I can imagine an economics professor reading through The Literary Book of Economics in search of things he can use in his teaching. But I find it hard to imagine anyone else doing so on his own initiative, merely because he enjoyed reading it. There is a reason why a book is the length it is; a novel is not, with rare exceptions, a series of short stories. I conclude that most of the people reading [Michael] Watts’ book, most of the people it was written for, will be students reading it because their professor told them to. And, judging by my experience of students over the years, many of the students told to read it won’t.
That fits the pattern of most modern schooling at all levels. Someone else decides what you should learn, tells you what you must do to learn it, and makes some attempt to make sure you follow his instructions. It is not a model I think highly of. A much superior model in my view, if you can pull it off, is to get someone to learn something primarily because he finds it interesting. The best way of doing that is to provide students with things to read that are worth reading on their own, not things they read only because they are ordered to. Not even things they read only because they think the labor of reading them will pay off in future benefit.
That view of education is why both children of my present marriage were unschooled. It is also why all of my nonfiction books, with the partial exception of Price Theory, were targeted at the proverbial intelligent layman. They can be, and sometimes are, used as textbooks, but they were written with the assumption that if the reader did not find a chapter worth finishing he was likely not to finish it.
David Friedman, “Thoughts on Literature, Economics and Education”, Ideas, 2017-05-01.
July 6, 2019
QotD: How to learn
July 5, 2019
QotD: The paradox of tolerance
This is now referred to as “the paradox of tolerance.”
Popper argues that unlimited tolerance is self-defeating. If a tolerant society is tolerant of the intolerant, the intolerant will defeat the tolerant. Therefore, tolerance is all well and good, but to defend itself, it must maintain a certain degree of intolerance towards the intolerant.
It it this defense of intolerance that radicals use to justify violence against their political opponents.
If one dares to question the legitimacy of “direct action” from communist groups against their political opponents, these groups will quickly cite this paradox of tolerance. When fascists are shooting up mosques and synagogues, it’s difficult to defend them against mere milkshakes.
Which is why the paradox of tolerance is constantly brought up to defend violence: It’s hard to argue against. Only the most strict pacifist will argue against violence in (the name of) self-defense. Karl Popper was right to point out that a tolerant society that is tolerant toward its enemies will be destroyed.
Nathan Kreider, “Misconceptions of the Paradox of Tolerance”, Being Libertarian, 2019-05-31.
July 4, 2019
QotD: Updating traditional curses
Modern Gypsy curse: may you one day trend on TwitterDavid “Iowahawk” Burge, Twitter, 2016-08-16.
July 3, 2019
QotD: Elon Musk as a modern-day Ferdinand DeLesseps
I used to love Elon like everyone else. I still think that having four or five billionaires in a space race against each other is finally the world I thought I was going to get growing up reading Heinlein. The Tesla Model S was probably one of the most revolutionary cars of the last 50 years. But he lost me when he committed outright fraud in the Solar City – Tesla deal and since then have only become more skeptical about he and Tesla.
Elon Musk at the 2015 Tesla Motors annual meeting.
Photo by Steve Jurvetson via Wikimedia Commons.I sort of laugh when folks tell me that really smart successful rich people believe in Tesla. You mean like James Murdoch, on the board of Tesla and who also was lost his entire investment in Theranos? Or like Larry Ellison, an adviser and fan of Elizabeth Holmes who invested $1 billion in Tesla just 6 months ago and has already lost 40% of it? The window on this is probably closing, but over the last 10 years if you wanted to get Silicon Valley investors to throw a lot of money at you, find a traditional bricks and mortar business and devise a story in which you take that industry and convert its economics to that of the networked software world (see: Uber, WeWork, Tesla, and even Theranos in some of its strategic pivots).
Or how about true millennials and Elon Musk? Name a wealthy millennial supporter of Elon Musk and Tesla and I can bet you any amount of money they have not looked at Tesla’s balance sheet or cash flow or the details of its global demand trends. They have not thought about its dealership strategy or manufacturing strategy and the cash flow implications of these. They just like what Elon says. It sounds big and visionary. They buy into Elon’s formulation that he is saving the environment and everyone opposed to him is in a cabal with big oil (ignoring the fact that Elon routinely uses his Gulfstream VI to commute distances less than 60 miles). So saying that rich millenials adore Elon is effectively saying that they want to be associated with the same things Elon says he is for — the environment and space travel et al.
