trominos

So I'd say skip it.

We get it -- the political system has fucked-up incentives. Duh. SHUT UP.

Well, it is a decision in that sense. That's a real sense in which a decision can be made. At each point in time we choose to do one thing from among the infinite possibilities available to us. And in making the decision to do that one thing, we are making the decision not to do any of the other things, even if not consciously.

I don't know where you're coming from with the "inaction is always our default position" thing. What do you mean when do you say "default"? Do you mean that we should (oof, I hate to bring "should" into this) sometimes maintain the status quo even if doing so doesn't have the highest expected outcome for us? Do you mean that we should sometimes maintain the default even if the expected outcome of doing so is dramatically lower than doing something? (I'm gonna go ahead and assume that this isn't what you believe, but if it is, our argument has to end here, because the only response that I've got is, "Well, that's really stupid.")

Because I would argue that that's the situation that we're in with global warming. I actually agree with you that the scientific establishment should be treated with substantial skepticism. But I also think that global warming is probably happening, and through applications of logic I've decided that reacting to a fictional global warming is SO SO much better than not reacting to a real global warming that we'd be insane to choose inaction as long as there's still some non-infinitesimal probability that global warming's happening.

You seem to think that you have an ace in the hole with your argument that our society supports an "innocent until proven guilty" approach. In fact, I am both a believer in the "expected value" approach to choosing a course of action and an ardent defender of innocent-until-proven-guilty. This is because the downside of convicting an innocent person is dramatically larger than the downside of letting a guilty man free -- not only because locking up an innocent guy for 40 years is much worse than letting some embezzler get away with it, but because every time our legal system sends an innocent person to jail the public loses some faith in it, and faith in the legal system is one of the most fundamental elements of a stable and happy society.

Okay, I think I'm done. I'm pretty damn sleep deprived at the moment, though, so if I missed anything please point it out and I'll address it later.

*Not a criticism.

See, I've been writing in fairly substantial amounts for about the past seven years. When I look at my old writing, it's clear that I improved extremely rapidly for the first year or so, and there's noticeable (though less pronounced) improvement for the next three or four years, but recently I think I've plateaued -- I no longer write in quite the same way I did a year ago, but I can't really distinguish between my writing then and now in terms of quality.

What's more, I'm not sure I can see anywhere for my writing to go -- I feel like I've maxed out my ability to appeal to my own aesthetic (in prose). And the fact that that even seems possible is a little painful.

I have to go and don't have time to really finish saying whatever I'm saying here. Have any of you ever felt like this? Have any of you ever gotten over feeling like this?

In my defense, posts like the parent's -- except earnest -- aren't uncommon on HN.

Anyway, I'll keep this short:

1) It's your life.

2) Taking risks is wonderful. So is breaking rules, particularly the invisible ones, like social norms.

3) Nevertheless, taking up smoking because you read a bad article about the habits of highly creative people written by somebody who clearly isn't highly creative is fucking retarded.

Americans in the middle class and above aren't strangers to spending substantial amounts of money on stuff that they don't need. Segways are useful enough that I could imagine them gaining a substantial market share if it were fashionable to use one.

Now, that doesn't mean that they would catch on if they weren't dorky. But even at the outrageous price that they were marketed at, I think it's conceivable that they could -- I think they'd have similar chances to other potential fashions. So I actually think I agree with PG more than you. Price and insubstantial benefit are both major problems with the Segway (and frankly I'm being a little devil's advocate here, the price was ridiculous -- but cut it in half or so and I think it stops being prohibitive), but the aspect of Segway that made it impossible for the thing to succeed was its dorkiness.

I went into writing that post fully intending to make the point that "producing work" for e.g. the glazier is only useful AT ALL if the glazier isn't already working as much as he wants; moreover, even in such a special circumstance, obviously no additional wealth is created by the window breaking and the glazier getting paid to fix it. But in the special circumstance of the glazier working less than he wants before he gets the job and then getting paid to do the job by a rich guy, something good still happens -- wealth is distributed to the glazier via a mechanism that is voluntary for all parties involved. This is vital. Even in the best of cases, "creating work" through the destruction and replacement of wealth amounts to charity and nothing more. But "forced charity" of this sort can be very good for an economy on the whole in certain circumstances. Like in a depression.

