Showing posts with label Something I've been thinking about. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Something I've been thinking about. Show all posts

Monday, February 14, 2022

Three Things I Learned from My Favorite Podcasters

As a follow up to my favorite bloggers post, I select here a few of the many, many podcasters I have followed to identify those that I love the most.

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

  • Ask questions driven more by genuine curiosity rather than an agenda. 
  • Let the answerer answer and with limited exception let the answer stand without challenge.
  • Explore and consider loosely connected ideas and hypotheses. There is often more to learn in doing so even in the actually rare event there is not a strong connection after all. 

  • There probably is a conflicting precedent and there likely are anticipated consequences that a policy's advocate may not like.
  • He continually reminds me that the Law is more nuanced than I or the common commenter appreciates. 
  • The history behind a law, rule, or norm is very often fascinating.

Jason Feifer (Build for Tomorrow):
  • When it comes to change and people's reaction to it, there is truly nothing new under the sun.
  • Release your clutch of the pearls; whatever it is, it ain't that bad. 
  • These are the good ol' days.

Tim Ferriss (The Tim Ferriss Show):
  • High performers have a lot to share that you can profit from even if you cannot fully emulate it. 
  • Thoughtful, honest questions of an open-ended nature are the best method for a meaningful interview-style conversation. There is no reason to try to impress an impressive guest, and he never makes this mistake. 
  • There are always other methods to learning a skill or achieving an outcome including near mastery-level advancement. The obvious path is often not the best path to choose nor typically the one chosen by true masters. It isn't a "hack" in the derisive sense one should seek--you have to put the work in. Rather it is a constant questioning and willingness to find alternatives.

Kmele Foster (The Fifth Column):
  • Race as a social construct should not be given special identification status or importance--doing so is harmful to all individuals and to disadvantaged groups in particular.
  • Strong talk when backed up by strong reasoning is a persuasive and welcomed trait.
  • Tell people what you think and leave it to them to have an emotional reaction (if any), and realize the emotional response is theirs to own not yours to manage.

Nick Gillespie (The Reason Interview & The Reason Roundtable) - in the second case credit goes to the entire group as they all demonstrate the qualities below:
  • Postmodernism is a very useful way to view and evaluate the world with much to offer especially to libertarian or classical liberal perspectives.
  • A mix of irreverent humor skillfully layered in does not simply lubricate a conversation, but it can actually succinctly add information content--a picture is worth a thousand words, and a well-placed comedic side crack is worth at least 250. 
  • We are and have been in a Libertarian Moment. It is just taking longer to develop and be fully realized than he and Matt Welch originally projected.

Malcolm Gladwell (Revisionist History):
  • We can hold in high confidence only our principles, but not so much our evaluations based on those principles. Time and again our judgements don't hold up upon closer and still closer examination.
  • The overall narrative of a well-told story will stay with you long after all of the related facts of the story have faded from memory.
  • We should always question the past.

Jonah Goldberg (The Remnant):
  • The proper evaluation of a President while in office is not relative to the hypothetical Presidency of the most recent also-ran nor the upcoming opponent(s). Rather the proper evaluation is against the high standard of an absolute scale of desired quality.
  • Humans must believe in something. If they do not have a traditional, formal religion, they will invent one or behave in a way that de facto creates one.
  • There is still hope for the principles of conservatism to endure all the challenges it faces from within. Much like Colonel Jessep, deep down in places D.C. socialites don't talk about at parties, we want him on Chesterton's Fence. We need him on that fence. 

Tim Harford (Cautionary Tales, 50 Things That Made the Modern EconomyMore or Less, et al.):
  • A well-told story is one of the most effective ways to convey complex ideas and important truths.
  • Statistics and data are underused and underappreciated.
  • A devilish caveat: Beware simplistic answers when persistently offered; they are usually wrong. Beware complex answers when insistently provided; they are often hiding some important truth.

  • Be of good cheer in all cases and including in political argumentation.
  • A comedic approach to contentious positions (political and otherwise) can be very disarming if not downright charming as well as effective (meaning winning over the opposing side) when well executed through good-natured humor that is neither derogatory nor abrasive.
  • You shouldn't bring your own horse to a horse-themed diner where the waitstaff all ride horses. There is a deeper metaphor here for those willing to face challenging truths--I'm sure there is . . . just keep looking.

