Showing posts with label thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thinking. Show all posts

Thursday, March 31, 2022

The Meaning of Opposite

Opposite is a loaded term. The meaning of it grows more ambiguous as the dimensions of the object to which it refers grow. 

A no-dimensional object (a point) has no opposite aside from absence (not a point). A one-dimensional object (the line A—B) has its pure reversal (B—A) as its opposite. 

Consider a higher order "object" such as driving in America. What is the opposite? It could be said that driving in England is the opposite of driving in America since Americans drive on the right while the English drive on the left. This would be true in the limited sense from the perspective of the perpendicular plane relative to the driver’s general direction, forward, through time—also forward. 

But one could also say that driving sideways is the opposite of driving as we know it. How about rather than driving through scenery that the car passes through that the car stands still and the scenery moves passing by the car was the opposite? Still another could be driving whereby you leave from your destination and arrive at your departure point. There certainly are more.

What is the point of this thought process? It is a hint at how difficult and convoluted and simply fraught any attempt to draw sharp distinctions can be. This is especially true in the realms of human action. Counterfactuals are not only challenging to find. They are nearly impossible to properly define.

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Thinking in Bets for Calmer Debates

Even the best decision doesn't yield the best outcome every time. There's always an element of luck that you can't control, and there is always information that is hidden from view.
That is from the summary of Annie Duke's book Thinking in Bets. The subtitle is "Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts". 

Her way of looking at the world inspired Arnold Kling to create an entire category for it in his Fantasy Intellectual Teams (FITs) competition. 

People tend to think in terms of did or didn’t and will or won’t rather than the proper probabilistic and adaptive viewpoint. Couple this with Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset, and you have a very sound method for decision making. But a scout's mind thinking in bets is not only a much better way of getting to solutions and making predictions, it is also more socially constructive since it tempers our emotional responses. 

In the political realm we often devolve and retreat to the simplistic concept of binary conclusions. While this human trait is very common in most all people and realms, it is a natural byproduct and significant downside of government action in general. Governments are the ultimate one-size-fits-all. Democracy adds to the problem by lending credibility to the process--we voted; therefore, the outcome is just/reasonable/practical, of course none of which follows. 

When it is all or nothing, we have too much at stake to compromise much less admit we don't know. This leads us to reject ideas we don’t want to be true along with resisting ideas we believe likely not to be true

Consider climate change/global warming and anthropogenic causation or contribution. Do we really want to place all of our bets on the idea we cannot affect the climate? Conversely do we really want to place all our bets that we absolutely can change what is happening to the climate? Do we really want to assume that we know exactly what the solution to the problem(s) will be such as subsidizing solar or wind, outlawing oil and gas, etc.? Wouldn’t the consideration of a carbon tax be a more appropriate response? And shouldn’t we consider the downside and extremities of what introducing a carbon tax might lead to? 

A framework of thinking in bets can help a lot in areas like this. Instead of tribally aligning with one absolute or another, we could take a more measured, agnostic view that allows for experimentation as well as revising. Instead we battle it out on the front end (the public and political stakes placed in the ground) having captured interests and biased reasoners (bootleggers and Baptists) and their lobbyist soldiers actually do the brute-force compromising for us on the back end with all the predictable shortcomings.

The thinking-in-bets perspective allows nuance and graceful position changes. Instead of having to be pro renewables/anti fossil fuels or vice versa we can adopt a mindset that skips past labels to force deeper thinking. Sure a person could always claim 100% confidence that THIS is the problem and THIS is the solution, but then at the very least we know not to waste our time in that discussion. Also, the more we make them be precise with predictions, the more likely they will step back from the barricade. 

Betting is a tax on bullshit, and forcing a bet can be a great method of separating our hearts from our minds. I am after a different benefit in this case, though. I don't necessarily want to call anyone out for bloviation. Rather I want to get a more open-minded and charitable disposition for all sides in a debate--allowing us to consider how little we actually know for sure.