Elon Musk is Ferdinand DeLesseps. He is PT Barnum. He is Elizabeth Holmes. He is the pied piper. He is fabulous at spinning visions and making them sound science-y. But he is not Tony Stark. There is a phenomenon with Elon Musk that everyone thinks he is brilliant until they hear him speak about something about which they have domain knowledge, and then they realize he is full of sh*t. For example, no one who knows anything about transportation or physics or basic engineering has thought his Boring Company and Hyperloop make any sense at all. His ideas would have been great cover stories for Popular Mechanics in the 1970’s, wowing 13-year-old boys like me with pictures of mile-long cargo blimps and flying RV’s. He is like a Marvel movie that spouts science that is just believable-enough sounding that it moves the plot along but does not stand up to any scrutiny.
All of this would be harmless if he was not running a public company. I don’t really care about the rich folks who were duped by Elizabeth Holmes, but hundreds of thousands of small millenial investors who have totally bought into the Elon hype are literally putting their last dollar into Tesla, and sometimes borrowing more. Tesla shorts often laugh at these folks on Twitter, calling them “bagholders,” but it is a tragedy. Unless Tesla finds a sugar daddy sucker, and the odds of that are getting longer, I think it is going to end badly for many of these investors.
As a disclosure, I have been short Tesla via puts for a while now. It you really want to understand Elon, the best book I can recommend is The Path Between The Seas about the building of the Panama Canal. First, it is a great book you should read no matter what. And second, Ferdinand DeLesseps is the best analog I can find for Musk.
Warren Meyer, “People Who Express Opinions Outside of their Domain Seldom Have Really Looked into it Much”, Coyote Blog, 2019-05-28.
July 2, 2019
QotD: Italy and the Nazi Final Solution
Surprisingly given the bad associations I have with the word “fascist”, Mussolini’s Italy may win third prize in the Righteous Among The Nations stakes. [Hannah] Arendt describes it [in Eichmann in Jerusalem] as “sabotaging” the Final Solution within its borders despite nominal alliance with Germany:
Colorized portrait of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1940.
Colorization by Roger Viollet via Wikimedia Commons.
The gentlemen of the Foreign Office could not do much about it, because they always met the same subtly veiled resistance, the same promises and the same failures to fulfill them. The sabotage was all the more infuriating as it was carried out openly, in an almost mocking manner. The promises were given by Mussolini himself or other high-ranking officials, and if the generals simply failed to fulfill them, Mussolini would make excuses for them on the ground of their “different intellectual formation”. Only occasionally would the Nazis be met with a flat refusal, as when General Roatta declared that it was “incompatible with the honor of the Italian Army” to deliver the Jews from Italian-occupied territory in Yugoslavia to the appropriate German authorities.
An element of farce had never been lacking even in Italy’s most serious efforts to adjust to its powerful friend and ally. When Mussolini, under German pressure, introduced anti-Jewish legislation in the late thirties he stipulated the usual exemptions – war veterans, Jews with high decorations, and the like – but he added one more category, namely, former members of the Fascist Party, together with their parents and grandparents, their wives and children and grandchildren. I know of no statistics relating to this matter, but the result must have been that the great majority of Italian Jews were exempted. There can hardly have been a Jewish family without at least one member in the Fascist Party, for this happened at a time when Jews, like other Italians, had been flocking for almost twenty years into the Fascist movement, since positions in the Civil Service were open only to members. And the few Jews who had objected to Fascism on principle, Socialists and Communists chiefly, were no longer in the country. Even convinced Italian anti-Semites seemed unable to take the thing seriously, and Roberto Farinacci, head of the Italian anti-Semitic movement, had a Jewish secretary in his employ…
What in Denmark was the result of an authentically political sense, an inbred comprehension of the requirements and responsibilities of citizenship and independence – “for the Danes … the Jewish question was a political and not a humanitarian question” (Leni Yahil) – was in Italy the outcome of the almost automatic general humanity of an old and civilized people.
Scott Alexander, “Book review: Eichmann in Jerusalem”, Slate Star Codex, 2017-01-30.
