Overconfidence From Moral Signaling
Tyler Cowen in Stubborn Attachments: The real issue is that we don’t know whether our actions today will in fact give rise to a better future, even when it appears that they will. If you ponder these...
View ArticleDo I Offend?
The last eight months have seen four episodes where many people on Twitter called me a bad offensive person, often via rude profanity, sometimes calling for me to be fired or arrested. These four...
View ArticleCheckmate On Blackmail
Often in chess, at least among novices, one player doesn’t know that they’ve been checkmated. When the other player declares “checkmate”, this first player is surprised; that claim contradicts their...
View ArticleDownfall
On Bryan Caplan’s recommendation, I just watched the movie Downfall. To me, it depicts an extremely repulsive and reprehensible group of people, certainly compared to any real people I’ve ever met. So...
View ArticleEnd War Or Mosquitoes?
Malaria may have killed half of all the people that ever lived. (more) Over one million people die from malaria each year, mostly children under five years of age, with 90% of malaria cases occurring...
View ArticleDefrock Deregulation Economists?
Recent economics Nobel prize winner Paul Romer is furious that economists have sometimes argued for deregulation; he wants them “defrocked”, & cast from the profession: New generation of...
View ArticlePlot Holes & Blame Holes
We love stories, and the stories we love the most tend to support our cherished norms and morals. But our most popular stories also tend to have many gaping plot holes. These are acts which characters...
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A Perfect Storm of Inflexibility
Most biological species specialize for particular ecological niches. But some species are generalists, “specializing” in doing acceptably well in a wider range of niches, and thus also in rapidly...
View ArticleALL Big Punishment Is “Cruel”
Cruel – willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it. Cruelty is pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another’s suffering when a clear remedy is readily...
View ArticleWhy We Fight Over Fiction
We tell stories with language, and so prefer to tell the kind of stories that ordinary language can describe well. Consider how language can describe a space of physical stuff and how to navigate...
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