Penn Jillette (Penn's Sunday School):
  • You aren't just capable of being wrong; you are wrong. We all are. Our memories are wrong. Our explanations are wrong. Our viewpoint and narrative is wrong. But through all that, we can still get it mostly right.
  • He is one of the wisest people I follow on understanding life. In this respect I have learned a lot about what to prioritize.
  • There is no good reason to be emotionally dishonest--especially with yourself.

  • Delivery is more important than content--this is by no means a knock on his content.
  • Even comedy experts, masters of the craft, cannot always predict what will and what will not work in comedy.
  • Smart balance including a great straight man is essential to a comedic performance.

Aaron Ross Powell & Trevor Burrus (Free Thoughts):
  • Honest inquiry using the "devil's advocate" method is a useful way to interrogate one's own side.
  • The motivation and arguments offered by both anti-gun and anti-immigrant proponents are very similar in their style and substance with both having the same problematic faults.
  • Mindfulness can help heal our harsh political divide.

Russ Roberts (EconTalk):
  • Be intellectually honest with yourself and others.
  • A more fruitful conversation can come by allowing opposing views to lie unchallenged. 
  • The point of economics and the desire for the good life is about happiness AND meaning--two deep, rich, nuanced concepts that are poorly understood.

P.S. Mike Munger is my favorite podcast guest. 

On a sappy note there is a bit of trepidation I carry considering the many podcasters that I follow and very much enjoy. There is a certain human connection to someone whose voice you often hear. While this would be true of any person you know in your everyday life, there are few of these people whom you seek out in a friendship-like regard. Some day one of my my favorite podcasters will suddenly be gone. Not through a proper retirement or move to a new thing, as much as that itself would represent a loss, rather I am thinking about ... well, . . . Do You Realize? . . .









Sunday, February 13, 2022

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 (AIERKids Prefer Cheese, & EconLogthere 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.




Sunday, February 6, 2022

Should Tipping Be My Only Charity?

I'm considering going a year where my only form of charity will be excess tipping--an amount well over and above what I would otherwise give. Before you dismiss this out of hand, consider the problem of charity  My ability to connect with truly effective altruism is very limited even if I religiously adhere to the formal EA movement or even if I completely reject the EA network. What I can do is reward good work and people working in general through gratuity. 

In truth I really probably can't make it my only form of charity from a practical standpoint. There are just too many obligations I have to traditional charity (e.g., my church donations, the United Way contributions I make through work, et al.). One could certainly argue the merits of these including how much is charity on my part versus quid pro quo where the quo is social desirability bias, virtue signaling, tax benefits (really just a subsidy for giving), and non-pecuniary benefits (e.g., two days of extra vacation for a continued minimum United Way donation). Nevertheless, I could substantially reduce all traditional and otherwise forms of charitable giving including donations of my time with excess tipping as the substitute. 

Let's consider some rough math on what this might mean. Hypothetically assume my desired annual charitable giving through this experiment to be $10,000. A point of consideration would be if the tipping would be limited to very traditional tipping situations, namely dining, valet, room service, doorman, etc., or if I would extend this to areas like occasional household services, namely plumbers, electricians, furniture movers, etc. One might argue that everyone should be tipped. However, to keep the math easy, I'll limit it to waitstaff in dining. 

Let's further suppose I dine out an average of 7 times a week at a moderate expense, 2 times a week at high expense, and 1 time per four weeks at a very high expense. The kids are with me for the moderate and high expense meals while it is just the wife and I for the very high expense meal, which are the following on average (with just the standard tip of 15%): $50, $100, $300. Per week that becomes $250 ($50x5) + $100 ($100x1) + $75 ($300x1/4) = $425/week or $22,100/year. Of this about $2,883 would be standard 15% tipping ($22,100 - $22,100/1.15)). To "donate" an extra $10,000 through excess tipping through the year, I would be making an implied 52% excess tip ($10,000/$19,217 [the amount spent before standard tip]). Stated another way, the increase is about 45% above the old levels ($10,000/22,100-1).*

Breaking this down by meal type we have a $50 meal becoming about $73, a $100 becoming about $145, and a $300 becoming about $436. Weekly expenses here have gone up $192 ($425 becoming $617). And the annual checks out where $22,100 is now $32,100. 

These would just be averages. I would hold out the ability to vary the amount to zero excess tip to a lot more excess tip based on maybe quality of service or perceived need. Also, I would do this for at least all traditional for-tip service providers. The fact that this would demand a continually updated Excel spreadsheet lending itself to trend and projection analysis along with graphs is indeed a very nice quid pro quo for me.