Anyway, I must've been really out of it; I usually don't get wrapped up in the details of making a point to such an extent that I forget the point that I'm trying to make. My entire post was pretty stupid, except for the part where I said that this book is blinded by its own biases (which I stand by). Sorry about that.

PS: I'm still not in a great state of mind (I'm exhausted but experiencing mild insomnia), so I make no guarantees about the quality of the post, either.

Look at the first example, "The Broken Window." The author describes a situation in which:

• Some kid breaks a baker's window.

• The crowd that gathers notes that, although unfortunate for the baker, the broken window will provide work for a glazier.

• The crowd fails to realize that the baker was planning to buy a suit, and the work provided for the glazier is counterbalanced by the work lost by the tailor. Also the baker's out a suit.

That's all well and good, but the author never considers the scenario where the baker is wealthy and losing $250 will not affect his spending habits (over at least the course of decades). Then the broken window actually results in $250 of created work for the glazier without any corresponding loss of work elsewhere (by e.g. the tailor) or loss of value (by e.g. the baker, who in the book's scenario couldn't buy a suit because of the broken window). In this scenario, the broken window is actually a net win for the community.

Nor does he consider the scenario where the baker is poor but thrifty and tends to save what he has. This is a very complex situation: in the short run the thrifty baker's spending habits will probably be unchanged by having to replace a window (or at least negligibly changed relative to the $250 that he was forced to spend), but in the long run he probably will end up spending about $250 less because of what he shelled out to the glazier, and moreover will fail to procure some items of value about $250. So then the math goes like this: because of the broken window, the glazier gains $250 dollars of work today. But some other worker loses $250 of work down the line, and the baker, in the long run, loses some items of value $250.

The thing is, spending $250 today creates more work than spending $250 next year, because the money will keep circulating, so it's not easy to demonstrate that the broken window is either helpful or harmful to the community here. (Note: spending $250 today instead of next year has a host of other effects, like increased inflation, that I obviously didn't mention. I don't mean to make a full analysis of these scenarios, just to point out that the author didn't make a full analysis of them himself.)

And a more glaring failure of logic in the second applied lesson: the author says, "No man would want to have his own property destroyed either in war or in peace. What is harmful or disastrous to an individual must be equally harmful or disastrous to the collection of individuals that make up a nation."

That's just not true. (A slightly ridiculous counterexample: when a serial killer dies of a heart attack, the nation he lives in is probably bettered.)

(In spite of all this, I still kind of liked the book.)

You fixed the rate of increase. Jesus. Obviously it'll look zero-sum under those circumstances. The point is, the more efficiently the stock market's played, the faster it grows overall (in theory). It's not zero-sum.

How about some that merely make non-obvious true points?

Or some that are at least interesting?

It probably seems like I'm bashing postmodern philosophy, but although I expect this line of thinking to end at the conclusion "postmodern philosophy is useless," I've never actually followed it myself, and I would honestly be very happy if you could answer "yes" (with examples) to at least one of the above questions. It's just that from my vantage point as a relatively uninformed outsider the field feels vacuous.

And your logic in the last sentence of your post is terrible.

> "To maintain the ability to think for yourself, the best material to read are those works that are very clear and honest about their axioms."

It's unclear what this means w.r.t. choosing materials to learn economics from. Luckily, you clarified your position by recommending Rothbard's For a New Liberty as an economic primer.

As far as I can tell from taking a quick look at it, For a New Liberty spends at least its first fifty pages talking about the basic principle of libertarianism and how it should be applied by a good libertarian. It is undeniable that Rothbard is up front about his biases, and when I looked through FANL I sort of figured out what you meant by "very clear [] about their axioms".

It is equally undeniable, however -- and this was my point -- that his biases are adhered to out of a mysterious near-religious conviction, and not because he thinks that they will get him to the truth, and that as a result he is probably not an ideal person to learn economics from.

And it is also true that recommending an enormous tract whose first fifty pages (at least) consist of heavily biased pseudophilosophical tripe to somebody who wants to learn economics from an unbiased source is really really stupid, and makes me think that your basic agenda is to push Rothbard's ideas or something like them.

> "Every model of the world has certain assumptions, certain axioms, built into it."

This is almost a tautology. Of course it's impossible to make a truly objective model of the world, particularly if by "model of the world" we really mean "economic model that has a priori had most of the nuance stripped out of it". There's no truly objective way to approach economics, yes -- because economies are so enormous and so complex that to study them you have to ignore most of what's actually going on.

