Years ago, I spent a big chunk of my intellectual career studying the rationality of disagreement, mostly via math modeling, but also some lab experiments. My main conclusion was that, for the purpose of accurate beliefs, it seems both desirable and feasible for people to not kno … | Continue reading
When the US and USSR came out victorious at the end of WWII, the world recalibrated its respect. That is, many correctly inferred that this win contained info about winner and loser abilities. Observers not only raised their overall estimates of abilities and virtues of the winne … | Continue reading
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (Bible) “83% of 5-year-olds think that Santa Claus is real, … ‘Children’s belief in Santa starts when they’re … | Continue reading
In his new book Little Book of Aliens, astrophysicist Adam Frank says that we now know almost nothing about aliens, but we will soon learn much more: Fermi saw that if technologically advanced, star-faring civilizations really were common, they should already be everywhere, inclu … | Continue reading
Software is eating the world. … All of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale. … Software programming tools and Internet-based services make it easy to launch new global software-power … | Continue reading
One of humanity’s key superpowers is our cultural plasticity: we change our species by each as kids copying the adults around us. Such humans can consistently be well aware that humans at other times and places are quite different, as long as we see each such cultural versi … | Continue reading
Richard Hanania has done me the honor of carefully thinking through my & other fertility theories, finding consequences and data tests I didn't think of. If you have time, go read him first, then come back here. | Continue reading
The political left and right each have a big long term problem about which they cry most. For the left it is global warming; for the right fertility decline. (Sure, a few tech people cry about AI, but far fewer than re these others.) | Continue reading
In the novel Pot Luck by Zola, a middle class woman in 1862 explains why she had only one kid, Marie, & wants Marie to have only one kid: ‘Children, you know, are such a burden.’ ‘Indeed they are,’ remarked Madame Vuillaume. ‘If we’d had anothe … | Continue reading
This graph of European urban population over history shows some dramatic declines, suggesting that there may have been historical analogue to our upcoming world population decline. And there have long been rumors that at least elites often had low fertility during such declines. … | Continue reading
The following claim seems both roughly true and pregnant with implications: The vast majority of statements that appear in natural human conversation, such as at dinner parties or on social media, are clearly unsuitable for inclusion as content (not study object) in the vast majo … | Continue reading
I attended a Girard-themed conference today, and in prep I recently read his classic Violence and the Sacred. He is a hard read for me, as he is often arrogant, repetitive, opaque, and exaggerates. Even so, this is to his great credit: he stays focused on important issues. | Continue reading
We struggle to explain large scale long term cultural changes. Such as the rise and fall of empires, or the demographic transition. Yes, we do seem to find patterns that are somewhat predictable, but our abilities here are also clearly limited. | Continue reading
The series finale of the TV show Billions just dropped today. Its Metacritic score started at 69 in S1, peaked at 87 in S4, then ended at 62 in S7. I’ve enjoyed it especially as “competence porn” where I get to admire people who are very good at what they do. | Continue reading
We have long known that self-set (i.e., Harberger) property taxes can not only lower the cost of making property trades, and discourage leaving properties idle, but can also serve as a substitute for eminent domain, wherein governments force sales at its-set prices in order to as … | Continue reading
A survey on … capitalism in 34 countries. In only 6 of these countries – led by Poland & the United States – do pro-capitalist attitudes dominate. (More) That survey gave these four statements as most often endorsed re capitalism: | Continue reading
Marc Andreessen recently released his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, not long after James Pethokoukis released his new book The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised. I mostly agree with both, and the book gives much more detailed arguments. Yet, alas … | Continue reading
Re gaining a better model of reality, we have three fundamental tasks: (A) collecting data, (B) elaborating theories that can explain data, (C) finding matches between data and theory. While a half century ago (B) was king, now (A) is king; (C) has always been neglected. | Continue reading
Compared to other animals, humans are uniquely able to synchronize our actions with each other. In fact, one provocative theory about the origin of human dance and song is that they allowed our ancestors to look to predators like a very large animal. And there’s a plausible … | Continue reading
I’ve often mocked science fiction stories set centuries in the future, yet with stable tech not much more advanced than our own, especially when they have big successful subgroups who resist innovation. I’ve also mocked stories (and actual plans) wherein some small gr … | Continue reading
Those who consume too much alcohol or other recreational drugs often make excuses. Like “I’m no worse than many others”, “I still manage to get to work most days”, or “Let’s wait til my problem gets worse, like I can no longer walk” … | Continue reading
Any stream of financial payments can be turned into an asset, by selling a transferable right to receive that stream of payments. For example, from the stream of tax payments that each individual citizen pays to the government each year, we could create “personal tax assets … | Continue reading
The last month has greatly change what I see as the default future. Instead of seeing the last few centuries of exponential world growth continuing until a new much faster growth mode appears within a century or two, my default is now darker. The economy declines after population … | Continue reading
Even his harshest critics seem to agree that Richard Hanania’s great new book The Origins of Woke, released today, offers the most plausible and detailed historical explanation yet of the rise of woke. ( | Continue reading
