Category: Philosophy

What should I ask Chuck Klosterman?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will be doing a Conversation with him.  If you do not already know, here is part of his Wikipedia entry:

Charles John Klosterman (born 1972) is an American author and essayist whose work focuses on American popular culture. He has been a columnist for Esquire and ESPN.com and wrote “The Ethicist” column for The New York Times Magazine. Klosterman is the author of eleven books, including two novels and the essay collection Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto.

His forthcoming book is about the 90s, namely The Nineties: A Book.  So what should I ask him?  Including about the 90s of course.

Many heads are more utilitarian than one

by  Tyler Cowen in

Highlights

Collective consensual judgments made via group interactions were more utilitarian than individual judgments.

Group discussion did not change the individual judgments indicating a normative conformity effect.

Individuals consented to a group judgment that they did not necessarily buy into personally.

Collectives were less stressed than individuals after responding to moral dilemmas.

Interactions reduced aversive emotions (e.g., stressed)associated with violation of moral norms.

Here is the full article by Anita Keshmirian, Ophelia Deroy, and Bahador Bahrami.  Via Michelle Dawson.

Psychedelics alter metaphysical beliefs

by  Tyler Cowen in

Can the use of psychedelic drugs induce lasting changes in metaphysical beliefs? While it is popularly believed that they can, this question has never been formally tested. Here we exploited a large sample derived from prospective online surveying to determine whether and how beliefs concerning the nature of reality, consciousness, and free-will, change after psychedelic use. Results revealed significant shifts away from ‘physicalist’ or ‘materialist’ views, and towards panpsychism and fatalism, post use. With the exception of fatalism, these changes endured for at least 6 months, and were positively correlated with the extent of past psychedelic-use and improved mental-health outcomes. Path modelling suggested that the belief-shifts were moderated by impressionability at baseline and mediated by perceived emotional synchrony with others during the psychedelic experience. The observed belief-shifts post-psychedelic-use were consolidated by data from an independent controlled clinical trial. Together, these findings imply that psychedelic-use may causally influence metaphysical beliefs—shifting them away from ‘hard materialism’. We discuss whether these apparent effects are contextually independent.

Here is the full piece, by Christopher Timmermann, et.al., via Anecdotal.

Solve for the Swiss suicide equilibrium

by  Tyler Cowen in

A 3D-printed capsule is set to “revolutionize” assisted suicide. It may be legally operated in Switzerland. This is according to an expert opinion obtained by Exit International – the organization that developed the “Sarco” machine – and was first reported by Swiss Info.

In 2020, around 1300 people died in Switzerland through euthanasia. They were cared for by the two largest euthanasia organizations in the country: Exit (no connection to Exit International) and Dignitas. The current common method is the ingestion of liquid sodium pentobarbital. After taking the drug, the person falls asleep within two to five minutes before slipping into a deep coma and dying soon after.

The capsule called “Sarco” offers a different approach to a peaceful death, without the need for prescription substances.

“It is a 3D printed capsule that can be activated from inside by the person who wants to die. The machine can be taken to any place to die. This can be in an idyllic outdoor setting or, for example, in the rooms of an euthanasia organization.” (Philip Nitschke)

The capsule is mounted on a device that floods the interior with nitrogen and very quickly reduces the oxygen content from 21 to one percent.

The person feels a little disoriented and may also feel slightly euphoric before losing consciousness. The whole process takes about 30 seconds. Death occurs from hypoxia and hypocapnia, a lack of oxygen and carbon dioxide, respectively. “There is no panic, no feeling of suffocation,” Nitschke added.

Here is the article, via Neville.  Whether or not you think this particular device has a future, the point is more general.  Technological advances come to many areas, not just the ones that make the cover of Wired magazine.

What should I ask Russ Roberts?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will be doing a podcast with him, specifically focusing on his decision to emigrate to Israel.  Here are the suggestions that Russ solicited from Twitter.  We will release the episode both on EconTalk and on CWT.

