A few weeks ago our microwave went on the blink. It still worked but when we opened the microwave’s door, a fan immediately started up. The GE repairman showed up today. After examining it quickly, he was pretty sure he could fix it. But, he warned us, it was about 8 or 9 years old and the typical life expectancy of that model was between 6 and 8 years. He seemed to be hinting that we should buy a new one. I asked him how much a new one would be. He replied that it would be about $300. That didn’t sound bad. “Can we buy from you and does that include the installation?” “No,” he answered. “You would go to a place like Home Depot but we don’t install.” “How much would it cost to fix this one?” I asked. “A little over $200,” he answered. “But the service charge of about $130 goes towards that $200, right?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. So the $200 was misleading. The $130 service charge was a sunk cost. A little quick arithmetic told me that the marginal cost of getting the microwave fixed would be only a little over $70. And we would have a working microwave right away. So we had him fix it. Sunk cost versus marginal cost. (0 COMMENTS)

In the late 1940s, Milton Friedman was considered an important economist who had made significant technical contributions. At the beginning of the 1950s, however, he moved away from Keynesian economics and as a result was increasingly viewed as a bit of a nut. Two decades later, however, Friedman had become far and away the most important macroeconomist in the world. Much of the ongoing macro debate revolved around economists addressing Friedman’s ideas, pro or con. How did this happen? Edward Nelson’s outstanding two volume study of Friedman provides the most complete answer that I have seen. During the 1960s, Friedman rejected 4 key tenets of Keynesian economics. And within less than a decade, all four of his critiques were shown to be correct. As a result, Keynesian economics absorbed much of monetarism, and this led to the creation of a new macroeconomic framework called New Keynesianism. Keep in mind that when I talk about “Keynesians”, I am not describing the views of J.M. Keynes or the views of modern Keynesians, I am describing the views of many of the most prominent Keynesian economists during the 1960s. (Samuelson, Tobin, Modigliani, Solow, Heller, etc.) Here are the four Keynesian ideas that Friedman rejected: 1. Nominal interest rates are the correct indicator of the stance of monetary policy.  The Fisher effect is not an important factor in the US. 2. Fiscal austerity (higher taxes) is the best way to reduce excessive aggregate demand. 3. There is a stable (negative) relationship between inflation and unemployment (the “Phillips Curve”). 4. Modern economies face an increasing problem of cost/push inflation, and hence wage/price controls are often the best way to control inflation. Let’s take these one at a time. In the mid-1960s, Friedman argued that nominal interest rates were rising because of increasing inflation expectations. Nelson points out that Keynesians like James Tobin rejected this claim (vol. 2, p. 113.) By the 1970s, inflation and nominal interest rates had increased much further, and there was almost universal agreement that Friedman was right and Tobin was wrong. Nominal interest rates are not a good indicator of the stance of monetary policy. Thus the Keynesians were saying that if you want tight money to reduce inflation, you need high interest rates. Friedman basically said no, high interest rates are not the solution; you need to reduce growth in the money supply. By the late 1960s, the US had both high interest rates and a fast growing money supply, and inflation kept rising. It turned out that Friedman was right. But Keynesians did not draw the correct inferences from this episode. Rather they decided that monetary policy must not be very effective, and instead advocated higher taxes as a way to reduce inflation (the MMT approach.) In 1968, LBJ raised income taxes so high that the US budget went into surplus, but inflation continued to increase. Friedman had two reasons for doubting the efficacy of higher taxes. First, his permanent income theory suggested that temporary tax changes would be offset by changes in private saving, leaving aggregate demand almost unaffected. More importantly, he saw that a tax increase could only slow inflation by reducing velocity, which would have only a one-time effect. Even if velocity fell one or two percent, the contractionary effects (on M*V) would soon be overwhelmed by increasingly rapid growth in the money supply. Thus Keynesians assumed that tax increases could slow inflation, while Friedman said no, you need to reduce the growth rate of the money supply. When the tax increases failed to slow inflation, Keynesians began to focus on the Phillips curve, which suggested that there was an inverse relationship between inflation and unemployment. A policy of higher inflation would lead to lower unemployment, and vice versa. Friedman said this was wrong, as workers would eventually catch on to changes in the rate of inflation and demand compensating changes in nominal wage rates. In the long run, unemployment would return to the natural rate, regardless of the trend rate of inflation.  