Citations
Your Disdain for This Banal Existence
Today’s Rolcats image is certainly my favorite so far.
Norvig and Partisanship
Peter Norvig has a great post on his website about models used to claim that the primary system induces greater partisanship in our elected officials. I’d encourage everyone to read it, if for no other reason than to see for yourself that Norvig really does call someone his “homey” while writing about simulated election results. [...]
Arnold Kling on Liberaltarianism
Arnold Kling has just written an interesting response to Ross Douthat’s piece in The Atlantic on Liberaltarianism. I agree with a great deal of what Arnold says, especially his claim that the role of libertarian thinkers in America is “to restrain the power-hungry elites in both parties.”
To Create Difficulties Everywhere
It is now about four years ago that I got the notion of wanting to try my luck as an author. I remember it quite clearly; it was on a Sunday, yes, that’s it, a Sunday afternoon. I was seated as usual, out-of-doors at the cafe in the Fredricksberg Garden. I had been a student [...]
Morality, Ethics and Optimization Problems
We’ve just begun taking a course in ethics here in the Princeton psychology department. I find it hard not to play the devil’s advocate during class by poking fun at the haphazard and half-consistent theories behind much of moral philosophy. My attitude seems always to echo one of my favorite of Nietzsche’s aphorisms: Are we [...]
Unpretentious Truths
Returning tonight to reading Taleb’s “Black Swan”, I was struck by the extent to which his preference for empiricism over theory repeats Nietzsche’s praise of “unpretentious truths” in Human, All Too Human: Estimation of unpretentious truths.– It is the mark of a higher culture to value the little unpretentious truths which have been discovered by [...]
Big Holes and Holes Filled
This video is simply awesome, even though I don’t particularly agree that tax cuts will clearly work.
The Fatal Genetic Condition called Mortality
Rereading Steven Pinker’s recent essay on the Personal Genomic Project — and genetics more generally –, I was particularly struck by this line: All of us already live with the knowledge that we have the fatal genetic condition called mortality, and most of us cope using some combination of denial, resignation and religion.
Breast Cancer and Early First Pregnancy?
Reading David Freedman’s book “Statistical Models: Theory and Practice” today, I was very struck by this passage: Example 1. In cross-national comparisons, there is a striking correlation between the number of telephone lines per capita in a country and the death rate from breast cancer in that country. This is not because talking on the [...]
Alexander and His Hectors
I suspect that anyone with an interest in evolutionary psychology or game theory will enjoy this passage from Taleb’s “The Black Swan:” I discovered that it is much more effective to act like a nice guy and be “reasonable” if you prove willing to go beyond just verbiage. You can afford to be compassionate, lax, [...]