PoTD

Glenn Greenwald:  Ron Paul, Mirror for Progressives.

Dessert

After Xmas eve, Xmas, 2 birthdays, and one half-repeat birthday celebration, I count in the house:

Pumpkin pie
Berry Pie
Apple Pie
Lemon Merengue Pie
Cheesecake
Sugar cookies
Thumbprint cookies
Other cookies
Chocolate cake
Chocolate Bread Pudding.

Hmm.  Someone ought to eat that.

PoTD

Eric Raymond on the taxonomy of anti-intellectualism.
Hard not also to link to Ben Casanocha on the food miles idiocy and Isegoria on how quality programs really work.

QoTD

From some SWTOR forums:

God grant you the courage to change what you cannot accept, the serenity to accept what you cannot change and the common decency to shut the fuck up about it

QoTD

Kn@ppster on the nonsense that is the modern presidential race:

Yes, there's continuous bickering over how much of the loot goes to which sector of the welfare-warfare state (guns vs. butter), but it's just a rhetorical game of manipulating small percentages and scaring the bejabbers out of the rubes with body counts.

Light Posting

Not only was XMas yesterday, but I have 2 other family birthdays (that I'm cooking for) in the next few days.  And then my sister is visiting the day after, and then my sister's girlfriend/fiance is visiting shortly after that.  And while we're Paleo-leaning anarchist libertarians in this house, they're vegan-leaning environmentalist watermelons.  Expect less than normal posting until about the 1st.

Recipe -- Aretae stuffing

1 onion -- sliced
3-4 apple pork sausage (not breakfast size)
3-4 yams - skinned, chopped
3-4 green apples - chopped
Assorted random dried fruits...handful of each.  I have used craisins, dried apricots, dried cherries, raisins, prunes in mlst combinations.  Today: dried apricots + craisins
Assorted nuts -- 1 handful each chopped.  I like pecans, but today I used walnuts, almonds, cashews.
Some oil.
Sometimes garlic

In a relatively deep saucepan...
Pour in oil, sausage, onion, yams.
Cook medium low until sausage cooked enough to chop...
Chop sausage...throw in everything else and chopped sausage.
Cook until yams half-mushy.

Use as stuffing for turkey...butterflied pork loin...or serve as is.  It's been a hit 7/7 over 5 years...with recipe requests.  Enjoy.

Merry Christmas PoTD

1.  Merry Christmas
2.  Watch this.

PoTD

Borepatch finds the PoTD.  Man robs store, tries to rob marines manning Toys for Tots.

"The subject was also transported to the local hospital with two broken arms, a broken ankle, a broken leg, several missing teeth, possible broken ribs, multiple contusions, assorted lacerations, a broken nose, and a broken jaw...injuries he sustained when he slipped and fell off the curb after stabbing the marine," according to a police report.

Watch them curbs.*


* I'm a card-carrying anarchist left libertarian.  I detest the fact that the police have the power to make up shit like this.  On the whole, I believe that the police are a substantially greater danger than criminals, drug-war-created drug-cartels aside.  On the other hand...I'm not much fond of goblins, unless they're Perfidy's goblins.  And, as a man...I think that if you're stupid enough to start a fight with a team of marines...you should be counted lucky if you don't receive a Darwin award...because it's clear you're too stupid to breed.

QoTD: Teams vs. Truth

That's the reminder of the post I wanted to write that I put on evernote two days ago.  Roughly, I was going to argue that you can either pick a team, or pursue the truth, but until you are willing to pursue the truths that are unpleasant to your team...you simply cannot both have a team and pursue the truth.  However, as usual, other smart people say it better, smarter.

Here's Tyler Cowen with QoTD:

As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you’re telling a good vs. evil story, you’re basically lowering your IQ by ten points or more.

There is, of course, a lot more.  It's from a transcript of his TEDx talk on what's wrong with stories.  RTWT.