July 1, 2019
QotD: Canada Day, if we have to…
The reasons for this bouncy nihilism vary: either because nationalism is icky, or because Canada’s lack of nationalism is in fact a kind of inverted nationalism, a way of distinguishing ourselves from other nations. Anomie is part of our unique cultural identity. Yadda yadda yadda never had a civil war blah blah blah we’re a shy, diffident country yadda yadda something about the wilderness, and we’re done.
It’s interesting that this anti-nationalism, mostly on the left, should coincide with the rise of nationalism — mostly imported, in one of the many ironies of this debate — on the right. The ur-text among the latter is that interview Justin Trudeau gave the New York Times Magazine, in which he referred to Canada as the world’s “first post-national state,” inasmuch as it has no “core identity, no mainstream,” thus confirming populist suspicions of him as a treasonous stooge of globalist elites.
Andrew Coyne, “On Canada Day let us remind ourselves we have done well, even as we strive to do better”, National Post, 2017-07-01.
June 30, 2019
QotD: The humble dishwasher
Dishwasher technology is already pretty good. Yes, we haggle over which things should be loaded where. And then we close the door, and some time later, open it again to find our dishes clean. It’s a miracle. Miracles are not ordinarily subject to major technical advances.
But there’s another sense in which dishwashers are too good to be made sexy, a more important one: Dishwashers do the whole job of, you know, washing dishes. There is no scope for the chef’s skill. Your refrigerator holds your culinary creations as they await unveiling; your range midwifes the moment of transformation under your careful control and with your vigilance. Even those who don’t spent a lot of time putting fabulous meals together often entertain extensive fantasies about being the sort of person who does. And express those fantasies through a $10,000 steel box.
No one fantasizes about being the sort of person who puts plates away. And because even basic dishwashers are so efficient, they kill any fantasies we might develop about buying a lavish model so that we can be known for our sparkling-clean tableware. The dishwasher offers us many hours of extra leisure, but no scope for imagination. And so after the argument is over, and the dishes are put away, it retreats to the back of our mind. It can stay there.
Megan McArdle, “A $2,000 Dishwasher Will Never Impress Me”, Bloomberg View, 2017-05-25.
June 29, 2019
QotD: Blogging versus social media
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, The Social Media Upheaval, 2019. (link goes to Althouse, who posted this quote based on the Kindle edition)
June 28, 2019
QotD: “Intelligence” is just a noun
We have said that we will be drawing most heavily on data from the classical tradition. That implies that we also accept certain conclusions undergirding that tradition. To draw the strands of our perspective together and to set the stage for the rest of the book, let us set them down explicitly. Here are six conclusions regarding tests of cognitive ability, drawn from the classical tradition, that are by now beyond significant technical dispute:
- There is such a thing as a general factor of cognitive ability on which human beings differ.
- All standardized tests of academic aptitude or achievement measure this general factor to some degree, but IQ tests expressly designed for that purpose measure it most accurately.
- IQ scores match, to a first degree, whatever it is that people mean when they use the word intelligent or smart in ordinary language.
- IQ scores are stable, although not perfectly so, over much of a person’s life.
- Properly administered IQ tests are not demonstrably biased against social, economic, ethnic, or racial groups.
- Cognitive ability is substantially heritable, apparently no less than 40 percent and no more than 80 percent.
Charles Murray, “The Bell Curve Explained”, American Enterprise Institute, 2017-05-20.
June 27, 2019
QotD: “Misandropologies”
Even though black women live longer than white men in the USA … and even though women control more disposable wealth than men do … and even though women are snagging most of the college degrees these days … and even though the law and public sympathy heavily lean toward women in any dispute between the sexes … and even though the media portray men as either bumbling incompetents or bloodthirsty rape-monsters … and even though men are far more likely to commit suicide, die on the job, or be homeless than women … we’re still lectured by these bitter fat blobs and their testosterone-free male enablers that misandry isn’t real because men still benefit from certain mysterious “systemic” and “institutional” advantages that none of these assholes seem able to enumerate even when calmly asked to do so.
It’s a funny sort of “patriarchy” we inhabit.