By 1970, we had high inflation and high unemployment, which showed that Friedman was right.  (Note that this was three years before the first oil shock.) Thus the Keynesians thought that high unemployment was the solution to inflation.  Friedman said no, you need to reduce the growth rate of the money supply. When the high unemployment of 1970 did not work, Keynesian economists blamed inflation on “cost-push factors”, such as monopoly power or strong labor unions.  They supported wage/price controls, which President Nixon implemented in August 1971.  After a brief decline in inflation, the problem got much worse during the mid and late-1970s.  Friedman saw that while wage/price controls might lead to a one-time drop in the price level of a few percentage points, as long as the money supply was growing rapidly, any gains from wage/price controls would be soon overwhelmed by a rising money supply. Thus Keynesians said that the solution for high inflation is wage-price controls, whereas Friedman said no, these controls will not work; you need to reduce the growth rate of the money supply.  See a pattern here? In the early 1980s, the Fed finally began reducing the growth rate of the money supply, and inflation fell sharply. Why isn’t the amazing success of Friedman’s ideas better understood?  It’s partly because his preferred policy target—stable growth in a monetary aggregate such as M2—was not adopted due to concerns about unstable velocity.   Even Friedman eventually accepted inflation targeting as a reasonable alternative.  And the other four ideas discussed above all got incorporated in 1990s-era New Keynesianism.  NKs accepted the importance of the Fisher effect, switching their focus from nominal to real interest rates.  They accepted that monetary policy is the appropriate tool to control inflation, not fiscal policy.  They accepted Friedman’s Natural Rate Hypothesis, the idea that higher inflation will not permanently reduce unemployment.  And they accepted that a contractionary monetary policy, not wage/price controls, is the solution to inflation. In one important respect, Friedman’s achievement is even more amazing than what I have outline here.  In all four cases, Friedman’s claims were made at a time when they looked wrong.  The Fisher effect had not been a very important factor in the setting of US interest rates when inflation expectation were near zero, including the period when the price of gold was pegged at $20.67/oz (1879-1933).  And during 1934-68, when gold was $35/oz, inflation expectation were generally pretty low (even as actual inflation bounced around unpredictably.)  During the early to mid-1960s, inflation expectations were probably not much more than 1%.  The Fisher effect became a major factor after Friedman began warning about the issue.  Similarly, in the mid-1960s it was widely believed that tax changes had a big impact on aggregate demand, as the Kennedy tax cuts of 1964 were followed by a strong economy (albeit perhaps for supply-side reasons.)  Keynesians were genuinely surprised when the big tax increase of 1968 failed to slow inflation.  When Friedman gave famous AEA Presidential address outlining the Natural Rate Hypothesis in late 1967, a stable Phillips curve seemed quite plausible, indeed the 1960s fit the model better than almost any other decade.  It was in the 1970s that the relationship completely broke down.  And the Nixon wage/price controls seemed to work at first; it was only a few years later that they began to fall apart.  Thus in all four cases Friedman rejected the orthodox view at a time when the orthodox approach seemed to be working fine, and in all four cases his views were eventually vindicated. Milton Friedman’s achievements in the late 1960s and early 1970s were truly amazing, and deserve to be better known. In a subsequent post, I’ll try to explain how Friedman was able to see the flaws in mainstream Keynesianism before most other economists.  Why was his model better?  We’ll see that all four of his successful critiques have something in common. (0 COMMENTS)

My interview on Open Borders aired last night on the PBS NewsHour.  Check it out! (0 COMMENTS)

