by Greg Krehbiel on 1 May 2012
Here is a frustratingly short debate between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman. Then Krugman leaves and they just talk to Ron Paul.
Ron Paul, Paul Krugman face off in economic debate
It’s somewhat interesting, but you don’t get enough real discussion to learn anything.
:: What do you think? :: 2012-05-01 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 30 April 2012
Everybody knows the cost of college is out of touch with reality, and we’re waiting for the market to correct things.
I’m not sure that’s going to happen when the costs are obscured by student loans.
Wouldn’t we be better off simply eliminating student loans? Let people go to the college they can afford. ISTM that will provide the appropriate pressure and will bring down the cost of college tuition.
3 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-04-30 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 29 April 2012
Have you seen this? No matter what you think of the constitutionality of the contraception mandate, this is unbelievable. It’s astonishing that this woman still has her job.
10 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-04-29 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 26 April 2012
Some people — usually very young people — think that the moral views they grew up with are the same moral views every human has always had. As they grow up they learn that other people in other cultures and at different times have had very different views — e.g., believing in slavery, or child sacrifice, or whatever.
Most people have a tendency to conform to the views of their culture. Peer pressure, or the relentless bleating of the media on some topic, can push public opinion in a certain direction.
It doesn’t particularly bother me that my views are sometimes out of touch with the culture. In some cases I realize that if we were to count noses — not just in the United States, but across the whole world — then my view would be in the majority. And if we’re going to count noses, it’s also worth considering the views of people from other times in history.
But on other topics I’m out of the mainstream with my contemporaries and with most people who have ever lived. That doesn’t really bother me either. It’s everybody else who should be bothered. 
Now to the point. I think many people believe there is some sort of trajectory to morality — as if we’re collectively getting better. We used to believe in slavery, but now we don’t. We used to believe in the divine right of kings, but now we don’t. And when people imagine future societies, they usually imagine them with “more advanced morals” than we have today. (That is, conforming more closely to the ideas of the script writer.)
That’s not always the case, but it often is. Star Trek certainly takes that view.
Do you believe morality is getting better? Imagine that you were cryogenically frozen and woke up in 500 years to a society with very different morality than we have today. Let’s say they were strict vegetarians, avoided all sexual contact, and trained people for their station in life based on their genetics. They look back on your moral views (whatever they are) the way you might look back on the moral views of a conquistador, or a tribal witch doctor.
Would you conform to the moral views of this new society or not? And if not, why? What would make you think that your moral views are superior?
4 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-04-26 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 25 April 2012
I was listening to a “partially examined life” episode on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and heard a very interesting way to change the terms of the “free will” debate.
We have a bias to think of things in terms of mechanics and causation. E.g., natural law compels this particle to behave in such a way and this chemical to react in this other way. If we apply this to “free will,” and if we say that we’re just particles and chemicals, then why are we exempt from causation?
But let’s say we choose to express things differently. Instead of speaking of cause, let’s say that iron filings prefer to be near magnets.
Science teachers actually speak that way a lot of the time anyway, and nothing measurable is lost by expressing it that way. Maybe not about iron filings and magnets, but it’s common to hear a scientist say that an electron would rather be in a lower orbital, or something along those lines. We may feel a little weird about that kind of language, but there’s nothing objectively wrong with it.
If we say that objects in earth’s gravitational field prefer to fall at 9.8 m/s2, we can do physics just as well as if we say they are caused to fall at that rate.
Now let’s take the “free will” question from the top down.
Humans clearly have preferences. I’ve heard it said — and I agree with this — that a person is more certain of his experience of making choices that seem to be free than he is of almost anything else. He’s definitely more certain of his ability to make seemingly free choices than he is of the existence of electrons, for example.
So we can say with some degree of certainty that we freely choose things according to our preferences. There’s plenty of room to quibble about what “freely” means in the preceding sentence (I have no idea what it means), but just let it go for the moment.
Now let’s work our way down — from humans to chimpanzees to dogs to fish to jellyfish to amoeba to rocks to electrons.