To allege that women are capable of malice and violence and deception is only to allege that they’re human. To expect anything less of them would be dehumanizing and patronizing — which, ironically, shares a root word with “patriarchy.” When feminism ditched the “equity” rhetoric in favor of a menses-splattered pagan goddess religion that depicts men as irredeemable worker drones and women as innocent angels, men who weren’t entirely asleep or pussy-whipped realized that the rules had changed and that they were under attack. But even to notice that a lot of women openly exult in hating men gets you labeled a “woman-hater.”
Misandry is real, and those who seek to deny or justify it deserve a stern paddling. And even if you acknowledge that it’s real, don’t try to make excuses for it using some postmodern gobbledygook, because then you become a misandry apologist — a misandropologist. Just admit that women can be every bit as mean, nasty, horrid, foul, vile, shitty, and hateful as men. It’s part of the human condition.
Naïve as it may be, I envision an enlightened future where there is no longer any misogyny or misandry — only a beautiful, sweet, shared sense of misanthropy.
Jim Goad, “Confronting the Misandropologists”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-05-08.
June 26, 2019
QotD: “Right-wing central planning is as foolish as left-wing central planning”
The real world is populated by politicians and lobbyists rather than philosopher-kings, but a government of philosopher-kings that tried to micromanage the economy in the way Beattie suggests would fail, just as all similar attempts at putting the economy under political discipline have failed. Right-wing central planning is as foolish as left-wing central planning.
Kevin D. Williamson, “Right-wing central planning is as foolish as left-wing central planning”, National Review, 2017-06-12.
June 25, 2019
QotD: Perpetual adolescence
SENATOR BEN SASSE: Yes, so this book is 100 percent not about politics, and it’s 99 percent not about policy. It’s about this new category of perpetual adolescence. And, first, let’s just say that, over the last two millennia or so, the emergence of a category called adolescence is a pretty special gift. We believe that, when our kids become biological adults, when they hit puberty, they don’t have to be fully formed, morally, emotionally, economically, educationally, in terms of household structure. They don’t have to go out and be fully adult immediately. They don’t have to go off to war, and they don’t have to become economically self-sufficient. That’s glorious, to have that protected space between childhood and adulthood. But it’s only glorious if you understand that it’s a transitional state, it’s a means to an end. Peter Pan’s Neverland is a hell. It’s a dystopia. And we don’t want to be — have our kids caught at a place where they’re not learning how to be adults. And, right now, we’re not tending to the habit formation aspects of a republic.
“Face the Nation transcript, May 14, 2017: Schiff, Sasse, Gates”, CBS News, 2017-05-14.
June 24, 2019
QotD: Political dishonesty
George Orwell, “As I Please”, Tribune, 1944-12-08.
June 23, 2019
QotD: The American way of war
One paragraph caught my eye:
We prefer our wars quick and decisive, concluding with a surrender ceremony, and we like firepower more than we want to admit, while counterinsurgency requires supreme restraint. Its apostles in Vietnam used to say, “The best weapon for killing is a knife. If you can’t use a knife, then a gun. The worst weapon is airpower.” Counterinsurgency is, according to the experts, 80 percent political. We spend our time on American charts and plans and tasks, as if the solution to another country’s internal conflict is to get our own bureaucracy right. And maybe we don’t take the politics of other people seriously. It comes down to the power of our belief in ourselves. If we are good — and are we not good? — then we won’t need to force other people to do what we want. They will know us by our deeds, and they will want for themselves what we want for them.
There is, I fear, a lot of truth in that little paragraph and I am also worried that the American fascination (mainly the Pentagon’s fascination) with process and organization has spread to Canberra, London, Ottawa, Wellington and even Berlin. The notion is that if we can just get our organizations and procedures right then everything will fall into line. We have forgotten that while good, sound organizations and sensible, simple, robust procedure do matter, they need to be in service to a sound strategic aim (a vision, if you like) and, sometimes, ad hoc organizations and “off-the-wall” procedures work best in new situations, whether counter-insurgency or all-out war against a peer.
Ted Campbell, “Following the blind leader (3)”, Ted Campbell’s Point of View, 2019-05-21.
June 22, 2019
QotD: Militant Islam and the arts
Mark Steyn, interviewed by John Bloom, “Mark Steyn, Cole Porter and Free Speech”, Quadrant, 2017-05-11.