So what should I ask him?  Keep in mind this is the Conversation with Russ I want to have…

From John Harland on Quora

by  Tyler Cowen in

Identity confusion is a potential hazard for autistic people. Neurotypical people characteristically develop a “personality” that they use to define and to ground themselves. That is the mask through which they interact with society. Autistic people do that to a much lesser extent and that can be a major strength, as well as a risk.

A muted sense of identity can make it much easier for an autistic person to become and effective contributor to a group because it makes them more adaptable. They carry less personal baggage about what ideas define them.

It can also make them very good at acting and at creating humour. However we might think of several famous actors and comedians who have killed themselves, seemingly because they were haunted by questions about who they “really” were behind all those adopted personas.

Learning to be ready for those questions, and learning why that trait can be a strength, are important lessons to impart to autistic children and adults.

Here is the link, with other interesting bits.

The Paxlovid Paradox

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Zvi at LessWrong rounds up the COVID news including this excellent bit on Pfizer’s anti-Covid pill Paxlovid which looks to be very effective but is not yet FDA approved.

The trial was stopped due to ‘ethical considerations’ for being too effective. You see, we live in a world in which:

  1. It is illegal to give this drug to any patients, because it hasn’t been proven safe and effective.
  2. It is illegal to continue a trial to study the drug, because it has been proven so safe and effective that it isn’t ethical to not give the drug to half the patients.
  3. Who, if they weren’t in the study, couldn’t get the drug at all, because it is illegal due to not being proven safe and effective yet. 
  4. So now no one gets added to the trial so those who would have been definitely don’t get Paxlovid, and are several times more likely to die.
  5. But our treatment of them is now ‘ethical.’
  6. For the rest of time we will now hear about how it was only seven deaths and we can’t be sure Paxlovid works or how well it works, and I expect to spend hours arguing over exactly how much it works.
  7. For the rest of time people will argue the study wasn’t big enough so we don’t know the Paxlovid is safe.
  8. Those arguments will then be used both by people arguing to not take Paxlovid, and people who want to require other interventions because of these concerns.
  9. FDA Delenda Est.

Christopher DeMuth on national conservatism

by  Tyler Cowen in

I thought the recent WSJ Op-Ed by DeMuth was one of this year’s more important essays.  DeMuth argues that conservatism needs a new [and also older], less libertarian, less cosmopolitan turn.  Here is his core message:

When the leftward party in a two-party system is seized by such radicalism, the conservative instinct for moderation is futile and may be counterproductive. Yet many conservative politicians stick with it, promising to correct specific excesses that have stirred popular revulsion. Republicans will win some elections that way—but what will they do next? National conservatives recognize that in today’s politics, the excesses are the essence. Like Burke after 1789, we shift to opposing revolution tout court.

Why national conservatism? Have you noticed that almost every progressive initiative subverts the American nation? Explicitly so in opening national borders, disabling immigration controls, and transferring sovereignty to international bureaucracies. But it also works from within—elevating group identity above citizenship; fomenting racial, ethnic and religious divisions; disparaging common culture and the common man; throwing away energy independence; defaming our national history as a story of unmitigated injustice; hobbling our national future with gargantuan debts that will constrain our capacity for action.

The left’s anti-nationalism is another sharp break with the past.

Do read the whole thing, as they say.  I cannot summarize his entire argument, but here are some points of push back:

1. It is a mistake to start by defining one’s view in opposition to some other set of views, in this case progressivism.  You will end up with something limited and defensive and ultimately uninspiring.

2. Unlike many classical liberals, I’ve long made my peace with nationalism, but for pragmatic reasons.  I view it as morally arbitrary, but also as the only possible solid foundation for a stably globalized world, given the psychologically collectivist tendencies of most humans.  DeMuth opposes national conservatism to globalization for the most part, but strong nations and strong globalizations go together.  There is talk of “global markets that eclipse the nation and divide its citizens,” but the case needs to be stronger and more specific than that.  National security arguments aside (yes we Americans should produce more chips domestically), which exactly are the global markets that are eclipsing us?  And is it global markets that are polarizing us?  Really?  Which ones exactly and how?