Some of the pros to this approach are:
  1. I have a lot of relevant information close at hand since I witnessed directly the service provided.
  2. I know pretty well exactly who it is going to even if there is tip sharing.
  3. Related to the two points above, I can weight the charitable gift commensurate with the perceived level of deservedness provided I measure that directly proportional to the service performed. If I want to base it on need, this becomes a con (see below).
  4. I am rewarding those who are doing something to improve their own situation as well as my life and others.
The cons are:
  1. I am not able to see much into the level of need so as to increase my giving as a result.
  2. Related to the first con, I would not be benefiting those who cannot work--very likely a group in much more acute need. However, this is a con of almost all charity as figuring this out is very difficult. My method here at least minimizes the problem of enablement--whereby charitable giving subsidizes and insulates people from the cost of bad decisions and rewards poor work ethic. Moreover, it is actually likely many of the people I would be excess tipping would be closer to people in need so as to aid them. No guarantee they will, but there is no guarantee some other method would be much better.
  3. I would most likely be subject to bias in my excess tipping whether it be a subconscious prejudice (e.g., tipping attractive waitstaff or those who somehow connect to me in a way that is probably frivolous like having an interesting accent) or outright mistaken heuristics (e.g., thinking that someone working at an expensive restaurant is less deserving that someone working at a cheap diner).
  4. If I am not meticulous about tracking the excess tip, I easily could fall so far behind so as to not meet the donation goal--I would be hesitant to tip someone $2,000 at an end-of-year meal. 
  5. I might reduce my exposure to tipping even if inadvertently as the pain of seeing the substantially increased cost could weigh on my decision making. 
  6. It might greatly disrupt my social group or the dynamic between me and the places I frequent. This is a big break with norms subject to misunderstanding and bad/unintended signaling. 
  7. I may be underappreciating how it will affect me given that this attempt at more direct action on my part will not likely have noticeable results. I might become jaded for bad reasons.
  8. I could have a net negative effect on the recipients subsidizing less optimal outcomes for them or hampering their natural progression to bigger and better things. The out of work actor working as a waiter might be cliché, but there is something to it. What if I unintentionally convince a young person to turn down an internship for mistaken hope that there are enough tippers like me out there making waiting tables their highest and best outcome? Did I say enough about how charity is hard?
Countering this longer list of cons, there are added benefits potentially. One is that this might become habit forming long term--when I return to charitable giving, I might continue excess tipping to some degree. Another is that it could be contagious as it would be as public as any giving I typically would engage in. One virtue of it is that it is a more generous act all things equal since I would not be getting a tax benefit. So rather than having other taxpayers subsidize my charitable choices, I would fully internalize them by going it alone.

If I end up doing this, I'll report back on how it worked in the wild.


*Notice I am ignoring the fact that this tipping is calculated on top of the sales tax--I gave up the ghost on that argument long ago for practicality sake. I don't like it, but the norm seems to be and the easier calculation certainly is to tip on the total after tax.

Monday, January 17, 2022

Losers Don't Pay Taxes

This is just a rambling thought experiment. Feel free to ignore as it probably has vast shortcomings I have not considered in the admittedly short amount of time I have spent on it.

What if we instituted a rule via Constitutional amendment that the voters for a losing Presidential candidate in the general election do not have to pay federal income taxes for the term of office for which their loser was running? Suppose further that this amendment was so firmly established that there would be no question of it being followed (unlike so much of the Constitution) and no question of it being permanent for the foreseeable future.

I can think of lots and lots of problems with this as I'm sure you can too. A chief one is that Congress and not the executive branch determines taxes. Not to sideline those, but let's jump straight into some game theory.