UPDATE:  other quote:  

Be more comfortable with agnostic, and I mean this about the things that make you feel good. It's so easy to pick a few areas you're agnostic in, and then feel good about like, "I'm agnostic about religion, or politics." It's a kind of portfolio move you make to be more dogmatic elsewhere, right? Sometimes, the most intellectually trustworthy people are the ones who pick one area, and they're totally dogmatic in that. So pig-headedly unreasonable you think, "How can they possibly believe that!?" But it soaks up their stubbornness, and then on other things, they can be pretty open-minded. So don't fall into the trap of thinking because you're agnostic on somethings, that you're being fundamentally reasonable about your self-deception and your stories and your open-mindedness.

PoTD

McArdle:
Discussing Extra Modes of failure...it's unscalability, which she's written on previously, but this example and exposition are extraordinary.

Topic oTD

The Norweigian butter shortage.  Here's Munger.  Look...protectionism works...unless people want stuff.

Linky

• MIT Open courseware fires volley #3 in the collapse of the education system. (UoPhoenix, Khan, Google AI)
• Athol Kay sounds awfully like Aretae on marriage here.  He neglects the amazing impact of wealth, and labor saving devices, but otherwise, excellent.
• Elmo on Nerf Guns.  Needs wider linkage.
• Sonic Charmer on Norks.
• Polumentis on a Declaration of War.  Read.
• Mead on the coming state cannibalism of the university.  It will be a good test of the formalist hypothesis that the university and the state are unitary, when the state eats the university.  Short term thinking...and then the university will stop supporting the state, and then the good guys go back to winning.

Politics -- Iowa

So...there will either be 3 or 4 republicans leaving Iowa for the rest of the race.  Romney (Has $), Paul (Has fanatical supporters), Perry (Has $), and whoever else takes another spot in the top 3 in Iowa.  Gingrich is falling in support, which means all the minor candidates (Huntsman, Johnson???) have had their try.  IF it's Romney, Paul, Perry leaving Iowa, I think Perry wins...because I think the not Romney vote is still larger than the Romney vote, because Perry is a damn fine politician...and the Paul vote tops out at under 15%.  Also...I think Perry kicks Obama's butt in the general election, for the same reasons I said before.  "I got an economy from Bush too".  And of course, Rubio is still the slam-dunk VP candidate.  My prediction from some months back is unchanged...Perry>Romney, Perry/Rubio > Obama.   On the other hand...if I'm wrong, and it's Romney > Perry, then Obama > Romney.  

For less biased opinions, try here.

Education PoTD

Munger on Laptops in class.

The Christmas Tree I Wanted

Unfortunately, the wife is sane.

Books that Require Thinking

I've posted something like this before, but here goes:

Loyal Reader Wobbly asks for book recommendations.

What books have you read that you think other folk need to read?

Let's see...
I've historically answered a question near this one here and here, and on education here.
However, it's been a couple years.
In the last few years...

1. I've updated my de Mesquita recommendation to: The Predictioneer's Game.  He's still required reading, but now a different book.
2. Kahneman:  Thinking Fast and Slow -- Great summary of much of what goes wrong in peoples thinking. Keith Stanovich is much shorter, and nearly as complete.
3. The topic of evolutionary psychology/sociobiology was kicked off by the ant guy.  But that's not the last thinking on the topic.  Now that the primatologists/archaeologists are in the mix, we're learning that things we think of as "the way people are" are just wrong.  The hunter/gatherer world that built the human psyche was just DIFFERENT.  Sex At Dawn. Alternatively, Hierarchy in the Forest.  An awful lot can be learned by understanding how people actually are.
4. I recently picked up Neil Strauss's 2nd book:  Rules of the Game.  Very simply, it's one of the best teaching books I've ever read.  If you ever write a book attempting to teach something, this is the model.  OTOH, I think books are bad for teaching.
5. Tim Harford's Adapt is probably the best explanation of the Aretae core feedback issue.   
6. MMSL has climbed to 2nd place on my list of marriage books, after Howard Markman's book.  
7. I have to add something on Diet/Health...but I don't know what to add.  I've been in the paleo-space cognitively, not as much practically, both on exercise and nutrition for the last 12 years now...and I still don't have a go-to book.
8. Mancur Olson is surprisingly good.  

