Category: Philosophy

Sentences to ponder

[T]he statement "All models are wrong, but some are useful"
is itself a model (of an epistemological system, with many competing
models) and thus is paradoxical, being true only if it isn’t. Moreover,
although it asserts directly that some models are useful and indirectly
that others are not, the statement tells as [sic] nothing as to which is which, so it is not, itself, useful.

That’s from Germany, by the way (original source here).  Now ponder it!  Even better, the same guy offers (useful) tips on how to cut health care costs.

The original indirect tip is from Seth Roberts.

Trivial but neglected points

If there is one message writ large within the annals of anthropology, it is to beware the solid truths of one’s own culture.  If we contrast our views with those of others, we find that what we take to be "reliable knowledge" is more properly considered a form of folklore.

That is from Kenneth J. Gergen’s often quite interesting The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life.

Free Riding

Taking a cue from the publisher, Amazon.com reports:

[Richard] Tuck presents a bold challenge to the skeptical account of social
cooperation so widely held today.  If accepted, his argument may over
time encourage more public-spirited behavior.

Richard Tuck, of course, is a Professor of Government and Harvard and a historian of early modern political thought.  This book has many complicated philosophic arguments, here are bites of three of them:

1. If your cooperative behavior adds positively to a Sorites problem ("how many stones make a pile?"), it can be rational for a self-interested person to see good reason to contribute.

2. Under a properly sophisticated theory of causality (with or without Sorites), you might see your contribution as helping to cause a good end to come about, even if your contribution is not "necessary" for the good end to occur.  The phrase "pre-emptive cooperation" is used.

3. Rule rather than act utilitarianism often has (rational) force on people’s behavior.

Since there is more cooperation than standard models would predict, we can’t dismiss these arguments, which by the way are used to claim that standard economic reasoning is historically contingent.  By the end of the book we are told that perfect competition may operate as oligopoly and that — don’t be surprised — more government may be both necessary and desirable.   

Think of this as a kind of verbal game theory, written for people who won’t read technical game theory or formulate a precise solution concept.  I don’t think this looser approach is always worse, though the exposition could have been more to the point.

Here is a podcast for the book.  Here are the first twenty pages.

Who is the greatest modern-day thinker?

Stephen Dubner asks, his readers answer.  I say dead people don’t count and give your answers in the comments.  Can I consider Tim Berners-Lee for my nomination or Marc Andreessen — you used a browser to read this post — or whichever single person is most responsible for Google or search more generally?  I don’t intend any slight to Richard Dawkins or the others but I just don’t see how they stand up to these guys.

Addendum: Arnold Kling nominates Vinton Cerf.

What you don’t know that you don’t know

Bryan Caplan writes:

A common Austrian slogan is that "Neoclassical economists study only cases where people know that they don’t know; we study cases where people don’t know that they don’t know."

He demands a good example in support of the Austrian view.  I would cite the arrival of the Spaniards during the time of the Aztecs and the subsequent conquest (see also Fabio’s comment on Bryan’s post).  This was not literally an unimaginable event, since it had (in modified form) been foretold by Nahua prophecy, but still the Aztecs had no ability to respond effectively, given their prevailing mental frameworks. 

More generally, look at the implied volatility embedded in options prices.  Is it forecasting how much volatility is really out there?  Here’s one possible quantitative measure: if you have futures on options, take the measure of "surprise" in implied volatility (the change in implied volatility not forecast by the futures price for the options contract) as the relevant measure of "what you didn’t know that you didn’t know."  I’m not saying this figure is large, or even necessarily positive on average, but I do think it is a meaningful concept.  Arnold Kling responds to Bryan as well.  Here is my previous post on this topic.

Which candidate would Derek Parfit prefer?

