to betting on a specific number, with payout to everyone, is improved.
A fabulous system is one where the casino next door can open up a better game.

In Aretae's vision...there are no wins apart from the casino next door. There's only who loses most, and who loses least. Because the house is screwing everyone so long as it's the only game in town.

Someone with decent writing skills is free to take this post, and make it clear.

Conservative AND Libertarian?

I've been bothered by this for a while now...figure I'll put it out there, now that it's been brought up recently by Kling here. How the heck are any conservatives even libertarian-leaning?

Aretae's typology says:

Libertarians want freedom.
Conservatives want to maintain the existing good.
Progressives want to help the weak.

There are no forces so corrosive of existing institutions as wealth and freedom. Liberty lets people try stuff that is outside the current boundaries of acceptable. Heck...liberty only matters at all when you're free to do stuff other folks don't like. And when folks find something that works, the kids will all start doing that...and the conservatives will all complain.

Worse (for conservatives)...capitalism destroys the notion of authority. There is no boss telling you what to do...there's only relationships where you trade for value...and the only reason you interact with institutions is for mutual gain. Also...free markets create change at rates unheard of away from free markets. AND for all wealthy people over all time, everywhere...wealth has been used primarily as a way to escape social norms. Capitalism creates wealth.

How the heck are any conservatives even moderately pro-freedom or pro-free market? Do they not see the (necessary) flow of events? Freedom and Freed Markets make for life getting real weird real fast...precisely the opposite of what conservatives are supposed to be about. It's probably why libertarianism was a leftist position back when the terms left & right were being invented.

An equivalence?

The statement:
"I'd like more competition in field X"
is functionally (game-theoretically) equivalent to the statement:
"I'd like to strip the current and future actors in field X of (some/most/all of) their power."

As an example, competition between states strips states, and especially those trying to use the state to gain their own goals of effectively all their power.

For instance...a state in close competition with other states that wants to prohibit abortion cannot. Mom can decamp to a nearby state with no such prohibition.

A state that wants a high marginal tax rate cannot. The rich folks move out...to lower marginal tax rate states.

A state that wants strong regulation on business cannot. The business moves to another state with lower regulation.


If you allow competition among barbers? Barbers have no power. If you allow competition among schools? Teachers lose their power. Very simple. Where there is competition, there is no power. Where there is no competition, there is power.

Tap it

Concepts used in discussions are about referents. It is tremendously valuable when attempting to understand WTF you are saying to be able to trace your concepts back to their referents. Just so that if we reach a sticky point...we can trace back.

This week's hubristic Aretaevian claim is that Aristotle, and Aquinas after him erred badly on this count.

Specifically, the words good and purpose are misunderstood, misused, misappropriated, and generally malfunctioning.

What is valuable? by observation in the world...the word value is applied to specific situations. Eating Bacon is valuable to Bob. Value, the concept, takes a prepositional clause, explaining WHO it is valuable for.

Purpose (final cause) is an even bigger issue. Whose purpose? If I use a fork to eat, the purpose that I am using the fork for is eating. Ditto when Ariel uses the fork to comb her hair...her purpose is detanglement. Trying to use the word "purpose" while escaping the idea that purpose requires an agent is trickery. For instance, "What is the purpose of life?" is a fundamentally failed question. It takes the word "purpose", which we know requires a subject, and attempts to use the word after having separated it from its referents.

So...if someone asks "What is the purpose of life"...the correct answer is: to whom? All observed purposes are agent-purposes...so which agent's purpose are you talking about? Of course, the question kinda screws up the bong-circle, but I guess you can't have everything.

Aside: yes, yes...humans are pattern-creating animals. Since humans have purposes, and especially human-made items have purposes, then if we are hyper-extending our pattern-faculty, we could easily and erroneously start to assume that the rock has a built-in purpose as well. But that's failure of human patterning, not reality talking.

Regardless...this poses the interesting question to those of you (not us) who believe in such a thing as a common Good. Value is always value for someone...collectives don't value...their individual agents do. What the hell are the referents you're addressing when you refer to the common good?

Or...as we used to say in college: "Tap it." Take your meaning back to stuff you can touch. Otherwise we can assume it's incoherent.

A libertarian goal?

Arguing in the comments about atomic individualism...I discovered a position:

At the heart of the libertarian position is the interest in the individual...and (less directly), the minority. If you were to summarize the DIRECTION of the libertarian position, you could do a lot worse than this:

The presumption against coercion should be larger.

I think, for instance, that contra EVERYONE else in the political climate...the libertarians would argue that you'd get a strong positive from any system that results in less law...and less agreement. For instance...a 2/3 or 3/4 majority requirement for new legislation would rock. There are real disagreements between people, and the notion of "common good" is usually a fiction used by some to impose their good on others, for whom it's a bad. Allow folks their disagreements whenever possible. This is the essence of ethical politics.

PoTD

Yesteday...PoTD was McArdle citing Kevin Anderson...but I think I missed saying so. As with all uprisings over history...the uprising is between branches of the elite. someone's words:

Occupy Wall Street is mostly the lower elite revolting against the upper elite

RTWT. Heck, read both of them.

Today, PoTD is on a completely different subject. I give you Q450 on death. He begins:

America has a dysfunctional relationship with death.

Very important idea-set. I thought about this maybe 10 years ago, when my step-son was 5...and concluded we needed to do something about that. So, given that we don't live on a farm, we started making sure we had a supply of small pets that would die after a few years...just to ensure that the kids have a realtionship with death that is not super-detached. If you live on a farm...probably it's not an issue for you. However...if you don't...how's your relationship with death...and what are you doing to help your kids with a better one?