3. Virtually every critic of globalization wants to pick and choose.  There is plenty of “globalization for me, not for thee” in these ideological arenas.  (In similar fashion, I don’t quite get the Peter Thiel bitcoin > globalization point of view….crypto has been quite international pretty much from the beginning, and often at least in spirit directed against national monies.)  And which exactly is the national body we are going to trust with micro-managing globalization?  Some DC bureaucracy that operates as effectively as the CDC and is filled 90% or more with Democrats?  From a national conservative point of view, or for that matter from my point of view, why do that?

4. For better or worse, Biden is far more of a nationalist than DeMuth makes him out to be.  “Confiscating vaccine patents” is the only example given of this supposed excess cosmopolitanism, but hey just look at the allocation of those third doses, something Biden has pushed hard himself.  On many matters of foreign policy, including China, the differences between Trump and Biden are tiny.  And Europe isn’t exactly happy with Biden either.

5. The policy recommendations toward the end of the piece are underwhelming.  Common carrier regulation to prevent Facebook from taking down controversial opinions is the first suggestion.  Whether or not you agree with that proposal, the major social media companies were not doing much in the way of “take downs” as recently as ten years ago.  To return to that state of affairs, but with the whole thing enforced by government (“Some DC bureaucracy that operates as effectively as perhaps the CDC and also is filled 90% or more with Democrats?”), is…uninspiring.

6. The next set of policy recommendations are “big projects” for cybersecurity and quantum computing.  Again, whether or not you agree with those specific ideas, I don’t see why they need national conservatism as a foundation.  You might just as easily come to those positions through a Progress Studies framework, among other views.  And is a centralized approach really best for cybersecurity?  How secure were the systems of the Office of Personnel Management?  Doesn’t the firming up of all those soft targets require a fairly decentralized approach?

7. DeMuth refers to our “once-great” museums as deserving of revitalization.  I would agree that the visual arts of painting and sculpture were more culturally central in earlier decades than today.  But putting aside the National Gallery of Art in D.C. (in a state of radical decline…maybe blame the national Feds?), and the immediate problems of the pandemic, American museums are pretty awesome.  MOMA for instance is far better than it used to be.  If there has been a problem, it is that 9/11 made foreign loan contracts for art exhibits more difficult to pull off, in part for reasons of insurance.  In other words, the contraction of globalization has hurt American museums.

8. I wonder how he feels about crypto, Web 3.0, and the Metaverse?  I think it is perfectly fine to regard the correct opinions on those topics as still unsettled, but is national conservatism really such a great starting point?  Aren’t we going to rather rapidly neglect the potential upside from those innovations?  Shouldn’t we instead try to start by understanding the technologies, and then see if a nationalist point of view on them is going to make sense?

More generally, if you are going to do the NatCon thing, how about embracing the tech companies as America’s great national champions?  Embracing them as your only hope for countering left-wing MSM?  Somehow that is missing from DeMuth’s vision.

So I liked the piece, but I say it is a rearguard action, destined to fail.  We need a more positive, more dynamic approach to a free society of responsible individuals, and that is probably going to mean an ongoing expansion of globalization and also a fairly new and indeed somewhat unsettled understanding of what the nation is going to consist of.  What DeMuth calls “empirical libertarianism,” as he associates with Adam Smith, I still take as a better starting point.

Apply for an ACX grant

by  Tyler Cowen in

From Scott Alexander:

I want to give grants to good research and good projects with a minimum of paperwork. Like an NIH grant or something, only a lot less money and prestige.

How is this different from Marginal Revolution’s Fast Grants, Nadia Eghbal’s Helium Grants, or EA Funds‘ grant rounds?

Not different at all. It’s total 100% plagiarism of them. I’m doing it anyway because I think it’s a good idea, and I predict there are a lot of good people with good projects in this community who haven’t heard about / participated in those, but who will participate when I do it.

How much money are you giving out?

