Well yes, that was even more jarring, though I can't fault them for putting Uther in, simply because it created a role for Anthony Stewart Head (all hail King Giles!)
Having said that, the King Arthur story is constantly being retold. In fact I recall reading some time ago a blog post that argued that the series was drawing on some of the older pre-Mallory legends.
Not that Guinivere was the only ethnically suspicious character, I mean look at Arthur. Blond hair, blue eyes, how can he be King of the Britons when he's clearly a Saxon?
I can't condense my knowledge of Behavioural Economics into a blog post, but there is clear evidence that human brains process information quite badly under certain conditions. Here's a quick reference.
And just because bias is hard wired in doesn't mean we can't fight it. We can, as you say, revise our opinions. Certain type of education can diminish some biases too, for instance a knowledge of statistics can partially protect people from a number of biases around uncertainty. We are wired with bases, but the brain can be re-wired, to an extent.
However, while we can fight bias and make gains against it, we can't decisively win. Short of completely redesigning the human brain bias will always be with us. It's important to remember that because we can't try to mitigate our bias if we think we have triumphed over them.
Yudkowsky is the only living person I'm aware of who I'd describe as disturbingly intelligent. I haven't gotten to grips with his timeless decision theory yet, but I need to make the effort at some point.
What can I say? The Divine Right of Popular Opinion is one of our foundational social myths. If there was no such thing as a collective preference, then majority rule starts to look a little arbitrary.
I think Ned's point is that it's impossible to act without bias. The human brain has a plethora of biases hard-wired into it and most of them we aren't even aware of.
The best one can do is be aware of one's own biases and try to give extra scepticism to ideas one is biased toward, and extra charity to ideas one is biased against.
At any rate, London has the balls to suddenly deploy outside the window of the house in which the scene is set a character who not only worked at the Sierra Mills, but who in fact had his arm chewed off by a machine in an effort to save the company a few dollars and was afterwards fired, his damage claims defeated in court by company lawyers. Ernest explains all of this in perfect detail to his reluctant sexual admirer, having total knowledge of a literary universe in which London is God and he London’s prophet and mouthpiece.
It is this that makes me deeply suspicious of fiction as a source of political or social commentary, or for that matter as a source of any insight into the human condition. Fiction is manufactured evidence, and it cannot offer a true insight into how things work because the author sets all the rules.
And let's not forget Arrow's Impossibly Theorem either. One of the corollaries of the theorem is that there's no such thing as coherent collective preferences. As such the "will of the people" is an entirely incoherent proposition.
At the very least it raises questions about the value of revelation as a source of evidence. After all, at least 80% of humanity is wrong about the nature of any god or gods and that's if the Catholics are right. If it's a smaller group then the proportion could be much higher.
Not true, with statistical techniques you can try to tease the effects of prevention out by counting incidents as you vary the level of prevention put in place. I will agree that this isn't really feasible with low-probability events like terrorism though.
There are disincentives, with Negative Income Taxing, but they're less severe. And by 'demographically stable" I mean "less likely to collapse under the weight of an ageing population".
Yes but what is the point of forced retirement savings? To ensure people can subsist in their old age. Instead of fooling around with savings schemes, why not cut out the middleman? Negative income taxes lack the perverse incentives of Social Security, and are far more demographically stable.
Measuring the outcomes of your actions is a very good idea: if you can't tell the difference between a policy working and a policy not working, what does that say for the merit of the policy? An invisible effect might as well be non-existent.
The trouble is that monitoring and evaluation are hard, and require genuine expertise. A classic rookie mistake is to measure outputs instead of outcomes. As Robert Peel put it, the success of police is not measured in number of arrests but in absence of crime. But then Peel's wisdom has long been absent from the conduct of law enforcement.
The collective term for such arguments is Poisoning the Well. Regardless of the particulars it is a technique based on discrediting someone's arguments by declaring the person morally invalid. It's a specialised form of ad hominem.
It depends on what you're hedging against. If it's total civilisational collapse you're worried about then buy canned goods and shotguns. But if you're instead worried about an oppressive domestic government that you might have to flee, then gold is a highly portable and anonymous store of value.
Of course that would only justify holding gold in person, not any form of gold derivative.
It's certainly easier to retard growth than to promote it, but along the margin of policies that could be implemented in the US, there's little that would affect growth to a meaningful extent. That's not to say all policies are equally good, far from it, it's just that the effect on GDP is not a particularly useful criterion.
As a general rule, congressional bipartisanship is the political equivalent of the Crips and the Bloods banding together to rob the rest of the neighborhood.
My favourite version of this sentiment is that bipartisanship is when the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do something stupid and evil.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “On Hobbits, Race, and Self-Contained Worlds”
Well yes, that was even more jarring, though I can't fault them for putting Uther in, simply because it created a role for Anthony Stewart Head (all hail King Giles!)
Having said that, the King Arthur story is constantly being retold. In fact I recall reading some time ago a blog post that argued that the series was drawing on some of the older pre-Mallory legends.
Not that Guinivere was the only ethnically suspicious character, I mean look at Arthur. Blond hair, blue eyes, how can he be King of the Britons when he's clearly a Saxon?
