Three Things I Learned from My Favorite Bloggers

There are many, many thinkers I have followed. Among the many, an elite few have earned the status from me of devoted readership. I don't always agree with them, fortunately. But I almost always find them some combination of insightful, provocative, and worthy of my attention. The lists below are certainly not exhaustive. While in many cases I learn things from those I follow that change my mind, in many other cases but equally as important I learn more about things I thought I already knew.

Here are three things I've learned from my favorite bloggers* (in alphabetical order):

Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten & formerly Slate Star Codex):

• Thinking out loud (in writing) can be a very productive way to both discover truth and convey good ideas.
• Embrace your mistakes and learn/teach from them.
• The realm of psychiatric conditions is vast, nuanced, and very much misunderstood.

Don Boudreaux (Cafe Hayek):

• There is value in repetition. (He even recognizes this and is, rightly, proud of it.) 
• There is always an audience for hearing arguments on first principles: free trade, trust in free markets, freedom of movement across borders, anti-cronyism, ...
• Liberty not only deserves a passionate and wise defense; it requires it for its preservation and advancement. A role for which he is very suited. Before COVID I did not appreciate this nearly enough. His continual presence in the space of defending rational positions and freedom has taught me much about what is needed.

Jason Brennan (200-Proof Liberals):

• Strongly expressed and even provocative facetiousness can very succinctly convey an argument. But...
• You don’t have to mince your words. Just come out and state your point of view. 
• If you may do it for free, you may do it for money.

Bryan Caplan (EconLog (UPDATED: and now Bet On It)): 

• Friendly curiosity is the most constructive way to engage disagreement and is a valuable route to learning. Test your arguments' strength by assuming the premises of your opponent and see if your position still stands (or at least stays strong with a minor need to relax the opponents assumptions). Also, focus on achievable goals. To change minds, one needs to work on minds with which one shares connections and communication--you need to speak their language. Therefore, work on your in-group despite your desire to focus on the out-group.
• Education is mostly about signaling, most of the value of it is captured by the individual, and as a result we have an economically destructive arms race. 
• Open borders is an enormously important idea that stands up against all attackers. 

John Cochrane (The Grumpy Economist):

• Don't be too quick to dismiss that which the market is pervasively and perpetually providing. There just might be a rational reason you are overlooking that explains the perplexity. Give heed to Chesterton's Fence. For me this would be investment active management (active stock and bond picking), real estate agents, extended warranties, etc.
• The market can (and in the past did) take care of the preexisting conditions concern in health care insurance.
• When it comes to the important issues of economic policy, economic growth IS IT. And it could very well be meaningfully higher than it persistently is.

Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution): 

• Be succinct. It is undervalued and under practiced.
• Be curious and take risks. 
• Read and write. Everyday and more than before. 

Robin Hanson (Overcoming Bias):

• Do not let the conventional wisdom or the fear of shallow sensibilities hold you back from exploring ideas and asking good questions.
• Prediction markets are an excellent method for discovery that are very much underused. As Alex Tabarrok says, "Betting is a tax on bullshit".
• The stories we tell ourselves are often not the full story or truth--X isn't about X. Robin better understands the human world than any one I follow or know of, and that is a high bar.

For a primer on Hanson see this.

David Henderson (EconLog):

• You can blog with a smile on your face (in stark contrast to Paul Krugman, who often writes as if someone is fiercely pinching his inner thigh).
• Always look for opportunities in everyday life to apply basic economic lessons (the economic way of thinking). For example, focus on the incentives, ignore the sunk costs, think on the margin, etc.
• Be optimistic about changing minds and give those who disagree with you the benefit of the doubt. As a corollary when you’re going to disagree with someone, look for points they make that you agree with at the same time. For instance if you’re going to disagree with someone’s arguments in an article, find other points in the article where you do agree. (I’m glad he didn’t lose his optimism in that 2007 fire.)

Michael Huemer (Fake Nous):

• The thinking and arguments of elite intellectuals can be as hollow and problematic as that for simple elites in general. In short, don’t fall for the appeal to authority fallacy.
• Don't seek expecting to find philosophical nirvana in any philosopher's arguments.
• Common sense is a strong and underrated pillar of sound thinking.

Arnold Kling (askblog & In My Tribe):

• He exudes the quintessential “on the other foot” point of view. He sees things from another dimension entirely. 
• Find a way to succinctly communicate your ideas—in his words, "Klingisms". For example, easy to fix versus hard to break, …
• Follow and emulate those who deliberately and consistently speak with the other side rather than about or at the other side. This goes along with his idea of being charitable in argumentation and debate.

Steven Landsburg (The Big Questions):

• Think deeply continually asking "why would that be?" and "does this explanation survive through last contact with the enemy?".
• Build simplifying models that give definitive answers—especially interesting when the answers are counter intuitive.
• Of everyone I regularly read, he posts the most things that are the most challenging to my priors in a way that leaves my priors in smithereens—and that is a very good thing even though it is quite frustrating for my contentment! And that is despite the fact that our views on the world, intuitions about morality, and priors generally seem quite aligned. 

Phil Magness (AIER):

• Persistent and thorough scholarship is the antidote to resistance and rejection of unpopular positions especially when the opposition is driven by social-desirability bias and mood affiliation.
• The wealth and success of the early United States including the Southern U.S. was not the result of slavery. 
• No one actually paid the astronomically high marginal tax rates supposedly targeting the highest earners in the U.S. during the mid 1900s.

Michael Munger (AIER, Kids Prefer Cheese, & EconLog - there is not always a consistent home base for his writings):

• There is often a more intriguing and insightful other, other side. He is a three-handed economist. 
• True open-mindedness is a wonderful but rare quality. He has it and conveys it splendidly. 
• Re-examined knowledge yields improvement--even third and fourth derivatives. His latest insight is always either a new, deeper wrinkle on a previous insight or a way he had been wrong all along in how he previously understood something.

Matt Ridley (Rational Optimist):

• Innovation is unpredictable, depends on trial and error, but once started, is so inexorable it looks inevitable.
• Human culture and technology grows through the magic of exchange, whereby ideas have sex creating offspring that are combinatorial advancements.
• The more you look, the more obvious and undeniable the relentless betterment of the world is revealed.

Scott Sumner (EconLog & The Money Illusion):

• Never reason from a price change.
• The market should guide monetary policy and the Fed needs to be (and can be) structured to follow the market’s guide.
• The middle class in America is not on the list of important things to be worried about.

Alex Tabarrok (Marginal Revolution):

• There is a very straightforward explanation for why the prices of many things today (health care, education, et al.) are so d*mn high--the Baumol effect. While I quibble with how complete this explanation is (70-80%?), it is obvious once [he makes] you think about it.
• We need more police. And better policing to be sure, but more police is an obvious answer once you look at the evidence.
• Dominant Assurance Contracts can solve the public good problem and "open the provision of public goods to entrepreneurship, innovation, and the market discovery process".

*I make no distinction for columnist or other such titling as I believe that the term blogger is the best all-encompassing word for those who write of their own opinions and expertise. 

P.S. Richard Hanania and the Resident Contrarian, relative newcomers to those I dedicatedly follow, will make this list once I learn 3 distinct things--it won't be long. They are both excellent.