All of the last set of comments were directed at Huemer, but I’ll add a few comments of my own. Anon: 1.To my mind, part of the problem with questions like “Is there a God?” is not that they are meaningless or that they have no answer. Rather, it’s that they are unanswerable. Are questions like, “Does Bigfoot exist?” answerable?  How about, “Did aliens build the pyramids?”  Or how about, “Do ghosts exist?”  My answer to all of these is, “Almost certainly not.”  Am I wrong? Hellestal: In order to create an accurate description of “only” the brain in its vat, the scientists, and the brain apparatus — as if that were all that existed, without relying on the simple rules of physics playing out from a (presumably simple) original condition — you would need an absolutely absurd quantity of description. Overwhelming. Doesn’t it depend on the required degree of accuracy?  Yes, it would be immensely difficult to simulate every detail down to 10 decimal places of accuracy, but most people are barely paying attention to most stuff anyway, much less measuring stuff with any precision.  I say a lot of novels contain more details about what the characters are experiencing than most of us typically pay attention to in real life. Henri Hein: I sympathize both with the skeptical view and the defenders of knowledge. I think the skeptic’s claim that we cannot know anything with 100% certainty must be correct. At risk of sounding like a 17-year-old Objectivist, “must be correct” sounds about the same as claiming to “know with 100% certainty.” (0 COMMENTS)

Robin Hanson and I disagree about alien visitation.  While he doubts that aliens are visiting Earth right now, I’m virtually sure that they aren’t.  As a result, we’ve made a bet.  The terms: 1. Robin pre-pays me $10. 2. If I become convinced that aliens have visited the Earth during our lifetimes, I pay Robin $10,000*1.05^(year-2021) in nominal dollars. 3. If either of us dies before (2), my heirs keep the money and the bet ends. Or as Robin puts it: I proposed this bet in reaction to this tweet of his: https://t.co/8VPEXM7j5b — Robin Hanson (@robinhanson) May 31, 2021 Why would Robin make such a bet?  Because we’re best friends and he trusts me. What would it take to convince me?  Ideally, I want to see alien critters with my own eyes, but I will settle for seeing technology so advanced I can’t imagine humans made it.   I would also settle for very high-quality, ample duration video of alien critters or tech, confirmed by multiple high-status media outlets. In short, I want The Day the Earth Stood Still, but I’ll settle for anything in that general ballpark. (0 COMMENTS)

Every once in a while I pinch myself at my good fortune in being alive at this time in history, with the web making things so much easier in so many ways. Two things happened in the last hour that reminded me of how much value people, including me, get from the web. The first was that on Nextdoor in my area, someone reported having found a dog: Found a little pup wandering up xxx Street. Tired and thirsty. We took him to the SPCA on 68. Animal ID xxxxxx. There is a five day stray hold starting 6/15. The same day (today), another neighbor answered: Thanks xxxx. xxxx belongs to our neighbor on xxxxxx St. I’ll pass the info along. And then that neighbor wrote: xxxx’s dad is on his way to retrieve him. This is amazing compared to what we could do just a few years ago. Hayek’s decentralized information in action. Just a few minutes ago, I wanted to send flowers to a woman in East Germany, er, Canada, to thank her for helping me think through how to get to my cottage in northwestern Ontario this year. She’s a fellow dual citizen whom a mutual friend told me about. Twenty-five years ago, ordering such flowers required a phone call after a laborious search for a florist. And for someone like me who can barely distinguish between flowers and flour, the descriptions of someone at the other end of the line wouldn’t have meant much. But I got on line, found a Canadian florist, looked at the pictures, ordered the flowers, and paid, all in about 3 minutes. Pinch me. But not hard. (0 COMMENTS)

In the past, I’ve frequently argued that inflation is an almost meaningless and useless concept. I’m not even aware of any coherent definitions of the concept. Unfortunately, the Fed has decided to target PCE inflation, and thus we are forced to pay attention to the issue, and even forecast its future path. Here are two problems with the inflation debate: 1. If the claim is that high inflation is an indicator of excessive aggregate demand, then why not focus on NGDP? If the claim is that high inflation is hurting living standards, then why not focus on real GDP? Inflation can be affected by both supply and demand shocks. If people say inflation is too high or two low, there’s usually some sort of public policy implication to their claim. It’s not merely like saying the weather is too hot. (Oops, even that has public policy implications these days.) In general, those who claim inflation is too high have a preference for a tighter monetary