P.S. I thought of this while listening to the recent excellent interview of Mike Munger on The Curious Task Ep. 131: Mike Munger - What’s Wrong With Anti-Trust and Industrial Policy?

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, January 2, 2022

52 Things I Learned in 2021

 As always, these are just in a general order of when during the year I catalogued them. Standard caveats apply--namely, an item learned does not establish its truth value or materiality. 

1. The 16th digit in a credit card number is simply a check digit based on a formula for the first 15 digits (the actual number). A great example of the value of redundancy from this Tim Harford post that is filled with great examples of both redundancy and brevity--like writing an entire email in the subject line alone with such a short message will suffice.

2. & 3. From the same episode of 99% Invisible: The lampposts in NYC's Central Park each have a unique four-digit number on them which can be used for easy navigation. The first two digits are the closest cross street. The second two show which side of the park the lamppost is on (even for east, odd for west) and how deep into the park it is (smaller is closer to the edge). 

The Swiss military had/has elaborate but nearly invisible defenses built throughout its countryside and cities. All of it to help protect it from invasion well into the Cold War, which had the added value of helping to maintain its neutral stance. From the episode, "Switzerland would eventually build out enough bunker space to house the country’s entire population with room to spare — with a buffer of over 10%, no other country’s shelter capacity comes close."

4. Christmas spending is just not that significant despite what you might suspect. In fact it has been getting relatively smaller over the past 80 years. "For every hundred dollars spent across the year in the U.S., just 30 cents are attributable to Christmas retail spending," according to Joel Waldfogel's Scroogenomics as quoted in this Tim Harford post. Also of note, Christmas was illegal in colonial Massachusetts. 

5. The older and more common response phrase is you've got "another think coming" rather than "another thing coming," which is what I've always said. My version is close in American English, and it's been getting closer over my lifetime, FWIW.

6. When Roe v. Wade was first decided it came with the general support of the Southern, Protestant religious right. I found this out reading this Scott Sumner post about what life was like back in 1973 including compared to now. If you think the abortion fact is weird, take a look at the miniskirts of the Middle East including in Afghanistan.

7. "Asian spices such as turmeric and fruits like the banana had already reached the Mediterranean more than 3000 years ago. . . ." Globalization is older than we might think. (HT: Tyler Cowen)

8. When Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO) closed the opening prayer of the 117th Congress by saying "amen and awoman", he was not being woke. He was clumsily making a very old joke as pointed out by John McWhorter on FIRE's So To Speak podcast.

9. Today's amphetamine treatments for ADHD are derived from sketchy 1950s diet pills, but they are not methamphetamines and Ritalin is not an amphetamine at all--so, many kids on ADHD medication are not on "speed", but the Adderall kids technically are. 

10. & 11. From the same episode of Every Little Thing: Most people breathe primarily through one nostril at a time plus the gross facts that every day we swallow the equivalent of about three wine bottles full of mucus filled with outside things that we have breathed in.

Wombats' poop comes out as very dense, hard cubes (i.e., they shit bricks). 

12. In the prime of his career Tiger Woods almost quit to become a Navy SEAL

13. From Joseph Henrich's book WEIRDest People in the World: when humans developed the ability to learn and to use language, their brains physically changed, and it impeded the part of the brain that is used to recognize faces.

14. One container ship today carries more freight than the entire English merchant fleet 400 years ago, with a fraction of the crewhttps://t.co/9ERrmD0sev pic.twitter.com/pwYY14m1PT
15.  Lots from this video such as: There are more hydrogen atoms in a teaspoon of water than there are teaspoons of water in the world's oceans; you can fit all of the planets between the Earth and the Moon with room to spare; Australia is wider than the moon; . . . and many more.

16. The famous part of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech that we all remember, the emphatic conclusion, was not from the speech he had painstakingly prepared to give but rather was an off the cuff adaptation made up in the moment.

17. Society of the Cincinnati is the oldest patriotic, hereditary society in America. It has very selective and interesting rules for membership.

18. The Murray-Hill Riot (a.k.a. Montreal's Night of Terror) was new to me. It shows how tenuous at times the wall between order and chaos and how important good police presence can be.