What might some implications be?
  • Any rational potential voter would probably chose to vote given the prospect of tax avoidance.
  • Those votes would likely gravitate at first to candidates who looked very unlikely to win.
  • This seems to help third parties get on to ballots and garner significant vote share.
  • Knowing that everyone else is pursuing this strategy, voters likely would be reluctant to throw their vote for scary candidates. Even if they realize their vote will not affect the outcome of the election (spoiler alert: your vote doesn't matter mathematically), if presented with two similar candidates where one was slightly less objectionable than the other but both rather unlikely to win, the better of the two would tend to get the vote.
  • Candidates would know all this as well. That should push them to be slightly more objectionable at the margin. However, power still matters and is desired. So they would also have an incentive to try to win if they thought they could win. Now what would make them very desirable to getting votes so as to win? hmmm? Promises for very low taxes of course.
  • Could they or would they promise no taxes? I think this is unlikely as everyone knows that there have to be some taxes if there is to be some government spending. What about funding spending exclusively through debt, which is promises of either future taxes or future inflation? While this could be a workaround, it would have problems. The threat of inflation harms current voters as once inflation is suspected and to the degree it is suspected, it arrives immediately, or at least eventually. Future taxes might come soon enough to affect current voters and will likely affect their offspring, a group for which voters care.
  • This is starting to sound like a powerful tool to restrain government. Candidates are encouraged to campaign on small government so as to allow for low taxes. Voters are encouraged to support candidates who pursue small government. It also seems to promote experimentation as candidates are encouraged to be a bit wacky but not too wacky for fear (by voters) that they would actually get elected, and voters are incentivized to vote for marginally more wacky candidates (more than current but less than the wackiest). Here wacky means stuff like: drug legalization, troop withdrawal/de-escalation, privatization, deregulation, etc. Consider me wacky, btw.
  • I would fear it would degenerate into some suboptimal game, though, like where we all pretend to pursue small government and then don't actually do it leading to a need for higher future taxes. This would create a ratchet effect making the next election a competition between greater liars offering lesser improvements. Another BIG problem relates to the issue raised and promptly ignored at the top: Congress. Would Congress be emboldened to spend more? An opposing-party Congress as compared to the President seems likely to. This could not be fixed by changing the amendment to instead be a voter for a losing party in the next Congress since we don't vote for one Congressional position. Would the rule need to be it applies only to straight-party voters? If we went down that road, perhaps we would need another amendment limiting all elections to just two parties--the default situation we have now anyway. Lock in the Democrats and Republicans granting them the oligopoly of two. This might work making them compete along the tax dimension axis almost exclusively with all other policy subservient to it. Now we might be back to strong incentives for small government. Yet another suboptimal result might be one party in each election is always aiming to be the losing party and the other party tacitly agrees to be the winning party. Would this still give a small-government outcome? Maybe. Voters can switch who they vote for, but if there is strong lock-in on policy, they may not be so quick to change their votes. Where does social desirability bias and virtue signaling come it?
  • Who knows? I do like the integrity of only the voters who supported people in power have to pay for the actions of those people. 


Sunday, January 16, 2022

Introducing Dimension Analysis

Something I've been thinking about for a long while with every intention of exploring in blog format is what I term Dimension Analysis - an exploration into various concepts that can be placed upon a continuum or axis. 

It is somewhat simply a thought exercise limited to the topic or concept under consideration. But it can also be a more in-depth way of seeing things in a new light including combining distinct ideas and concepts.

I have a lot of things I would like to compare in this manner and have done a bit of this previously. Some ideas I expect to be covering would be:

Motives: Status versus Profit - What does one seek more of? When is one more dominant or influential than the other? Where are the tradeoffs?

Archivists versus Free Spirits - Sometimes we seek to record our lives into personal (if not public ledgers) while other times we are minimalistic nomads. To label people hoarders would be uncharitable and not the essence of what I'm driving at. Librarian isn't exactly correct either. On the other side think more live-for-today, focus on what is important rather than careless and thoughtless.

Editors versus Curators - One has the disposition of fixing through correction while the other seeks improvement by selection and promotion.

Puzzles versus Mysteries - The solvable realm compared to the unknowns and unknowables.

Engineers versus Epistemologists - Action upon theory versus theory for theory's sake. 

Philosophers versus Mechanics - Related to the prior, this was my first example I stumbled upon for this whole dimensions analysis thing. Shades of grey versus black and white. Two very different approaches or even definitions of problem solving.

Leaders: Managers versus Visionaries - Some are (or seek to be or need to be) great tacticians while some are (same caveat) great strategists. Plan execution versus plan design.

Sculptors versus Appraisers - Stolen from Caplan's The Case Against Education, both of these have the opportunity to raise or at least transform the value of a piece of stone. But they come at it from very different angles.

Honesty versus Pleasantry - Are you telling me what I need to hear or what I want to hear? Do I want to hear what I need to hear, or do I wish to hear what I'd like to hear? Best practices versus social desirability bias.

These are but a smidgeon of comparisons I would like to explore. My ambition has exceeded my ability to get to this topic so far. Perhaps getting it posted will spur me along. That inspires another dimension: Goals versus Desires. In all cases I hope to not draw upon distinctions without differences, but I'm sure there will be a degree of that error made.



Thursday, November 4, 2021

You're Allowed Cynical Beliefs But Not Cynical Reactions

Society rewards cynical beliefs and optimistic reactions while at the same time it punishes optimistic beliefs and cynical reactions. 