ACX Grants proper will involve $250,000 of my own money, but I’m hoping to supplement with much more of other people’s money, amount to be determined. See the sections on ACX Grants + and ACX Grants ++ below.

Here is further detail, including a link to the application form.

My Conversation with David Salle

by  Tyler Cowen in

I was honored to visit his home and painting studio, here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the CWT summary:

David joined Tyler to discuss the fifteen (or so) functions of good art, why it’s easier to write about money than art, what’s gone wrong with art criticism today, how to cultivate good taste, the reasons museum curators tend to be risk-averse, the effect of modern artistic training on contemporary art, the evolution of Cézanne, how the centrality of photography is changing fine art, what makes some artists’ retrospectives more compelling than others, the physical challenges of painting on a large scale, how artists view museums differently, how a painting goes wrong, where his paintings end up, what great collectors have in common, how artists collect art differently, why Frank O’Hara was so important to Alex Katz and himself, what he loves about the films of Preston Sturges, why The Sopranos is a model of artistic expression, how we should change intellectual property law for artists, the disappointing puritanism of the avant-garde, and more.

And excerpt:

COWEN: Yes, but just to be very concrete, let’s say someone asks you, “I want to take one actionable step tomorrow to learn more about art.” And they are a smart, highly educated person, but have not spent much time in the art world. What should they actually do other than look at art, on the reading level?

SALLE: On the reading level? Oh God, Tyler, that’s hard. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll have to come back with an answer in a few minutes. I’m not sure there’s anything concretely to do on the reading level. There probably is — just not coming to mind.

There’s Henry Geldzahler, who wrote a book very late in his life, at the end of his life. I can’t remember the title, but he addresses the problem of something which is almost a taboo — how do you acquire taste? — which is, in a sense, what we’re talking about. It’s something one can’t even speak about in polite society among art historians or art critics.

Taste is considered to be something not worth discussing. It’s simply, we’re all above that. Taste is, in a sense, something that has to do with Hallmark greeting cards — but it’s not true. Taste is what we have to work with. It’s a way of describing human experience.

Henry, who was the first curator of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, was a wonderful guy and a wonderful raconteur. Henry basically answers your question: find ways, start collecting. “Okay, but I don’t have any money. How can I collect art?” You don’t have to collect great paintings. Just go to the flea market and buy a vase for 5 bucks. Bring it back to your room, live with it, and look at it.

Pretty soon, you’ll start to make distinctions about it. Eventually, if you’re really paying attention to your own reactions, you’ll use it up. You’ll give that to somebody else, and you’ll go back to the flea market, and you buy another, slightly better vase, and you bring that home and live with that. And so the process goes. That’s very real. It’s very concrete.

And:

COWEN: As you know, the 17th century in European painting is a quite special time. You have Velásquez, you have Rubens, you have Bruegel, much, much more. And there are so many talented painters today. Why can they not paint in that style anymore? Or can they? What stops them?

SALLE: Artists are trained in such a vastly different way than in the 17th, 18th, or even the 19th century. We didn’t have the training. We’re not trained in an apprentice guild situation where the apprenticeship starts very early in life, and people who exhibit talent in drawing or painting are moved on to the next level.

Today painters are trained in professional art schools. People reach school at the normal age — 18, 20, 22, something in grad school, and then they’re in a big hurry. If it’s something you can’t master or show proficiency in quickly, let’s just drop it and move on.

There are other reasons as well, cultural reasons. For many years or decades, painting in, let’s say, the style of Velásquez or even the style of Manet — what would have been the reason for it? What would have been the motivation for it, even assuming that one could do it? Modernism, from whenever we date it, from 1900 to 1990, was such a persuasive argument. It was such an inclusive and exciting and dynamic argument that what possibly could have been the reason to want to take a step back 200 years in history and paint like an earlier painter?

It is a bit slow at the very beginning, otherwise excellent throughout.