PoTD -- Humor

Landsburg:

This just in: The study of physics makes people less compassionate. Data show that when cornered at a party by the inventor of a perpetual motion machine, physics majors are particularly unlikely to offer positive encouragement.

RTWT.

Mapping the Value Stream in education

Because I'm not smart enough to do pictures/diagrams in my blog, and I'm reading Toyota Culture

Explanation = 3% of total value...the other 90% of explanation is waste.
Example = 15% of value...surprisingly high.
Practice / Repetition = 40% of value ... Waste from praticing wrong thing, practicing thing wrong.
Feedback during practice = 30% of value ... Waste from bad feedback
Evaluation = 10% of value ... waste from teaching to the evaluation.

UPDATE: Apparently, Isegoria IS smart enough to do pictures.

Good vs. Evil

Alex J expanded on a point I was trying to hint at in my last alignments post, and I'd like to continue the digression.  Here's Alex:

I suspect in-group loyalty maps G vs. E more plausibly. That is, it talks about an important feature many people, much more so than malice. 

Historically, I have no doubt that Alex is correct.  Historically, evil means against the tribe, and good means for the tribe.  Hell, both Hegel and Socrates/Plato argued that explicitly.  However, in the last ~400 years, it's become more and more disreputable to refer to "good" as such a highly relative thing as good for my tribe.  And then in WWII, Hitler more or less ended that as a viable line, by being so obviously evil (according to built-in human moral intuitions) in his pursuit of "good for my tribe".  Likely, that's because in Europe, for the last 400 years, the intellectuals were unsafe under any specific individual tribe/state/nation, just as intellectuals have ALWAYS been unwelcome under autocratic rule.  Instead...in Europe for at least the past 400 years, have been mobile between nations, decamping as the political environment got too hot for their particular brand of disapproved thinking.  [Aside:  in China, I think they were less lucky...they didn't have a place to hide, and so their autocratic system stifled differences of opinion, travel, trade, and useful technology.  Rather standard for an autocrat, really.]

And since the Intellectuals control the conversation...good as "good for my tribe" is a dead meme, despite some reactionaries trying to bring it back.  Good has come to mean good for people in general, or even for living things in general.   If you get tarred with the "trying to do stuff that's good for your group and bad for others", you're well-understood to have left the path of the righteous.

Indeed my quip from the last post:

There is good for me, vs. good for everyone. (Evil vs. Good)

was meant to evoke this anti-groupist common ethics.

And it is precisely this anti-groupist common ethics that has me pro semi-unlimited immigration.  If one counts the interests of ALL the human beings involved even a little bit...then immigration to a country with a standing, working culture and legal system is the single best thing that could conceivably happen to the immigrants.  Good for my people and shitty for everyone else is a BAD answer.

Moldbug, extra-geeky Star Wars fan?

Moldbug has appropriated the term Sith throughout most of his writing career. Question: Is this due to his extraordinary familiarity with the Star Wars universe? Alternately, are the Star Wars folks reading Moldbug?

I don't talk about it much here, but I've been known to be a gamer from time to time. If I prevaricate, I can pretend it's just my 15yo son who's involved...but that's not QUITE accurate. Most interesting modern news in the online gaming world, of course, is the release of Bioware's new MMORPG: Star Wars, The Old Republic (SWTOR). And my ELEMENTARY school (and since) gaming buddies just conned me into a 1x a week group.

In SWTOR, one has the option to play characters from the Sith Empire and characters from the Old Republic. What is the defining difference?