Consider that a politician is given wide latitude to sow distrust in the system and the powers that be but would be viewed as naïve for believing things work by and large pretty well and our default position should be charitable benefit of the doubt. Similarly a politician would be expected to embrace a development as beneficial to his side while being seen as a sour puss or exhibiting sour grapes to downplay a successful event.

This is not just a political phenomenon. CEOs must be grounded realists who only crack a smile when championing an outcome. Otherwise, they should be on the lookout for the next problem. Yet if a problem arises, they get no credit for being dismissive.

Perhaps the biggest exemplification can be found in everyday life where nobody wants to hear about the downside after a positive moment and at the same time nobody wants to hear how it will probably all be okay in the face of fear. Rather one should doubt the future and champion any moment of progress while rejecting hope and brushing aside any consideration that ulterior motives may be at play.

Social media amplifies these truths orders of magnitude due to the network and feedback-amplification effects. 

I am a bit ambivalent on this in general. I both fight and embrace my personal tendency toward cynicism. It can negatively bias one's thought process like a disease, but it can also provide healthy critical analysis. A good journalist has a proper balance in regard to cynicism. They are not a cheerleader for their beat nor a pure curmudgeon. 

We are all and always have been journalists in one way or another to greatly varying degrees of quality. Today's technology makes this more apparent, but it has always been the case. We gather facts, analyze data, and relate stories. Some are better than others and some do it for pay while others do it for pleasure (or shear necessity of living in a society). 

--------
2021-11-11 Addendum: As a personal example of this, I offer how as a fan of OU football any optimistic outlook I hold is seen as being a “homer”, a derisive label. At the same time a cynical take on the team’s prospects is seen as wise and level-headed. Further, if the team does well, it is widely viewed as uncouth to not give them credit for their success. Even more so, if they do poorly, one is not allowed to point out ways the opponent got lucky, etc.

I do not find these social norms to be desirable, tbs.

Wednesday, November 3, 2021

What You Think Versus How You Think

What is more important: what you think or how you think? 

To what degree is it fair to hold people accountable for what they think. Cognitive dissonance should be relative to rational ignorance. It seems unfair to hold people highly accountable for beliefs and other thoughts they shouldn't have legitimately thought much about or simply haven't had much exposure to. Further, what you think is subject to social desirability bias and group identity--factors that are so ingrained as to be a bit out of our immediate control. I think of that not as a pure get-out-of-jail card for bad thoughts (or thinking--see below) but rather as a relaxation of culpability.

How someone thinks implies an examination of reasoning, and that seems to be a much more legitimate way to evaluate thinking. What someone thinks should ultimately be governed by how they think not the other way around. Unfortunately we tend to give a very shallow evaluation of others including leaders especially politicians by getting hung up on what they think.

Consider this 2x2 analysis:


In this framework there should be high stakes if the thinking that went into an eventual thought was thorough (deep/rich), but low stakes if the thinking was not. We are rewarding good thoughts and punishing bad thoughts, but the degree to which we do so is dependent on the thinking (process) that created and supported the thought (conclusion). One implication is that more intelligent people should bear a greater burden for their thoughts. 

Another is that a bad conclusion from a thorough process should carry higher blame than would a bad conclusion from a shallow process--the bigger the inconsistency, the bigger the crime. Don't confuse that with allowing a thinker to get off easy for a bad thought when they should have thought more deeply before forming a conclusion. For that we have to change the framework.

To wit: the framework is transposed a bit when we switch from considering thought accuracy (is the thought right, correct, good, moral, etc.) to considering thought significance.


Now the framework assigns greater scrutiny to the interaction of the level of thinking and the meaningfulness of the thought rather than the level of thinking given the ultimate outcome. One obvious implication is that thoughts of trivial/minor significance deserve low stakes regardless of the reasoning level that goes into forming them. 

It is easy but false to assume all thinking should be deep/rich. That is simply not possible. It is out of our grip most of the time. We either don't have the time or the mental faculty or both. Therefore, one implication is don't hold confidently to high-significance thoughts if you did not employ deep/rich thinking in deriving them. Another implication is don't put deep/rich thinking into trivial/minor thoughts. 

How does this compare to the real world experience? I think level of reasoning is generally a non factor in most people's framework most of the time. Rather it all comes down to does it feel good and is it me or like me:


My claim is that reasoning is given very little credit for most people most of the time. Perhaps this is defensible to a degree given the vast ulterior motives we all possess. While that is an apt explanation, it is not a reasonable justification. 