But that doesn't mean all approaches to economics are equally objective, and you're wrong to suggest that objectivity of analysis isn't worth considering. I'm quite sure that some economists have less of an axe to grind than others -- and as a result have more dedication to getting at the truth -- and I'd bet that they get better answers than their competition does. They're the ones I'd like to learn from. And I'd imagine that they wouldn't adhere too closely to any given philosophy, because it seems unlikely that any one philosophy is completely right.

So, having said all that, I'd like to reiterate the grandparent's request: does anybody know of any primers to economics that seem concerned more with trying to get the right answers to the questions of economics than with pushing a particular philosophy?

I'll go ahead and link you to the only thing I've ever read on the subject, just to provide another opinion: http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=82c53220-7594-4ec...

What?

Distractions from what?

You're idealizing life. There's no goal; we don't get points for making it to outer space or for reaching a singularity or for uncovering the secrets of the universe. You get a certain number of years to fill up with "distractions", and then you die.

You may not appreciate sports, but they bring joy to millions of people -- probably to many millions more than NASA does, and in a greater capacity. Denigrating that is extraordinarily narrow-minded.

I go back and forth. I generally think of myself as a civil libertarian, so my initial reaction is to say that "people can take care of themselves" and then to let things go, but I do think that the fact that concentration drugs provide significant competitive advantage in many fields of work and study (and the resulting pressure to use them to keep up) has the potential to be an enormous problem. I really don't want to live in a world where people have to choose between drugs and comparative failure.

But that would imply that he intentionally ripped off a bunch of artists, then decided to go to court over it (and almost definitely lose) and to start a witch hunt by pushing a blatantly false account of the whole thing in what I'm sure will amount to libel.

That's almost as crazy as the possibility that his work was independently ripped off by multiple artists.

I haven't thought that much about this -- is there a scenario I'm missing? The situation really makes no sense at all.

Theists, for the most part, have their moral outlook determined by their respective religions. Which is stupid, but at least it's standardized.

Many atheists believe that their morality is determined by reason. Brooks' point is that there's no such thing as morality determined purely by reason. There are necessarily some subjective premises in there.

All that this observation does is counter-refute atheists' refutation of the idea that atheists can't be moral. The idea that atheists can't be moral is still stupid (IMO), but not for the reason that some atheists say.

That's why I asked you to define the word -- I can't argue about it otherwise. I really don't think there's any good definition other than, "A system of judging actions to be either 'right' or 'wrong,' such that actions that I am uncomfortable with are designated 'wrong'."

Well, there are variants of the above (change "I'm uncomfortable" to "some group of people, possibly directed by arbitrary external rules, is uncomfortable"), but the point is that I think any definition that roughly corresponds to the meaning we intuitively attribute to the word needs a lot of subjectivity in it.

As long as "morality" stays undefined, I obviously can't refute your premise that objective morality exists. I mean, it's your fucking premise.

I can't parse this sentence at all -- mostly, I think, because "true for them" doesn't seem to mean anything. Can you clarify? Also, what's the problem you're talking about?

If you think that there is some objective morality that is inherent to the universe, the burden of proof is very much on you to show that, not on me to disprove it. (But if you need a disproof, here's as close as I can get: I am 100% certain that you cannot give a definition of "morality" that both meshes with what's expected of the term and that implies the existence of some fundamental objective framework for determining what's right and what's wrong. Just think about it for a while.

Or, alternatively [and not equivalently, but evocatively]: we're all just particles. You can give any brilliant argument you like about the morality of an action, and my particles are just gonna keep on doing whatever the fuck they want.)

As you discuss, lack of objective morality is horrible. It still makes me feel weird when I think about it, and I decided that "ethics" was bullshit when I was thirteen. My brain is hard-wired to believe that certain actions are "right" and certain actions are "wrong" in a sense that encompasses more than just my brain's response to those actions, so thinking about (what I see as) the truth about morality causes a dissonance between my conscious and my subconscious.

In the same way, my brain believes very deeply that everything has a cause, so it believes that there's a meaningful answer to the question, "Why does the universe exist?"

But that question doesn't have an answer. And objective morality doesn't exist. Sorry.

So any competent programmer necessarily has some kind of mathematical inclination.