The Sith argue the line from the movie Hero (two thumbs up), or from Moldbug: Order, Peace, Shared Purpose first. Other shit later.
The Old Republic argues instead: Freedom and Self-Determination first. Other shit later.

So...Is Moldbug just a star wars expert? Or are they reading him?

Segueing political now...

There are two ethical axes one can sit on. Traditionally here's how the axes sit.
There is good for me, vs. good for everyone. (Evil vs. Good)
AND
There is inclination towards order vs. inclination towards freedom. (Law vs. Chaos)

In reality, it's very hard to place anyone on the evil vs. good axis. Almost universally, we all do so...and as universally, we're looking at less than half the picture when we do so. Further, the Hansonian model of intelligence is "how well can we portray our interests as those of the community at large".
I'd suggest that we stop talking intent, and start talking effects.

To some extent, Moldbug and I sit at nearly opposite ends of the other, law-chaos continuum. On a different analysis, like most debates, we're not actually arguing against one another, but rather appearing to argue against one another while arguing orthogonally.

Moldbug is arguing effectively the "Hero" line that peace and stability are Teh winorz, and that Chaos is the enemy.
Aretae is arguing that innovation, and creative destruction are Teh uberz, and that control is the enemy.

The lines aren't ACTUALLY directly opposed. And as with all interesting disagreements, they're VALUE-first arguments, not fact-first arguments.

College Bubble

Foseti's side-comment on there not being a college education bubble has me scrambling to redefine terms.

The question on college education is NOT presently:
1. Does college education make a salary difference?
This question seems moderately well answered. However...it turns out that the question seems to be substantially less well-answered than we think. I've been a homeschooler for a long time (longer than the 13 years I've had kids in my household).
Here are a set of questions we should be asking instead:

1. What portion of the college education $ value is attributable to the fact that higher IQ kids go to school than lower IQ ones? In other words: would you rather hire a 125 IQ kid with no college, or a 105 kid with a degree? As someone who's done a few hundred programmer interviews...I don't even look at college. I look at work experience (years) and then talk to them for a while as an informal software IQ test. Other folks have told me that they are surprised when a college student with a CS degree can actually write code.
   
2. What portion of the cost of college education is driven by insane government loans? Subsidized, and non-dischargeable. OMG, how much more support can you get!!! I'd bet it's a similar answer to the question of what portion of the subprime market was driven by government action in the form of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying low downpayment mortgages? Hint (not quite all, but close).
3. What is the value to college for the marginal (specifically, not average) student? The 100 IQ kid who can't decide whether to go to college, or take the welding position with his uncle's company?
   
4. How much of the value of college is signalling vs. human capital value-increase? Related: What would be the net social result to making post-high-school education illegal? Restricting college to no more than 10% of the 18-year olds in the country?
5. How much of the value of college is concentrated in a few majors? It surprises no readers of this blog, least of all Illka, that roughly the entire top 15% of salaries by college major are calculus-based majors. I have personally advised my eldest child that if the major isn't calculus-based, it's not worth going to college. I haven't said the other half: Unless you're a black male like he is, in which case, finishing college is free money, and more so if you're mathy.
6. How much of the value of college is institutional prestige, rather than know-how learning? Hire the guy from your school? The difference between Harvard and Harvey Mudd in terms of student quality is at best minor, and more likely tilted substantially towards Harvey Mudd. HOWEVER, the $ value of going to school varies HUGELY by which institution you attend. Attending Harvard has an insane $ value, while Mudd has a medium one. Hell, look at the president.
7. How much of that institution-dependent $ value of school is know-who, rather than know-how? I'm wagering all.
8. What percentage of the value of going to college comes from the diploma (as opposed to, say, 3.5 years of school learning)? (Hint:~90%) If you don't finish, then you're better off not having gone. So any judgement on college value needs to take into account likelihood of finishing.
   