Related: See Arnold Kling's review of The Mind Club.  

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Ethics Versus a Moral Code

Ethics are rules and standards that we can reasonably hold others accountable to and that follow from first principles that are themselves self-evidently consistent--ethical intuitionism (a la, Huemer). 

Moral codes are rules and standards some group agrees to abide by. 

For a moral code to be ethically enforced the parties to the code must be adults of sound mind giving free, willful consent and where exit is always an option (a la, Nozick). Yet that does not make the moral code ethical per se. We have no right to expect others not party to the agreement to abide by our moral code unless it is itself ethical. 

We can belong to G.R.O.S.S., but we cannot force anyone to join. However, members and non-members of G.R.O.S.S. are all subject to a higher moral code that is ethical. So G.R.O.S.S. itself and our behavior as a member may not be ethical. 

I believe a common failing is mistakenly assuming a moral code is ethical with religion playing a leading role. One way to test for this is if a godless society would be able to derive the standard naturally. Therefore, for a rule, law, norm, mores, et al. to be ethical, it must be able to survive on its own in the wild so to speak. 

"This is truth because Calvin (or Hobbes) said so," is not valid outside of the treehouse.



Friday, May 14, 2021

Being Nostalgic for the Future

Nostalgia is not a fond memory of an accurate past. Rather it is either fond memories of being young, good moments taken out of perspective (over emphasized), or a mythologized history that is not based on fact. 

As the philosopher Billy Joel told us, “…
Cause the good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems…”.

Put another way and paraphrasing the historian Austin Powers: As much as we might want the future to resemble a fictional past that we are nostalgic for, that is just not in the cards, baby. 

A much more productive and healthy mindset is to be excited about what the future will bring. Think past technological advancements, as great as they should be. The cultural developments will be splendid. 

If we can just get out of its way, there awaits us a brilliant future eager to get here. 


Friday, May 7, 2021

Fighting Words

This is a partial list and probably just a glimpse of the many ways in which I am unelectable as a U.S. Presidential candidate. I feel like I am part of a small minority advocating that the world is round in the midst of a powerful and vocal majority who dismissively says "No, quite obviously, it's flat".

  • If you support government schools, you are part of the problem. Do whatever you can to get your kids out as well as help others to get out as well--especially the most needy, inner-city kids and others. Starve the beast. It does not serve its customers, children and their families.
  • Social Security and Medicare = Welfare. And it is unsustainable welfare at that.
  • (Related to the above) Baby Boomers need Millennials and immigrants (especially illegal immigrants) to bail them out of their financial peril. 
  • Most news is entertainment and most of that is proverbial porn. Watching and reading popular news sources is entertainment with negative intellectual value--it is making you dumber.
  • Support for the Pledge of Allegiance is virtue signaling, and recitation of it is an activity of un-American obedience.
  • The national anthem being played before sporting events is state worship of dubious origin, and the rationale given for its continuance is awkward at best. 
  • You don't own "your" culture. You are a part of a greater human culture and many, many subcultures. Hopefully you are contributing to them, and hopefully you are finding where they are and how they are changing beneficial to you. Regardless, to claim ownership is nonsensical
  • The push for National service is motivated in large part on resentment. People resent how good life is for the young, and how bright and relatively easy their prospects are; therefore, they want to instill hardship on them, and they believe the only way for them to develop character is for them to be placed into a form of involuntary servitude. 

P.S. For those scoring at home, that is 2.5 points for Bryan Caplan as a fellow traveller reference. Perhaps I should formally outsource my thinking to him? Hopefully I have not subconsciously done so.




Sunday, March 28, 2021

Winkler's Wager

Let me state upfront I know that for the most part (if at all) I am not breaking new ground here. 

Are we all basically agnostic? Or all basically believers? How much of the rejection of belief (disbelief) is just a rejection of the behavior and style and beliefs of individuals or institutions the nonbeliever (believer) finds amiss or reprehensible or simply unconvincing? 

Years ago in thinking about this topic and in preparation for this blog post specifically I polled two friends. These are each very thoughtful, highly intelligent people. One is correctly described as a strong believer in God. One is correctly described as a strong disbeliever. Separately I asked them simply "What is the probability God exists?" leaving it fairly open ended for their own interpretation. Both of these people know how probability works and why 100% and 0% are bad answers. 

The believer stated that he wanted to say 100%, knew that was technically impossible, knew that faith might be a reason to actually make it legitimate, but settled on 90% (all of this recollection conditional on if memory serves; it was 5 years ago). He gave a good explanation for his thinking to support the answer.