19. With the emergence of the Brood X cicadas in 2021, I learned about how these 13 & 17-year insect events work.


21. From the two remnants (Jonah Goldberg and Chris Stirewalt) on these two episodes of The Remnant I learned that large turn out elections do not necessarily favor Democrats. This is a conventional wisdom myth.

22. Conservationists sometimes transport Rhinos upside down via helicopter.

23. Queen Elizabeth is sorta technically the world's largest landowner

24. Icebergs always float with about 10% of their mass above the water (tip of the iceberg and all), but their shape determines which part is up and exposed


26. Robert P. McCulloch was the amazing entrepreneur who purchased London bridge, which, as I knew before, was dismantled brick-by-brick and reassembled in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. I did not know that he did it as an effort to bring tourists and publicity to his town nor did I know that he was the inventor of the light, one-person chainsaw. (HT: David Henderson)

27. The awful practice of forcing Jews to wear a yellow star to identify them to unsuspecting others originated not with the Nazis but well before that in the European middle ages.

28. There are a bunch of things I learned from these cool guides. One is the difference between a swamp and a marsh. Another is the signs a dog will bite. Still another is interpretation of tree rings. And more . . .

29. Humans make up just 1/10,000th of Earth's biomass. We are dwarfed slightly by livestock and greatly by fish (neither too surprising to me), vastly by arthropods (somewhat surprising), and colossally by bacteria (greatly surprising). 

30. Two words: Reindeer Cyclones.

31. I was surprised to learn of these contemporary and relatively important people who opposed the decision to use nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945.

32. Over the past eight years, a Chinese billionaire has died on average every 40 days--in case you're wondering, there aren't enough of them to make that a normal, nothing-to-see-here statistic. This appears to be wrong on its face as well as once the proper framing is applied. I regret the error. 

33. "Pirates understood the advantages of constitutional democracy — a model they adopted more than fifty years before the United States did so." -- From The Invisible Hook

34. Thomas Jefferson's awkward (to say the least) and wrongful position of being a slaveholder had no easy answer for resolution. It was complicated not just by him having inherited his slaves, but that it was an extreme impracticality for him to ever free them. It was statutorily illegal for him to do so, and more importantly his debts outweighed his assets meaning there was no way for him to free them and discharge the debt. Rather he would have to auction them off to other potentially much worse slaveholders which very likely would mean breaking up the slaves’ families.

35. Among so many things in mixology Peter Suderman's Substack has taught me, perhaps the most impactful was what I didn't know or appreciate about sweet Vermouth.

36. This insane development was begun in 2014 in Turkey and sits abandoned, partially finished. It was to be a luxury housing development for wealthy Gulf tourists based on a Disney inspiration it would seem. Here is more on what was to be the Burj Al Babas.


38. In what is an unintentional tribute to spontaneous order and entrepreneurial problem solving, the Lagos megachurches are becoming relatively well-run cities unto their own. Perhaps an African-Christian version of Burning Man?

39. The reason horse terms were originally used in describing things about cars and naming some car brands is that many people greatly hated cars as a replacement to their beloved horses, and this marketing technique made peace with those who were so strongly opposed to automobiles.

40. "Organic farming is less polluting than conventional farming when measured per unit of land but not when measured per unit of output." From this abstract which includes hints that magnitude matters. 

41. These facts about Ireland during WWII including that the country was neutral. 

42. From The Soho Forum's Bill Kristol vs. Scott Horton Debate on U.S. Interventionism I learned that Somalia is the U.S.'s longest war rather than Afghanistan. 

43. Hard to summarize, but I learned a lot about genetics from this Richard Hanania CSPI podcast interview of Razib Khan

44. Dog's noses are amazing. I knew that. But I didn't know how those slits on the side of the nostrils work or how they can triangulate the source of a smell especially with the help of another dog. 