9. What happens if you combine these factors? Basically...the marginal student going to college at the marginal institution can't handle calculus as currently taught (Calc is usually the discriminator-class in college...it's how we make sure the stupid and lazy people don't become engineers). And huge amounts of the salary benefit to college come from being mathy in college. And huge amounts of the value to college comes from going to name-recognition schools. And huge amounts of the reason people go to college even so involves massive government subsidy.
   

Conclusion:

Eliminate government involvement in student loans, and watch how quick the bubble deflates. Keep government involvement, and wait for a big damn pop. Less than 15 years by my estimate.

My current bet remains: Modern, in-person college instruction at a generic school, is a zombie, heading down the path newspapers are on. By 2025, half of them will be dead, mostly low name-recognition private liberal-arts schools. Go online or die.

Postscript: Aren't student loans hideous? At 90% certainty, they're a great way to transfer money from the working-poor into the pockets of the rich colleges and the future rich, while screwing those who don't benefit from college, either by not going or by failing out or getting useless degrees (with non-dischargeable loans).

PoTD

The Meaning of Conservativism. Well said. I have major issues with, unsurprisingly, his final cause approach...but the article is worth reading the whole 4 pages. HT: OZ conservative.

Paragraph oTD

Kling:

I was explaining to someone at dinner the other night that I came to Austrian economics in a very odd way. I did not study the sacred texts. I spent the prime of my career outside of the academy, experiencing the behavior of organizations. I saw first-hand the challenge that large organizations have in dealing with innovation. I saw the tenuous grasp that bosses have over their organizations. Above all, I saw how impossible it is for top management at firms to have the sort of information and control that is casually assumed in mainstream economic models [ed -- and by formalists]. It is a relatively small leap from that insight to the insight that government officials also lack the information that they need to exercise the sort of control that is casually assumed in mainstream economics.

Emphasis added. Hayek FTW.

Happiness vs. Preferences

One of the more interesting points rarely made in the happiness literature (Except for occasionally by observers like Will Wilkinson) is that happiness is pretty clearly NOT at the top of most folks (revealed preferences) goals lists. Folks prefer to be fulfilled, rich, statusful, beautiful, bedding the statusful or beautiful, and many other activities before they prefer to be happy. Keeping that in mind goes a long way. Athol Kay hits on that as well in today's MMSL. Very worth reading.

Goblins

Loyal foil Perfidy is writing "the great american goblin invasion novel" as a weekly serial here. If you're into military fiction/fantasy/science fiction, its quite a good read. Chapter six is up now, but start from chapter one. I'd say it's a much better read than anything I've ever written, but I don't want to damn with faint praise. How about: I've purchased and read books in many genres, including fantasy and sci-fi, that are less interesting and well written.

QoTD

From the Economist, via Samizdata:

From Ghana in the west to Mozambique in the south, Africa’s economies are consistently growing faster than those of almost any other region of the world. At least half a dozen have expanded by more than 6 per cent a year for six or more years.

Of course, this is to be expected. The best single predictor of GDP growth is starting GDP (Lower is better). Property rights, etc., appear to be a rather distant 2nd. China's growth, therefore, is massively unimpressive...they were (and still are) dirt poor. All you have to do is be poor enough, and you grow like gangbusters, unless the government screws it up (Pre-Deng China, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.).

Singapore, and Hong Kong, OTOH, consistently rated as the top 2 free-est economies in the world for the last 10-20 years, are hugely impressive, maintaining huge growth rates even into high GDPs.

Left Libertarianism

I didn't know it, but it seems that Matt Ridley is one of us. "The market as an antidote to capitalism". Very left-libertarian phrasing, and article.

PoTD

Robin Hanson channeling Roissy:

This research examined the relative sexual attractiveness of individuals showing emotion expressions of happiness, pride, and shame compared with a neutral control. Across two studies using different images and samples ranging broadly in age (total N = 1041), a large gender difference emerged ...

RTWT. Women are most attractive displaying happiness. Men are most attractive displaying pride.