We can either try to draw some bright line — above which a thing is experiencing preference in a way analogous to what humans experience, and below which it does not — or we can simply say that everything experiences preference, but subjectivity changes on a sliding scale.
This way of looking at the question puts the whole “free will” debate in an entirely different light. Rather than assuming that the universe is, at its core, a mechanism, and then working our way up to this complicated mechanism called a human, we start with something we actually know quite a bit better, which is our own experience of preference and choice. Then we work our way down, trying to use the same language as much as we possibly can.
It’s not clear to me that anything changes all that much except that we have a radically different perspective on the question.
IOW, let’s just say for the heck of it that both explanations are nonsense and that we can choose to err in one of two ways. We can impose mechanism on something that really doesn’t seem to be a mechanism (e.g., us), or we can impose preference on something that really doesn’t seem to have preference (e.g., an electron). But the important thing to remember is that from a measurable, objective perspective, both explanations are equally valid.
I’m not saying that I buy any of this, but it is a very interesting twist on the debate, and — let me tell you — it’s very rare that I hear an interesting twist on the free will debate.
2 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-04-25 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 25 April 2012
As you all know, there’s lots and lots of oil in North Dakota. In fact, there’s More Oil in North Dakota than Alaska.
But environmentalists hate oil, so now the search will be on for some endangered critter that can be used as a pretext to slow development.
If they’re smart, they’ll pick something cute, like the black-footed ferret.
:: What do you think? :: 2012-04-25 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 25 April 2012
Jonah Goldberg makes two interesting points in The Trouble with Arguments.
The first is the hostility many liberals show towards free speech in their desire to silence the right to get them out of the way of the leftist agenda.
There’s only one valid point of view, you see, and anyone who isn’t on board just needs to shut up — or be shouted down.
The second is that by making colleges and universities “hostile work environments” for conservatives, liberals have pushed many conservative intellectuals into think tanks.
So the next time you hear a liberal complain about conservative think tanks, tell him to blame the thought police at the university.
:: What do you think? :: 2012-04-25 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 April 2012
When I read something like this — Watch out! Is the Fed pushing us into another bubble? — I wish I knew more about macro economics.
But then again, people who know a lot about it don’t seem to get it right either, so … does it really matter? Even if I spent a few years studying this stuff, would I be able to do anything better than I do now? I don’t think so.
Still …. I’m not happy that I don’t understand it.
4 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-04-24 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 April 2012
We have two mostly phony wars going on right now. The left accuses the right of a “war on women,” and the right accuses the left of a “war on religion.”
It looks like the latter is going to heat up due to protests by Catholics.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called for two weeks of public protest in June and July against what it sees as growing government encroachment on religious freedom.
The protests are expected to include priests and nuns and thousands of Catholic parishioners. Some activists expect civil disobedience, which could lead to powerful images of priests and nuns being led away in hand restraints.
The Catholic disagreement with the Obama administration is over far more than condoms. Obamacare requires sterilization and even abortion services as part of basic coverage. That is an over-reach by government and the Catholic Church is right to oppose it.
But reality is one thing and perception is another. How do you think the media will cover this? Do you think it will be hard for them to find some uber-Catholic to make silly comments about how a married couple using a condom is no different than bestiality? (If Santorum is at any of the rallies it will be easy.)
In short, I think this could be a disaster for Catholics. They are ill-suited to make a big PR play right now, and the most likely outcome, IMO, is that the media will have a lot of fun painting them as extremists.
Having carefully selected, articulate spokesmen on the Sunday talk shows is one thing. But unleashing the rosary-toting hoardes in a show of mass umbrage isn’t going to work.
6 comments :: What do you think? :: 2012-04-24 :: Greg Krehbiel
by Greg Krehbiel on 24 April 2012
Study says having to pee at the wheel is like driving drunk
And in other news, here’s an interesting blog about mind / consciousness stuff: The Splintered Mind
He has some interesting posts that question whether materialist theories on consciousness imply that the United States is conscious.
If it is, it’s pretty dumb.
:: What do you think? :: 2012-04-24 :: Greg Krehbiel
