Milton Friedman taught me about the danger of inflation and centralized monetary policy and Sowell opened my eyes to the perverse incentives of bureaucracy.
The combined insights of Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell give a very good view into what's happening in our modern economy.
I think the main blindspot that the two have (particularly Milton Friedman) is that they don't seem to acknowledge that the pursuit of self-interest is the driving force which creates big governments in the first place. Corporations need big governments to subsidize them and to regulate their competitors out of existence. It's not the public's idealism or sense of altruism which allows governments to become so big, it's just the self-interest of the elite. So the pursuit of self-interest should not be seen as an absolute virtue because it doesn't scale.
QED.
I'm not big into politics but I don't really understand how two different parties can both use "science and data" to reach totally separate conclusions. Which one is lying/wrong?
As a programmer, it just doesn't compute. Input and output and all that.
Think of stuff that programmers do argue about. Type systems, databases, architecture, agile development, etc.
Logic is a great tool, but it's also more limited than people realize.
That's not at all how a steel man argument works. You're supposed to commit to building the best form of your opponent's argument and verify that they themselves agree with it. You don't ask someone to do it for you.
With steelmanning I mean "the act of taking a view, or opinion, or argument and constructing the strongest possible version of it."[1] If you dispute that definition[2] then mentally swap the term to one you think better fits what I proposed.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/steelmanning
[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7X2j8HAkWdmMoS8PE/disputing-...