QoTD

From the Smallest Minority:

The young want everything. They think they an get everything swiftly and painlessly. They are far too confident. They don't know what their problems are, not really. They talk too much. They demand too much. Their ideas have not been tempered by the hard facts of reality. They're idealists, but they don't sense that it's the easiest thing in the world to be an idealist. It doesn't take any brains. This was said by Aristotle 2,300 years ago. Mencken once said that an idealist is someone who, upon observing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, assumes that it will also make better soup.

Article oTD

I'm a little late to the party (11 months), but ...
Kevin Carson makes a tremendous case that Government Transportation Subsidies are a substantial portion of the cause of the shape of our economy. Winner take all markets are (substantially) the reason we have a super-rich 1%...and the reason we have winner-take-all markets (outside of software) is that we have massive transportation subsidies...and have since ~1850.

RTWT.

More Hayek

• Mario Rizzo -- "Hayek’s approach attacks, root-and-branch, the macroeconomic way of thinking". Very worthwhile. (HT: Coordination Problem)
  
• Henderson -- rather balanced review
• Don Boudreaux -- DeLong is completely wrong.

I continue to insist that Hayek's work on the importance of distributed knowledge, and the essential impossibility of central planning qualifies him as the most important thinker of the 20th century.

Edit: Sorry, bad title first time

PoTD

Venkatesh Rao on Developernomics in Forbes. Long. complex. Worth reading.

Hayek

There's a big kerfluffle presently, with Krugman and Warsh complaining about Hayek and his relative importance in economics. Everyone is in the fray...with Tabarrok and Roberts responding quite ably. Tabarrok's point that Hayek is the 2nd most quoted economist in Nobel Prize acceptance lectures is rather telling.

I, however, am far more pro-Hayek than that. I started reading a bunch of original sources in economics in the 2007 time frame. Notably, after almost any particularly insightful claim made in the form of a book, the author would say somewhere..."of course Hayek got me here."

I am not convinced I'm exaggerating when I claim that Hayek is the most important thinker in ANY discipline in the 20th century. Hayek is the central theorist around limits to knowledge and ability to plan...which is the most important topic I know.

Hayek -- thinker of the century.

QoTD

Alex J in the comments:

I think that in the most efficient world, (that is, the world which pleases the most people the most amount, and greatly displeases the fewest people) many people would be outraged by many things that they will not be in a position to do anything about. In exchange, all of the things which matter to themselves personally, would be more or less to their satisfaction.

Political Analysis

I'm having trouble looking at political analysis from the point of view of the ruler any longer. I think the methodology is just broken.

Rather...I think that the correct method of analysis for good modern political thinkers is how should a state-free person decide which state to reside in...and what constitutes good cause to pick up and shift jurisdictions. Good states are those who the citizen decides to join. Bad states are those which lose their citizenry. If we can get enough states present (LaTNB), then we can see via consumer choice, which state models actually work (as in, which ones make their citizenry happy, and growing) and which state models don't work. Until then, we're all talking in the pre-planning phase of a startup. And we know that 90+% of startups suck.

Human Nature and Variance

Human Nature is a big topic in modern discussions, and it's almost never done right. I've been trying to figure out how to say this for half a week now, and having largely failed...I'll output what I've got, and let my extraordinary commentariat turn it into something coherent.

Commencing ramble:

By example, because as a teacher, I'm well aware that a narrative is more effective learning in many cases:

Standard reactionary line:

Women prefer the life of a homemaker-mother to that of a working mother or single person.

Standard PUA line:

Men find fertility-cues the MOST attractive...WHR + facial symmetry.

IF you parse this line as saying

ALL Women prefer the life of a homemaker-mother to that of a working mother...

OR

ALL Men find fertility-cues the MOST attractive...WHR + facial symmetry.

Then...

1. You're wrong

2. You end up with a particular notion of how society ought to be ordered.

I find this to be a largely natural, and nearly completely wrong way to look at the world.

The important issues is variance.