policy, and vice versa. But fast NGDP growth is a much better indicator of whether the economy is overheating. In my view, the Fed’s recent decision to adopt “flexible average inflation targeting” is a tacit admission that NGDP is a better target. They are going to let undershoot or overshoot 2% on occasion if it allows for a more stable path for NGDP. 2. People foolishly divide up into two camps, hawks and doves. In 2019 the doves said, “Inflation is too low; we need more monetary stimulus.” The hawks said, “Don’t look at inflation; other indicators suggest we don’t need monetary stimulus.” In 2021, the hawks say, “Inflation is too high, we need tighter money.” The doves say, “Don’t look at inflation, other indicators suggest that we don’t need tighter money.” Of course it’s always true that inflation is an unreliable policy indicator. But I get tired of seeing people divide up into hawks and doves, and only use the “inflation numbers are misleading” argument when it favors their policy preference. Hawks and doves are both wrong. We don’t need easy money or tight money; we need stable money. That’s why I didn’t believe the low inflation of 2019 was a problem and it’s also why I don’t think the high inflation of 2021 is a problem. Inflation is not a reliable policy indicator. You should immediately distrust any pundit who only discounts the importance of inflation when it’s below 2% (i.e. hawks) and you should also discount any pundit who only discounts the importance of inflation when it’s above 2% (i.e. doves.) Over the past 100 years, bad outcomes have occurred when we adopted dovish policies, and also when we adopted hawkish policies. Good outcomes have occurred when we adopted stable monetary policies. (0 COMMENTS)

Whenever government repeals a bad policy, my first reaction is amazement. Then gratitude. Swiftly followed by indignation, because no matter how bad the repealed policy was, the government almost never apologizes. Homely example: The FAA used to ban the use of any electronic device during takeoff and landing.  When the rule finally went away, I was amazed, because I expected to endure this petty tyranny for all the flights of my life.  Next, I felt grateful for this small expansion of my freedom.  Soon, however, I became indignant, because the government never apologized.  A half-hearted, “Sorry that our paranoia inconvenienced people billions of times” would have gone a long way. The same holds for the COVID crusade.  Almost all vaccines sharply reduce contagion.  Yet for months, government kept forcing vaccinated individuals to wear masks and socially distance.  When the CDC finally changed its guidelines, I was amazed.  Then grateful.  Yet before long – and to this day – indignant.  A half-hearted, “Sorry that our paranoia trampled the freedom of hundreds of millions” would have gone a long way. A clever public choice economist might respond, “Getting government to repeal bad policies is nigh-impossible already.  If leaders have to apologize when they repeal, repeals will virtually vanish.”  Plausible, but you could also say, “If governments know they’ll have to apologize when they repeal bad policies, maybe they’ll be more cautious about adopting bad policies in the first place.”  It’s the same as the logic of war crimes trials: One common objection to the Nuremberg trials was that they gave bad incentives to future war criminals.  If war criminals know they’ll be tried and executed if they lose, self-interest urges them to fight to the bitter end.  From this perspective, the trials were short-sighted.  They satisfied the impulse for revenge, but extended the duration of future wars. On reflection, however, that’s only a medium-run view.  The apostle of credibility could easily retort, “Yes, the Nuremberg trials encourage future war criminals to fight to the bitter end.  But they also discourage future leaders from committing war crimes in the first place.  We should take a truly long-run view.” But how abject of an apology does the public deserve anyway?  It depends.  If government justified a bad policy with hyperbole, willfully overstating the probability and severity of bad outcomes, then we deserve a giant blubbering apology.  At minimum. In contrast, if the government justified a bad policy with agnosticism, admitting that the probability of severely bad outcomes was low, then even I’ll settle for a low-key apology.  Though as I’ve argued before, government minus hyperbolic rhetoric is practically impotent: Why are proponents of government action so prone to hyperbole?  Because it’s rhetorically effective, of course.  You need wild claims and flowery words to whip up public enthusiasm for government action.  