The disbeliever answered via email, so I have his response. After sleeping on it, he answered 20% with a thorough account of his reasoning. 

I don't want to make this about their specific answers. This was just an experiment regarding my prediction about what they would say and why they would say it. Why I completely understood what they said and why they said it (it basically matched my prediction as well), I do not feel fully compelled by either. 

Similarly, I ran this twitter poll recently:
Obviously, this was not a meaningful sample size. But that isn't the point as much as the split among the choices I presented gives some indication that I think resembles how people tend to think about this.

Faith = ???... belief in the face of doubt? That definition would imply that 100% and 0% are not legitimate answers. Doubt seems essential for faith to have meaning. And the existence of doubt pushes one toward the unsatisfactory middle point of 50/50.

I think this is more easily seen in the case of a believer. But it is true at the antithesis as well. Atheism (certainty there is no God) is a faith by the atheists' own definition--one cannot prove a negative (e.g., there is no God); therefore, atheism cannot be scientifically proven. 

Ask a believer and a disbeliever this question: What it would take for them to reverse their view? This leads me to believe all in this debate are "believers" ultimately. And yes I know the problems with this over simplicity.

To the point of many in the atheist community, a point Penn Jillette makes in this piece, no one is really agnostic. A person always will find a way to dismiss evidence or argument offered against the view they hold in their heart of hearts. 

I think this gets to the crux of the question. The right answer is perhaps +/-50% with faith in God or faith in not God (something beyond the material realm) pushing one off of this center point of pure agnosticism toward one of the two faiths. The existence of God is a non-falsifiable conjecture; therefore, using science or reasoning to "prove" either the existence or the nonexistence of God is futile and fallacious thinking. 

Can we at least point to arguments to guide our judgments on God's existence? It would seem this is quite hard beyond simply an exercise in persuasion for those already tempted to be on the same side of the argument--we can never change the minds of those on the other side. Yet, minds do change and in both directions. The links in the P.S. sections allude to this.

So much of this ageless debate is people talking past one another. Adjacent to this is the determinism versus free will debate. Usually there is confusion on the part of those arguing for free will between determinism and fatalism, and usually there is confusion on the part of those arguing for determinism between free will and randomness. 

Sam Harris makes a strong case for determinism but only on the back of a reductivism I don't think can be denied--yes, there are always causes . . . it is cause and effect all the way down. Yet this basically amounts to a tautology that avoids the important parts of the question. Can we hold ourselves and others responsible for actions taken? What does it mean to choose? To act? To fail to act? 

I am a dualist on the issue. When I play pool, my choice of where to aim the cue ball and how to hit it are my free will, the resulting actions of the balls on the table are pure determinism. The determinist would entreat, "Is it not just a higher order of underlying causes that lead you to 'chose freely' how to strike the cue'?" My answer is "Yes, of course, and that isn't interesting for the matter at hand." Daniel Dennett says it better

Similarly, believers in God and disbelievers in God tend to talk past one another. They mischaracterize the other side's position and misunderstand what the other side means. This is not helped by how poorly the believers tend to understand their own position or how dismissively the disbelievers tend to assume past the implications of their own position. Believers wish to put God in a box and disbelievers live out the story of the Apostle Thomas. Taken to logical ends most believers' understanding of God can be disproven and most disbelievers' reasoning forces them to reject all knowledge and facts about the world. Experiments to this end: 
  1. Ask a believer to convince you that their belief is genuine as opposed to something that makes them feel good.
  2. Ask a disbeliever to explain why their expectation that their car will get them to work tomorrow morning is not predicated on faith or many small faiths they themselves cannot prove. 
Each will often struggle: In the first case because it is hard for a believer to identify a reason for faith beyond a desire for faith; In the second case because most people do not know how an automobile works and the existence of the future is continually theoretical--I'll prove tomorrow exists . . . tomorrow.

We should not depend on the ill-equipped be the strawmen foils for our favored positions. 

Consider my work as a practitioner within the investment management profession. My most sophisticated client would find the way I explain my job to my young children and the way my young children understand what I do to be quite unimpressive and perhaps even unattractive. That doesn't invalidate the philosophies I hold or the method I employ or the track record I've achieved professionally. Likewise part of what I do and any successes or failures associated with it might be simply due to luck. My efforts and explanations are at least to some degree counterproductive, irrelevant, and orthogonal to their associated outcomes. My shortcomings, imperfections, and activities themselves within financial money management neither prove nor deny the existence of financial money management.