The most likely scenario by which world human fertility will rise again includes a big return to communism. It will be a small-scale religious “commune” form of communism, not industrial state capitalism, but communism nonetheless. | Continue reading
Some hope that the world’s fertility fall might be reversed by governments subsidizing fertility. But on reflection, that seems unlikely to me. Let me explain why. Some think that in the old days folks had kids as a way to pay for their retirement. But it | Continue reading
\My wife and I feed wet food to our two cats Ben and Jerry at the same time every day. Ben spends the whole prior hour crying for that food. He seems to be expect that, if not for his lobbying, we’d never feed him. Jerry instead spends a similar time spread out across prior … | Continue reading
We hold businesses strongly liable for lies, and even for truths that authorities call misleading. Ordinary people, in contrast, are mainly held liable only for lying under oath in court, lying to police officers, lying for clear financial gain, and when a factual claim defames o … | Continue reading
In eight X/Twitter polls I asked how often we smile in this situation: Imagine you are walking down a sidewalk outside, or a store aisle inside. You notice an adult approaching you from the other direction, walking normally. It has been at least ten seconds since you passed anoth … | Continue reading
World population is widely projected to peak around 2050-90 at roughly 9-11B, with ~40% of living in Africa. World population would then decline. But how long, and how far? The median respondent in my Twitter | Continue reading
In their recent book The Myth of Left and Right, two professors who are brothers say that most of us see left and right as denoting stable principled philosophical essences, while in fact the positions associated with left and right are mainly tribal. | Continue reading
Most economic growth comes from innovation, not the accumulation of capital or labor. And innovation rates are mostly due to two competing factors. One the one hand, we pick the low hanging fruit of the easiest highest-payoff innovations to try first. On the other hand, we can mo … | Continue reading
Not sure exactly why, but one of its authors sent me the book Data Science in Context: Foundations, Challenges, Opportunities. The chapter of most interest to me is ch. 7, on regulation, which highlights these recommendations: | Continue reading
I’m grateful that some of you are paying for this blog, and I want to show my gratitude to you. Supposedly only those of you who have paid should be able to comment on this post. So: please suggest t… | Continue reading
In a widely-used simple approximation, the world of thinking and writing is a world of specific arguments. Readers collect their opinions by combining the arguments of those they read/hear with arguments that they think of for themselves. In this approximation, the only reason to … | Continue reading
29 years ago, as a first year grad student, I published one of my best ideas: “Buy Health, Not Health Care.” Cato Journal 14(1):135-141, Summer 1994. To cure health care, give your care-givers a clear incentive to keep you well. Make sure that when you lose, they lose … | Continue reading
Social norms can be enforced formally or informally. That is, one can have either laws, or informal sanctions enforce by “mobs”. Both systems can discourage unwanted behaviors, and isolate unwanted people. So we usually face a choice: to discourage such things via law … | Continue reading
In response to a tweet of mine, someone pointed me to the thought-provoking 2001 paper Bad is Stronger Than Good: Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good. The self is more motivated to … | Continue reading
Government at all levels has limped into the digital age, offering online services that can feel even more cumbersome than the paperwork that preceded them … Government is hamstrung by a rigid, industrial-era culture, in which elites dictate policy from on high, disconnecte … | Continue reading
I haven’t posted as much lately as it is summer, and I’ve been doing a lot of family trips. Including an Alaskan cruise the last two weeks. Such periods are supposed to be happy times, worth their extra cost in part due to our anticipating and remembering them fondly. … | Continue reading
Having a romantic partner is useful in many ways. You won’t be as lonely, you can ask them for advice, you can do activities together, and you can share transport and even a household with them. But if you look carefully, you will notice that many people don’t choose … | Continue reading
I recently asked on Twitter: When a problem is serious, and "something must be done", why do folks so often assume that it must be governments who do it? (more) Many of my 113 gave a similar answer. A sample: | Continue reading
Star formation peaked around 4Gyr after the Big Bang, Earth formed around 5.5Gyr later, and Earth is now 4.5Gyr old. The usual theory is that life arose within Earth’s first 0.4Gyr, but another possibility is that life first arose on a planet Eden around a star that formed … | Continue reading
We humans seem to have a general heuristic: be more wary of things that differ more from familiar things. In particular, we more distrust creatures who differ more from us; we are more inclined to ally against those who differ more, with those who differ less. In extreme cases, d … | Continue reading
A year ago I tried to come up with the most plausible story I could for why some UFOs might be aliens. In that story, life started long ago on some planet Eden, which then via panspermia seeded life onto thousands of planets in Earth’s stellar nursery. One of those other pl … | Continue reading
Louise Perry, author of “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution”, responds to Bryan Caplan’s book “Don’t be a feminist”. Perry summarizes Caplan well here I think: Caplan offers an elegant alternative, one that he believes actually describes th … | Continue reading
Though “discrimination” is a central theme of our modern world, it is closely connected to many other powerful related concepts. So we might wonder: what is the essential motive or passion driving attitudes and behaviors here? | Continue reading
There is a God–shaped vacuum in the heart of each man, which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ. Blaise Pascal. (more) In my recent efforts to study the sacred, I framed the question in this usual social sci … | Continue reading