If we parse the above as saying

MOST Women prefer the life of a homemaker-mother to that of a working mother...

or

THE MEDIAN Woman prefers the life of a homemaker-mother to that of a working mother...

Then...we're in the realm of sane positions. I happen to believe that both of the above are true. On the other hand...neither of the above preclude the existence of, say, 40%, or 0.4% of the population that is naturally happier as a working mother or as a single, childless woman.

In short...the difference between ALL and MOST is enormous when it comes to policy implications. Since ALL is basically an insane position...we need to address the MOST question.

I will admit to being quite attracted to sexy, fertile-looking women. I've dated girls who are solid 9+s on ANYONE's scale. But they were fundamentally boring. I have very little interest in standalone sex...but rather seek a two-sided connection around the sexual experience. Furthermore, I'm so intellectually pushy/dominant in person, I get bored in weeks with girls who are not deeply independent. Furthermore...I'm deeply devoted to the topic of ethics...it having consumed a large amount of my thinking for the last 30 years. Hence...the people I choose to sleep with, I filter first on brilliance / ethics / super-confidence... and second on looks / femininity. I will and have turned down "8s" for more interesting 6s.

Ditto, my whole family reeks of (supported) hyper-confidence. Generally, through time, we've been better than the local bottom 90% on attractiveness (measured by romantic attachments) and physical activity/sports, and better than the bottom 99.99% on intelligence related tasks. Suggesting that my 150+ IQ, high confidence, physically active (lesbian) sister should defer to a man on damn near anything is insane. Ditto my harvard physics ph.d. girl-cousin. etc.

The question, once you consider variance is much more interesting.

1. Do we prefer a society that is super-comfortable for the median 67%, and far less pleasant for the outliers...

OR

2. Do we prefer a society that screws with the comfort-level of the median, by reminding them that everyone is NOT like them, but which allows the tails of the distribution, 3 or 4 or 5 sigma out on various characteristics to find places.

I am deeply committed to vision #2.

People are different...along many axes. Heck...it's unusual to find a person who isn't 2 sigma out on one of the first 20 axes you check them on.

That gets interesting though, when you find people who are 4+ sigma in directions that disgust us.

The religious line that gays should avoid gay sex seems to me insane, and completely ignorant of variance in human nature..

Sex is a huge drive in most people. According to Athol Kay, it's pretty much nuts to ask a (married) man and a visiting woman living in the same house for a few weeks to avoid sex. Asking a healthy human being who has different drives to avoid those drives for their whole life? That's crazy.

Ok...what about crazier situations?

Suppose someone has a greater-than-average enjoyment from nicotine. Should they be expected to not smoke?

Harder:

Suppose someone has a 5-sigma variance, and unlike the rest of us men who would just have sex with a 16yo in a heartbeat (if she wanted/could be convinced, and it wasn't illegal)...his real interests run to 8yos. That's what really gets him hard. (I have an 8yo daughter, if it helps with my reasonableness in asking the question). Suppose such a person concludes that to actually have sex with an 8yo would be harmful to said 8yo, and doesn't want to do that, because they're a good human being with highly unusual built-in drives. What should they do? And what should we do with them? I am personally a huge believer in using computer-generated pornography to allow them to fill their needs...and watching them closely besides. I prefer this solution to (a) locking them up forever (b) pretending that they don't have strong drives like the rest of us (c) asking them to just not have those drives.

The question is...how do you deal with variance.

The answer is: NOT by assuming there isn't rather large amounts...or trying to kill/disenfranchise anyone different from me.

Paragraph of the Year?

Maybe not otY on my blog, but on Sumner's econblog...probably true. Go read Scott Sumner quoting Reihan Salam on China.

Against Inter-Group competition

I've been jousting with Jehu on the topic for some months (years?) now...and perhaps I have a better line now.