Matt Yglesias says that, as a philosopher, Derek Parfit would (should?) prefer Barack Obama.  In Matt’s view Obama as President means a smaller chance of existential catastrophe and Parfit is especially concerned (correctly, in my view) with preventing such catastrophes.  It’s also worth pointing out that Parfit is not such a committed egalitarian.  In his view inequality across different time slices of your life is in principle as bad as inequality across different persons; on the self he is a Humean nominalist so what’s "a person" anyway?  (Has not voter registration in Chicago mastered this perspective some time ago?)  So we should worry more about the temporarily suffering and less about the poor, at least insofar as we are driven by egalitarian intuitions. 

It always struck me as an awkward question for egalitarians whether the dying elderly — arguably the poorest people of them all, adjusting for human capital valuations — should be first in line for claims upon resources.  You might argue that the dying elderly had lots of fun in the past, maybe so, but we don’t refuse to help out the high-time preference poor on these grounds so why should life history diminish the claims of the elderly?

I don’t wish to speak for Parfit but having spent two days in a room with him and Richard Epstein, I can say that a Parfit endorsement of McCain would very much surprise me, existential risk or not.

Where is inequality greater?

Bryan Caplan writes:

In the U.S., we have low gas taxes, low car taxes, few tolls, strict zoning that leads developers to provide lots of free parking, low speed limits, lots of traffic enforcement, and lots of congestion.

In Europe (France and Germany specifically), they have high gas
taxes, high car taxes, lots of tolls, almost no free parking, high
speed limits (often none at all), little traffic enforcement, and very
little congestion. (The only real traffic jam I endured in Europe was
trying to get into Paris during rush hour. I was delayed about 30
minutes total).

If you had to pick one of these two systems, which would you prefer?
Or to make the question a little cleaner, if there were two otherwise
identical countries, but one had the U.S. system and the other had the
Euro system, where would you decide to live?

Much as it pains me to admit, I would choose to live in the country
with the Euro system. If you’re at least upper-middle class, the
convenience is worth the price. Yes, this is another secret way that
Europe is better for the rich, and the U.S. for everyone else.

I wonder sometimes whether inequality of status — as opposed to wealth — is greater in Western Europe or in the United States.  In this country you can love NASCAR and be proud of it.  Millionaires won’t look down on you much for that taste.  In Europe you are expected to dress well and be educated and not watch too much TV.  So the egalitarian left is in an odd position here.  On one hand it wishes to elevate the European system over the United States.  Furthermore it also wishes to claim that wealth isn’t a final determinant of happiness (i.e., Europe is worthy), while at the same time circling back to emphasize inequality of wealth as a prima facie fault of the American system. 

Tighter social networks, by inducing conformity, make a society more egalitarian along both political and economic dimensions.  Yet those same networks place especially high "taxes" on those who don’t follow the norms, thus creating another kind of inequality.

Happiness studies are highly imperfect but the inequality of measured happiness doesn’t seem to be any higher in the United States than in Western Europe.  Oddly that result doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention.

Hail Will Wilkinson!

I think the “nation state-as-primary-moral-community” assumption at
bottom of most modern liberal arguments for the welfare state (and in
many libertarianism-in-one-country arguments, for that matter) is
morally backward. But I also have a fairly conservative theory of
incremental social change. Whether or not all our institutions are
legitimate – and certainly they are not – they are also very good in relative terms, both historically and contemporaneously. My
immediate interest is in taking steps to make those institutions better
in a way that opens up to the possibility of expanding liberty and
thereby well-being the world over.

He is getting better and better all the time.  The link is here.

Hegel, or Department of Yikes

Eric, a loyal MR reader, asks:

Could you comment on
Hegel?  What do you make of his argument regarding the desire for
recognition as a fundamental driving force of history.  I have not read
much of Hegel, but this idea was attributed to him in Francis
Fukuyama’s "The End of History."

My competence here is low but who I am to turn down a loyal reader?  I have looked at every page of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit — usually considered his most profound work — but I can hardly claim to have read it.  Maybe the Master-Slave dialectic was profound at the time but, frankly, I considered the book a waste of time and I couldn’t keep on paying attention.  Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History are more coherent (the writings on aesthetics also) and every now and then Hegel is striking prescient or otherwise brilliant, such as when he is writing about the forthcoming nature of bourgeois commercial society.  But "every now and then" is the operative phrase here.  Mostly you read him because he has been an influential thinker.  A few points:

1. He is more of a classical liberal than most people think.  The correct translation does not in fact have him writing: "The State is the march of God in the world."  And he had a very well-developed theory of property rights.