Perhaps the most challenging part for believers is to separate God from being simply a personification of truth, love, and perfection. 

Perhaps the most challenging part for disbelievers is to build a foundation of truth (moral, mathematical, and physical) without the identification of God as this foundation. 

Both sides accuse the other of shortcuts for the sake of certitude. Both sides make the mistake of looking to religious texts as scientific works. If you do this, you are gravely missing the point. Newtonian/Einsteinian physics can't speak to ethics or morality. Likewise, the Bible, et al. are not going to serve your quest for scientific truth. 

Along the journey of building this post over the past few years these fellow travelers were helpful: 



Here is another very good, related conversation.

From this comes this insightful item: “Religion has nothing to fear from science, and science need not be afraid of religion. Religion claims to interpret the word of God, and science to reveal the laws of God. The interpreters may blunder, but truths are immutable, eternal and never in conflict.” If I could be so bold, I would like to add a corollary. Faith and religion are very poor at discovering and developing legislation to govern society and scientific facts to explain the universe and world around us. Faith and religion are very well-suited for the discovery of righteous first principles and guideposts for how to love and live among one another. Likewise science cannot teach us right from wrong but can teach us true from false.

P.S. Is God math?

And

P.P.S. How should a Christian Bayesian react to the Mayans, et al? Should they heavily discount the evidence and slightly shift their prior or slightly discount the evidence and heavily shift their prior? Is this question a risk of confirmation bias?

P.P.P.S. I avoided the heresy of an adjacent issue: that perhaps believers of all types (Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, ... Mathematicians?, Universists? ("let the Universe decide..."), et al.) are all yearning and seeking to follow the same ultimate God. 






Sunday, March 7, 2021

My Friends Are All Wrong For Different Reasons

I have always prided myself on the diversity of friends I have been blessed with. This goes along with an ability to be a welcomed part of many different social groups. (At least I think I have been a welcomed part . . .)

To take one example, senior year of high school my first class was Leadership with all the cool kids--the ones who were popular enough to be class officers, etc. The bulk of the day was honors classes with the smart kids--"nerds" was strictly a putdown back then. The last class was gym with all the others--misfits who in many cases lived in fringe realms and in some cases it was amazing they hadn't dropped out of school already. I don't know of anyone in my class of 600+ who could actually approach my level of diverse and deep integration. 

At my best I am a social chameleon. At my worst I'm a jingle you can't get out of your head.

Among other things, this quality has given me a chance to learn from lots of different people as well as compare key difference among groups. Painting with a broad brush, here is one thing I notice.

My friends on the right tend to naively believe the rhetoric of the politicians they admire. They think the things they hear are sincerely believed and will be sincerely pursued. 

My friends on the left have the opposite problem. They tend to naively believe that the rhetoric espoused by the politicians they admire should be ignored—that the true pursuits will be reasonable, noble, and unarguably worthwhile. 

Both can be willfully blind to the most grotesque, pandering, and ridiculous rhetoric. 

I admit this is an overgeneralization to make a point, but it is still a generalization based in truth. While there are many exceptions to this rule, in the cases where it holds I don't find the friends usually to be in contempt. They are almost always unintentionally wrong rather than willfully guilty. Political cognitive dissonance is a very real and rationally held phenomenon

My ultimate takeaways:
  • Looking inward first, I should be on guard for both of these problems in my own thinking and behavior. 
  • To change minds on the right where I agree with a friend on the policy desire, I should emphasize how politicians and political solutions fail to pursue our common cause.
  • To change minds on the left where I agree with a friend on the policy desire, I should emphasize how politicians and political solutions work against our common cause.
Changing minds on the right or left where I disagree with a friend on the policy desire is much more daunting. It probably starts by inquiring as to why they want what they want in the first place. From here it is very often the case that we have the same desired ultimate outcome. It is just that we disagree about how to achieve it. Without first finding common ground, a discussion inevitably becomes an emotional argument rather than a fruitful search using logical arguments.* 

For example, trying to change a paternalist's mind on the drug war cannot constructively start until he understands that you are not advocating unconditional, rampant drug use. He will imagine chaos on the streets and label you extremely dangerous. He has been conditioned to believe that opposition to drugs because they are bad = support for the drug war. 

Likewise, you cannot begin to alter the position of a supporter of the minimum wage until you firmly establish the common ground that you both want the best for low-wage workers.



*People have always misunderstood my love of argument thinking that I love to be in arguments.