45. The vastness of the Walt Disney World complex is incredible including how big the parking lots are.

46. Coincidental with the prior item, I learned about this utopian city in India, Auroville, that has a strange Epcot focal point among other things strange and non-utopian. (HT: Scott Alexander)

47. Also from Scott Alexander I learned about all these phenomenal families

48. LBJ's daughter once kept a cat fetus in the White House private residence's freezer for months--from the ELT podcast.

49. The best-selling novel I, Libertine was a total hoax played on the elite, snob-class created by late-night radio host Jean Shepherd. 

50. A Bar-tailed Godwit set a world record by flying more than 8,100 miles nonstop! between Alaska and New South Wales, Australia. 

51. I learned about some recent tragic developments in horse racing. These trends look particularly bad and bad for the sport, which will be a future WWCF topic.

52. Philip Van Doren Stern wrote a short story in 1943 titled The Greatest Gift inspired by a dream he had. Because he couldn't find a publisher, he sent 200 copies of it to friends as Christmas cards. That led to a publisher taking interest and publishing it in book form in 1944. Then two magazine publications printed it one in each of the years 1944 and 1945. Eventually it came to the interest of Hollywood where it was adapted and resold to eventually becoming the 1946 Frank Capra film staring Jimmy Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life.



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.  

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Don't Let the Crazies Write the Story

How should we think about global warming? 

The video below came to mind as I read this great post from Michael Huemer. From the post:
The insane extremists are winning the debate about global warming. Whatever your view of global warming, you probably agree with me about that. You probably also think the crazy extremists are the people on the opposite side from yourself – the people on the left if you’re on the right, or the people on the right if you’re on the left. 
What I’ve realized is that both the left and the right are dominated by crazy extremists who ignore facts and evidence so they can believe what they want to believe.

He goes on to list four very reasonable points about what to think about global warming. Be sure to read his post.


https://youtu.be/vE8mFDabqD0 

Using the video as a metaphor, I think people of either extreme position think of themselves as the boy, Atreyu, and their opponents as the horse, Artax. They on the left (right) are desperately trying to pull the climate-change deniers (climate alarmists) out of the swamp of sadness and certain global death (economic poverty).


P.S. Interestingly the climate alarmists should have a higher hurdle to overcome in getting support for their extreme view. This is because if they are right, they still have to be right that their extreme measures will actually solve the problem. If they are wrong about climate catastrophe, they will bring about something nearly as bad for humanity. On the other hand if climate-change deniers are right, everything is fine. If they are wrong, they have to also be wrong about there being time to change their minds. I think that is part of the impetus behind the artificial urgency that has recently developed in the environmentalist religion. They need to change the terms so that failing to act now is impending doom.

P.P.S. The horse in the swamp scene very much bothered me as a child—terrified and crushed might be the more accurate terms. The still below is from the movie's ending which was also bothersome in a 'what is infinity?' type of way.



Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Failure Due to a Lack of Imagination


How can you possibly have this without that

How can we have great TV without commercials that are viewed? 
Journalism without newspapers? 
Lending without banks? 
Currency without gold backing government issuance? 
Meat without slaughtered animals? 
Cars without gas? 
Cars without drivers? 
Mail delivery without a U.S. Postal Service?
Etc... 

If the demand for X is there, supply will come. The specific means of supply are almost always sufficient but not necessary. In fact the means of supply are constantly shifting and fleeting as competition makes sand of once sturdy foundations. 

This is all for the better for society no matter the temporary pain specific producers must endure. We hold back change, question new developments, innovations, and techniques, and stifle entrepreneurial exploration all for lack of imagination and faith in the process. 

It is not just regulation where government is aiding the bootlegging vested interests at the behest of the Baptist worriers. We see slow adoption and disapproving dismissal throughout society--all the way from concept to highly proven result.

Yes, there is another side to this. Chesterton's Fence is an important force for good. But it is just a starting point in the conversation about change asking us to slow down and consider what we may not fully understand. It is not an ironclad rule that change must be bad. And it fades from being relevant as those with the most at stake and who are the most involved are the ones leading the way for change.




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. 


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.