On “Dealing With Political Blind Spots”
I can't condense my knowledge of Behavioural Economics into a blog post, but there is clear evidence that human brains process information quite badly under certain conditions. Here's a quick reference.
And just because bias is hard wired in doesn't mean we can't fight it. We can, as you say, revise our opinions. Certain type of education can diminish some biases too, for instance a knowledge of statistics can partially protect people from a number of biases around uncertainty. We are wired with bases, but the brain can be re-wired, to an extent.
However, while we can fight bias and make gains against it, we can't decisively win. Short of completely redesigning the human brain bias will always be with us. It's important to remember that because we can't try to mitigate our bias if we think we have triumphed over them.
On “On Hobbits, Race, and Self-Contained Worlds”
Have you seen any of the BBC's Merlin? Lancelot wasn't black, but Guinevere was. It really made the whole thing a bit jarring.
On “The AI-Box Experiment”
Yudkowsky is the only living person I'm aware of who I'd describe as disturbingly intelligent. I haven't gotten to grips with his timeless decision theory yet, but I need to make the effort at some point.
On “The will of the people and other illusions”
What can I say? The Divine Right of Popular Opinion is one of our foundational social myths. If there was no such thing as a collective preference, then majority rule starts to look a little arbitrary.
On “Dealing With Political Blind Spots”
I think Ned's point is that it's impossible to act without bias. The human brain has a plethora of biases hard-wired into it and most of them we aren't even aware of.
The best one can do is be aware of one's own biases and try to give extra scepticism to ideas one is biased toward, and extra charity to ideas one is biased against.
On “Jack London, the socialist Ayn Rand”
It is this that makes me deeply suspicious of fiction as a source of political or social commentary, or for that matter as a source of any insight into the human condition. Fiction is manufactured evidence, and it cannot offer a true insight into how things work because the author sets all the rules.
"
There's also some very good non-erotic HP fanfic out there. I'm particularly fond of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky.
On “The will of the people and other illusions”
And let's not forget Arrow's Impossibly Theorem either. One of the corollaries of the theorem is that there's no such thing as coherent collective preferences. As such the "will of the people" is an entirely incoherent proposition.
"
What a fascinating concept.
On “Fear and Failures of Interpretation”
At the very least it raises questions about the value of revelation as a source of evidence. After all, at least 80% of humanity is wrong about the nature of any god or gods and that's if the Catholics are right. If it's a smaller group then the proportion could be much higher.
On “$200,000,000 per arrest”
Not true, with statistical techniques you can try to tease the effects of prevention out by counting incidents as you vary the level of prevention put in place. I will agree that this isn't really feasible with low-probability events like terrorism though.
On “The Remnant”
Isn't it interesting how much the One Percent Doctrine, advanced by the right, and the Precautionary Principle, advanced by the left, have in common?
On “Are We All “Trust Fund” Babies?”
There are disincentives, with Negative Income Taxing, but they're less severe. And by 'demographically stable" I mean "less likely to collapse under the weight of an ageing population".
"
Yes but what is the point of forced retirement savings? To ensure people can subsist in their old age. Instead of fooling around with savings schemes, why not cut out the middleman? Negative income taxes lack the perverse incentives of Social Security, and are far more demographically stable.
"
Negative income taxing. Then you don't even need a separate retirement system. Plus, what Murali said about Singapore's system.
On “Check out these WASPs”
Things have come to a pretty pass when you get nostalgic for George W Bush ;)
On “Note to NYPD: This Is Not How You Improve Relations With the Community”
Measuring the outcomes of your actions is a very good idea: if you can't tell the difference between a policy working and a policy not working, what does that say for the merit of the policy? An invisible effect might as well be non-existent.
The trouble is that monitoring and evaluation are hard, and require genuine expertise. A classic rookie mistake is to measure outputs instead of outcomes. As Robert Peel put it, the success of police is not measured in number of arrests but in absence of crime. But then Peel's wisdom has long been absent from the conduct of law enforcement.
On “I’ve Never Been in a Crowd Like This, They’re Nuts”
The collective term for such arguments is Poisoning the Well. Regardless of the particulars it is a technique based on discrediting someone's arguments by declaring the person morally invalid. It's a specialised form of ad hominem.
"
Remember Koom Valley!
On “Thanks for Pitching The Road to Serfdom. Now Please Get Lost.”
It depends on what you're hedging against. If it's total civilisational collapse you're worried about then buy canned goods and shotguns. But if you're instead worried about an oppressive domestic government that you might have to flee, then gold is a highly portable and anonymous store of value.
Of course that would only justify holding gold in person, not any form of gold derivative.
On “I’ve Never Been in a Crowd Like This, They’re Nuts”
Where's Abraham Lincoln when you need him?
On “Moderating Extremists”
Perhaps we should take Alex Tabarrok's suggestion of replacing presidential debates with a game show.
On “Playing games with the deficit”
It's certainly easier to retard growth than to promote it, but along the margin of policies that could be implemented in the US, there's little that would affect growth to a meaningful extent. That's not to say all policies are equally good, far from it, it's just that the effect on GDP is not a particularly useful criterion.
On “Don’t Set The Doomsday Clock Ahead Quite Yet”
My favourite version of this sentiment is that bipartisanship is when the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do something stupid and evil.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.