Sober weighing of probability, cost, and benefit damns with faint praise – and fails to overcome public apathy. Added bonus: When government explicitly admits that, “The probability of a severely bad outcome is low, but caution makes sense until we know more,” the natural response is to try to swiftly ascertain the truth.  Mostly notable, if the world’s governments had responded to COVID with an earnest admission of ignorance, the impetus to apply the time-tested experimental method would have been far stronger.  Voluntary Paid Human Experimentation wouldn’t merely have given us vaccines sooner; it would have allowed us to calmly cease a vast array of ineffective COVID precautions a year ago. I’d like to assert that, “History will not be kind to the enemies of Human Challenge Trials,” but that’s wishful thinking.  History is written by the victors, and the victors of COVID are unapologetic innumerates.  Though we deserve a massive apology, we’ll be lucky to walk away with the freedoms we took for granted back in 2019.   (1 COMMENTS)

Here’s Mike Huemer’s second set of responses to me and you. About Bryan’s Comments Thanks again to Bryan, and the readers who commented on his post, for their thoughts about Part 2. This is all cool and interesting. I’ll just comment on a few questions and points of disagreement. 1. Real World Hypothesis (RWH) vs. Brain-in-a-Vat Hypothesis (BIVH) “Why, though, couldn’t we race the Real World theory against the Simulation-of-the-Real-World theory?” Good question. We can think of it like this: we have a theory, B (for “brain in a vat”), and some evidence E. B doesn’t predict E very well, because there are so many other things that are about equally compatible with B. What you could do is add some auxiliary assumptions onto B, producing (B&A). And you could pick A specifically so that it entails E, given B. In Bayesian terms, this has the effect of increasing your likelihood (P(e|h) in Bayes’ Theorem). It also reduces your prior (P(h)) by the same ratio (or more). So there’s no free lunch. In other words, now the problem is just going to be that the new theory (B&A) has a low prior probability, because it stipulates that the scientists program the computer in a particular way, where this is one out of a very large number of ways they could program it (if there were such scientists). Btw, this might not initially sound to you like it’s a super-specific stipulation (“they program a simulation of the real world”). But I think it really is very specific, comparatively speaking. You have to include the stipulation that they make a simulation that is perfect, with no glitches or program bugs or processing delays that would reveal the simulation. This is possible but is true of only a very narrow range of simulations that could exist. You have to stipulate that they decide to simulate an ordinary life in a society much less advanced than their own. Again, possible, but only a narrow range of the intentions they could have, and not one that makes a whole lot of sense. By comparison, if we found that our lives maximized enjoyment, or aesthetic beauty for observers, or intellectually interesting situations, or anything else other than “looking just like a normal mundane life”, then we’d have some evidence for the BIVH. “To what extent is this approach [direct realism] compatible with just saying that the reasonable Bayesian prior probability assigns overwhelming [probability] to the Real World story?” Also a good question. It’s different from saying we assign a high prior to the RW Hypothesis, because it depends on having sensory experiences. In the “high prior” story, you should believe the RWH before having any sensory experiences (if you could somehow still understand the RWH at that time). The direct realist approach is more like assigning a high prior probability to “Stuff is generally the way it appears” (or “if there appears to be a real world, then there is”). I think it might be a requirement of rationality that one assign a high prior to this. 2. The definition of “knowledge” “[W]hat’s wrong with the slightly modified view that when we call X “knowledge,” we almost always mean that X is a “justified, true belief”?  … [W]e can think of “justified, true belief” as a helpful description of knowledge rather than a strict definition.  