Don’t overpredict a negative future

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:

A second question would be whether there is evidence to support the contention that Americans have become more negative overall. I am doubtful. Do fans of the Boston Red Sox hate the New York Yankees more than they used to? It’s not obvious that the answer is yes. What about animosity between, say, Protestants and Catholics? That’s probably a good deal weaker. There is almost certainly less homophobia, too, in addition to many other forms of prejudice. There are other indicators of progress; the surge in the number of Americans starting new businesses, for example, is hardly a sign of pessimism.

And:

The good news is that shifts in national moods come relatively frequently, and they are difficult to forecast. In the 1990s, for instance, few people forecast our current predicament of such an extreme polarized emotional opposition. Negative moods do not necessarily feed upon each other and become worse, as shown by the broader currents of history. Civilization has been around for thousands of years, and the U.S. for a few hundred years, in both cases with many ups and downs. If negative moods inevitably lead to nothing more than further collapse or destruction, it is hard to see how we would have come so far.

It is even possible that national moods are characterized by mean-reversion — namely, that negative moods tend to turn more positive, and vice versa. That would imply we could look forward to better moods ahead. That is hardly gospel, but I haven’t seen anyone with a better theory.

And:

So, to sum up a few of the basic facts under this worldview: Americans are more negative and more oppositional in some important ways, especially around politics. This is not a good development. Yet — especially when you look beyond politics — the national mood is by no means entirely sour or hopeless. National moods also change frequently, and in unpredictable ways. There will be many positive developments in coming decades, most of all in biotechnology.

The negativity, in other words, is contained, and it could change swiftly and without notice. I don’t know about you, but I find this outlook liberating — or even, dare I say, a reason for some modest optimism.

The mention of MR commentators, however, is behind the paywall.

My Conversation with Stanley McChrystal

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is part of the CWT summary:

He joined Tyler to discuss whether we’ve gotten better or worse at analyzing risk, the dangerous urge among policymakers to oversimplify the past, why being a good military commander is about more than winning battlefield victories, why we’re underestimating the risk that China will invade Taiwan, how to maintain a long view of history, what set Henry Kissinger apart, the usefulness of war games, how well we understand China and Russia, why there haven’t been any major attacks on US soil since 9/11, the danger of a “soldier class” in America, his take on wokeness and the military, what’s needed to have women as truly senior commanders in the armed forces, why officers with bad experiences should still be considered for promotion, how to address extremists in the military, why he supports a draft, the most interesting class he took at West Point, how to care for disabled veterans, his advice to enlisted soldiers on writing a will, the most emotionally difficult part and greatest joys of his military career, the prospect of drone assassinations, what he eats for his only meal of the day, why he’s done writing books, and more.

And:

COWEN: If we had to shrink one capacity of the military, say, by 50 percent, and double the capacity of another, what would you pick to shrink and what to expand?

MCCHRYSTAL: This is always the tough one. I tend to think that the maneuver warfare part that we have created for ground warfare in Europe or in the Mideast is probably somewhere where we have to accept some risk. We have to have fewer capabilities there. You could even argue maybe the number of aircraft carriers — big capital things.

I think where we can’t afford — and therefore, I would invest — is in really good people. Now, that seems like a simplistic answer, but we are going to need very crafty people at things like cyber warfare. We’re going to need very innovative people. We’re going to need people with cultural acuity, which means language skills, and that’s going to be more important. So if I was advocating, I’d be leaning toward resourcing harder in those areas.

COWEN: Now, of course, your father was a general. You come from a military family. Why is it that military recruitment, right now, is so well predicted by having had a parent in the armed forces? What’s driving that? And how can we take advantage of that to recruit additional people?

MCCHRYSTAL: Well, we’ve taken advantage of it to the point where it may be counterproductive now. When I would travel the battlefields and go to small bases, invariably, the sergeant or lieutenant in charge was the son or daughter of a friend of mine. In one way, it’s comforting because you know people have entered the service with open eyes and clear expectations, and they make good soldiers, but you don’t want a soldier class in America.

Definitely recommended, there is also a segment about disabled veterans and their rights.  And again here is Stan’s new book Risk: A User’s Guide, co-authored with Anna Butrico.