2. "Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis" is a very bad representation of what Hegel believed.

3. The whole Hegelian structure becomes more plausible once you see it as motivated by the belief that philosophy had become truly, absolutely stuck after Hume and Kant.  Hegel thought that his "moves" were required to get out of the mess that preceded him.  I prefer the pragmatic turn myself.

4. I very much like Charles Taylor’s book on Hegel.  I do not think it is what "Hegel really meant" but perhaps it is what "Hegel would have had to have really meant, had some smart people like Robin Hanson pinned his back against the wall, lectured him about futarchy, and made him write shorter sentences to boot."

5. I believe that the secondary literature on Hegel is fraught with danger and is highly unreliable.

On the desire for recognition, yes it is a fundamental driving force (ask any blogger) although it was a well-known eighteenth century idea.

Overall I don’t think much people should spend much time with Hegel, although if someone tells me he found it a revelation, I don’t think him crazy.

Questions that are rarely asked

This time it’s Robin Hanson’s turn:

…why exactly would learning that
the world is a brutal place make one less interesting in learning more
about that world?  Wouldn’t learning help one to avoid brutality?

That’s in response to Paul Graham, who had written:

We want kids to be innocent so they can
continue to learn. Paradoxical as it sounds, there are some kinds of
knowledge that get in the way of other kinds of knowledge. If you’re
going to learn that the world is a brutal place full of people trying
to take advantage of one another, you’re better off learning it last.
Otherwise you won’t bother learning much more.

Very smart adults often seem unusually innocent, and I don’t think
this is a coincidence. I think they’ve deliberately avoided learning
about certain things. Certainly I do. I used to think I wanted to know
everything. Now I know I don’t.

How happy is Iceland?

Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest
percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the
world in which to live…Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply,
tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme’s
(UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and
as an economy – in terms of wealth, health and education – they are
champions of the world.

Here is much more, interesting throughout, and I have been an admirer since I visited the country in the mid 1990s.  The author emphasizes that Icelandic women have kids when they want to, often at young ages, and they accept that the father may not be around much but the whole family steps in to help out.

I was wondering whether the proclivity of Icelanders to leave their country (many are highly educated and speak fluent English and thus pursue opportunities elsewhere) somehow counts against these happiness claims.  But oddly I think not.  In part it is their intelligence and balance that makes them want to explore other locales.  In percentage terms, hardly any Japanese leave Japan but this counts against the happiness of the country rather than for it.  Country-specific capabilities can in the long run be stunting or reflect stuntedness.

I’ve not yet thought through what this means for the economists’ tendency to use revealed preference as a measure of value.  There are perhaps two margins of rejecting: the people who are not very good at enjoying something or not able to enjoy it because it is bad, and the people who are very good at enjoying something wonderful and thus wish to build upon that strength and move on to something else.

It is perhaps a Buddhist idea to suggest that the happiest country in the world is a totally empty one.

Pointers are from Seth Roberts and Nadav Manham.

Why do ethicists write such long papers?

I found this fascinating:

If indeed my observation that ethicists hardly write short papers is correct, this might say something problematic about us. For example, that we are less sure of ourselves than other philosophers, and thus feel that we have to go on and on. Or that there is a pro-length bias in the guidance we give to our students; or in accepting ethics papers for publication. Or that the subject makes people feel that they always have to (pretend to) be very serious, because morality is such a grave topic. Or even that ethicists simply tend to have less fun. A while ago Mike Otsuka posted here asking about funny titles for ethics papers, and we all found it hard to find examples.

OK people, the challenge is upon you: what are some funny titles for possible ethics papers?  All of my thoughts in this direction are non-funny, such as "A Good Start," or "Here’s Why None of My Papers Have an Abstract."

For the pointer I thank Saul Smilansky.