What if anything is wrong with that?” I think “justified, true belief” is a fair approximation to the meaning of “knowledge”. (A closer approximation is “justified, true belief with no defeaters”.) That is to say that when we call x “knowledge”, we mean something close to that. I don’t think we ever mean exactly that, though. E.g., when you say that someone knows something, part of what you’re saying is that they’re not in a Gettier case. That’s always implied by your statement (even if Gettier cases aren’t something anyone is thinking about at the moment), so you never merely mean that the person has a JTB. About Reader Comments “part of the problem with questions like “Is there a God?” is not that they are meaningless or that they have no answer. Rather, it’s that they are unanswerable.” I don’t see why that’s unanswerable. That is, I think we can and do have evidence for or against the existence of God. Granted, none of it is conclusive evidence. But then, we also don’t have conclusive evidence for or against any scientific theory, yet we shouldn’t say that scientific questions are “unanswerable” (should we?). “The second example [goodness of polygamy], however, is not a factual question, and will depend on what each particular culture considers  good and bad.” It is a factual question! I can’t find that passage right now (it’s not on 87-8 in my copy), so I’m not sure what point I was making. But I explain my arguments against moral relativism in ch. 13. I too found the discussion of ‘polygamy is wrong’ to be ignoring the ambiguity of the proposition I doubt that I was doing that. Just take whatever interpretation of the phrase you want, assume that is understood, and then read the passage with that sense. If you think there are three senses of “wrong”, say, wrong1, wrong2, and wrong3, just substitute “Polygamy is wrong1”, and then read the rest of the passage as normal. Again, I’m not sure where this passage is, so I am not sure what its actual point was. …Phenomenal Conservatism, which says that we are entitled to presume that whatever seems to us to be the case is in fact the case, unless and until we have reasons to think otherwise. This sounds exactly as Popperian fallibilism, since you are admitting that the moment you get a good reason to think what it seems to you is false, you should doubt it, and thus the original “foundation” is still fallible. This isn’t Popper’s point. Popper’s point is not merely that we are fallible and should give up our beliefs if we find evidence against them. Pretty much everyone agrees with that for almost all beliefs, and so that would not be a distinctively Popperian point (nor would Popper have gotten famous for saying that). What is distinctive of Popper is that he thinks that you never get any reason at all to believe that any scientific theory is true. (Most people can’t believe that Popper thinks that, because it’s so crazy, and so they just refuse to interpret him as saying that, no matter how clearly he says it. If you don’t believe me, see the Popper quotations in this post: https://fakenous.net/?p=1239.) “BIV is a bad explanation because from it anything goes and so is not really an explanation” … Michael goes on an unnecessary argument (not even completely expressed in the book) with made up probabilities I thought it would be too complicated for undergrad students. In case you’re interested, this is where the argument is explained more fully: https://philpapers.org/rec/HUESTA. The Deutsch argument doesn’t sound adequate to me, since it doesn’t explain why the BIV theory is unlikely to be true. The remark, “from it anything goes” is indeed the start of the explanation, but it sounds like Deutsch does not give the rest of the explanation. He infers that the BIV theory isn’t an explanation, which doesn’t follow at all. If there were a BIV, and its experiences were really caused by scientists stimulating it, then that, trivially, would be the explanation of its experiences. I don’t think my argument was unnecessary, because what I did was to actually explain why the BIV theory should be rejected. As far as I can tell (not having read Deutsch’s book, but just from Benjamin’s comment), Deutsch doesn’t actually say why we’re not likely to be BIV’s. But just because “your belief is not justified” is not a good reason to change it, specially if the belief to which you should change is also not justified. I think this is a misunderstanding. I didn’t mean that you should change to another unjustified belief. I meant that, according to the skeptic, you should change from believing to not believing (whatever they’re saying is unjustified). Why? That’s just what “unjustified” means. If you think that it can be rational to hold an “unjustified” belief, than I just don’t know what you mean by “unjustified”. In order to create an accurate description of “only” the brain in its vat, the scientists, and the brain apparatus — as if that were all that existed, without relying on the simple rules of physics playing out from a (presumably simple) original condition — you would need an absolutely absurd quantity of description. I think this argument is assuming that (i) the BIV theorist has to give a detailed description of the actual state of the brain, the scientists, etc., without stating the laws of nature (?), but (ii) the Real World theory only states the general laws, and doesn’t have to specify any boundary conditions. (?) But I can’t figure out why Hellestal assumes that. Why wouldn’t the BIVH and RWH both