Category: Uncategorized
-
Incentives in markets vs politics
People tend to become better at doing the thing they are rewarded for doing. Entrepreneurs are good at turning money into products, politicians are good at getting votes, bureaucrats are good at increasing their budgets and influence, and welfare recipients are good at becoming more needy. In markets with well-defined property rights, there is a tendency…
-
The Future of Bitcoin
This is not a prediction, but one plausible timeline out of the many I can imagine: Late 2013: The media reports that organized crime, tax evaders, and “terrorists” are using Bitcoin. Early 2014: Politicians call for investigation of claims that Bitcoin is being used to facilitate illegal activities. The rhetoric is ratcheted up over the…
-
Sophie’s Birth Plan
“A birth plan is a written list of preferences to be used as a guide for how you would like your labor and delivery to go.” Here is the one we used for our daughter, born February 26. See the PDF for the document signed by our doula and midwife. Text below:
-
America’s culture of violence
Although I believe in the individual’s right to own the means to defend himself, I want to say that I do not believe that the reason that there are so many violent shootings in the USA is that too few people own guns. Nor do I believe, that the main problem is that people do…
-
Learning to squat
You probably don’t know how to squat. In fact, you are probably not capable of squatting for any period of time, even though it is one of the basic human positions, just like standing and lying. Why does it matter? Because, as I recently discovered, squatting is the optimal position for all sorts of things…
-
A comparison of two non-empirical hypotheses
“Mais où est Dieu dans tout cela?” “[Sire,] je n’ai pas eu besoin de cette hypothèse.” – Pierre-Simon Laplace If you ask a pre-modern, pre-scientific person why he believes in God, he would probably mention the need to explain some natural phenomena, living or geological, or perhaps offer some ontological justification. If you ask…
-
Why Paleo?
We are animals not far removed from the jungle. Genetically, we are identical to primitive man. Our bodies have been shaped by our environment to make the best of the resources available to us. Our genotype (the DNA) only develops a healthy phenotype (our body and mind) in response to the environmental inputs it evolved…
-
There are two ways to measure life expectancy: objective (wall clock) time and subjective time: life as we experience and remember it. A long boring life is subjectively shorter than a short, exciting life that is full of memories. The boring, repetitive parts (commuting to work, sitting in a cubicle, watching television) get compressed while…
-
Why I am a radical
Conservatism: the philosophical position that one should oppose new ideas and practices. Moderatism: the idea that one’s pursuit of truth should never conflict with the majority opinion — too much. Extremism: the belief that one should adopt beliefs opposed to the majority. In relation to reality, in any given society, conservatives, moderates and extremists have…
-
Us and them
Human beings naturally group people into those we identify with and “others.” We understand and empathize with “our” kind of people, but simplify others into stereotyped models. We treat our family, school, city, country, race, sport team, political or sexual identity, or whatever with various degrees of familiarity. And then perhaps we travel to another…