1. Inter-group competition is almost always negative sum. Hurt my group a bit, hurt their group a lot. I argue against this, regardless who is doing it, and who they are doing it to...on general principle.
2. I am a perma-outsider, with family in multiple races and categories, and friends all over the place. Anytime anyone is playing "advance my group" and screw the others, it's a direct attack on me, my family, and/or my friends. Heck...It's hard to find a group I belong to that constitutes MORE than 2%. Mixed race, pro-fecundity, long-term Polyamorous marriage, as an atheist, unschooling, left-libertarian, post-Objectivist, Extropian, socially colorblind, racism-aware, HBD-supporting anarchist with cultural instincts from Texas, California, Moscow, and Brussels. I am a teacher who dislikes the client-side of classrooms, and who teaches that teachers are unimportant, and a rationalist who argues from rationality that rationalism is largely impotent. Find me a place where I'm an insider, and I'll be shocked.
   
3. The two cultures are self-reinforcing. Houston and Chicago are my primary case studies. A culture of general cooperation, and inter-group positive activity leads to a positive economic growth, which decreases inter-group conflict. If I'm busy getting rich, I don't have time to bitch about the Mexicans. And if they're getting rich, they don't have time to bitch about me. Contrarily, increased inter-group suspicion decreases trade, decreases wealth-creation, and causes more inter-group suspicion. Hence...I see the advocacy choice as one of: Do we advocate for the virtuous cycle, or the vicious one. Advocating a vicious, value-destroying cycle in order to relatively benefit my group seems hugely and massively bad to me. When some other group is also doing that, then I can choose to participate in the value-destruction process by advocating the vicious cycle...OR I can choose to oppose the value-destruction process entirely.
   

If someone like me considers economic growth rate to be the only (by virtue of aggregate impact) interesting social metric...then I am stuck considering the pro-vicious cycle people to be massively bad for society. In addition to it being rather bad for me personally...this adds up to a pretty solid opposition.

Busy

Last week, I cooked for Thanksgiving on Thursday, and then cooked Friday night for 2nd Thanksgiving on Saturday, while friends and friends' kids were visiting.

I appear to have survived 9 years of marriage/11.5 years of togetherness with my wife, as of yesterday, Nov 30. Being as her idol is her Texan grandmother who considered gun control to be not missing the good-for-nothing layabout grandchild who hadn't left the property when ordered to...I do well to be careful.

As of today, Dec 1, my little girl turns 8.

Best Legal/Medical News in YEARS!!!!

Paying Donors is legal!!!!!!!

Innovation

Wealth ~= (1 + Growth rate) ^ years ... which means over any period of time...Growth rate is the real topic, when wealth is discussed.

Also ... Growth rate ~= innovation rate

Therefore, given that wealth is the god-metric...innovation is God's formal cause...and the proper goal of all social good.

I just read Alex Tabarrok's new ebook on what makes innovation (discussed several times in the last few years on this blog). It's good, and it's addressing the real problem. Here's a teaser:

"Thus, in Florence, the epicenter of the Renaissance, we see five factors propelling that city's innovation: patents, prizes, education, global markets, and cosmopolitanism, an openness to ideas from around the world. How do these factors apply today?"

--Tabarrok, Alex (2011-11-21). Launching The Innovation Renaissance: A New Path to Bring Smart Ideas to Market Fast (Kindle Locations 54-56). TED Books. Kindle Edition.

I like the book...not just because he agrees with me (mostly).

Summary: Two thumbs up for content, three thumbs up for topic.

Bryan Caplan has a review here.

Side note: my overall favorite line in the book is his Julian Simon line:

I see two views of humanity. In the first view, people are stomachs. More people mean more eaters and less for everyone else. In the second view, people are brains. More brains mean more ideas and more for everyone else.

Buy. Read.

PotW

Seth Roberts is the required reading for the week. Read Seth, then relink. It's required. Excerpting not feasible.

Also on good news for the day, Tabarrok is attacking the real problem in economics in a $3 ebook. Reporting back soon, but probably not until after work.