assume the same laws? And in order to get any empirical predictions, both would of course have to add some information about the configuration of the physical world (some initial conditions). The BIV theory would have to add information about the state of the BIV. The RWH would have to add information about the state of the real world. Maybe you’re assuming that the BIVH says that there is only a BIV, and nothingness outside the BIV’s lab. Of course that’s a ridiculous theory. But that’s not how anyone understands it. The BIV theory specifies that there is a BIV (and stuff for stimulating it, etc.), and it doesn’t make claims about whatever else is going on outside the BIV’s room. the low entropy starting condition of our universe … I don’t know why this puzzles anyone. A low entropy starting condition is a mathematically simpler starting condition. That is literally what “low entropy” means: simplicity. I don’t agree with the last statement. Entropy is more precisely defined in terms of the measure of the phase space region that corresponds to a given macroscopic condition. Low entropy corresponds to a small region, and high entropy to a large region. Almost all of the phase space is occupied by the highest-entropy state, thermal equilibrium. On the standard way of assigning probabilities in thermodynamics, “low entropy” basically means “improbable”. For our world: You need a universe, which should ideally have simple rules of physics and a simple (low-entropy) starting condition. Then the simple rules of physics need to play out to, eventually, create us. And that’s it. But that’s not enough to explain your evidence. To explain your evidence, you need there to be, e.g., tables, and giraffes, and 8 planets, and Mount Rushmore, etc. Because you have experiences of all those things, so the RWH says that all those things really exist. For the BIVH, you still only need the scientists and the brain-stimulating equipment to explain all those experiences. There doesn’t have to actually be, say, a Mount Rushmore. To my surprise, Prof. Huemer largely neglects social epistemology. True. I was trying to keep the book of manageable length. However, I plan to do an epistemology text next, and it will at least include testimony and peer disagreement. The burning question I have: is the typo in the footnote on p.95 on purpose? No. In fact, I don’t even see the typo. (?) I think the skeptic’s claim that we cannot know anything with 100% certainty must be correct. Do you really mean that, or do you just mean that we can’t know controversial beliefs with certainty? (E.g., progressives do not in fact know the optimal minimum wage.) Would you say that you’re uncertain whether you exist? Is it uncertain that A=A? …our most solid cases of knowledge is built from cooperation. In the example with the octopus, if my friend is next to me and is also seeing the octopus, and we both talk about what we are seeing, and our descriptions match, the likelihood that I am truly seeing the octopus goes up. True, but notice also that this is not actually a likely case. If you see a normal physical object in normal conditions, you’re not going to be asking your friend if he sees it, etc. I’ve never done that in my life. Why not? Because I don’t need to, because I already know what I see. The cases in which you actually need to check with other people are theoretical claims. Like, you’ve just given an argument against the minimum wage, and you ask your friend who is an economist to check it. I’ve done that sort of thing all the time. And yes, that definitely increases the likelihood of being correct. This undermines the first claim above (“…our most solid cases of knowledge…”). No, our most solid cases of knowledge are things like immediate observations, made in normal conditions (good lighting, no hallucinogens, etc.). The theoretical knowledge that is commonly produced cooperatively (like science) is typically much less solid (less likely to be true, more likely to be revised in the future), even after we’ve gone through that cooperative process. Of course, that’s not because the cooperative process is bad; it’s because theoretical claims are inherently harder to know and easier to be wrong about. Which is why we feel the need to work together on them in the first place. (0 COMMENTS)

In his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek, a future (1974) Nobel economics prize winner, spoke about “the individualist tradition which has created Western civilization” (p. 73 in the edition edited by Bruce Caldwell, University of Chicago Press, 2007). Stokely Carmichael, a black nationalist of the 1960s and chairman of the Student National Coordinating Committee, said (as quoted in Donald Critchlow’s In Defense of Populism [University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020], p. 97): When you talk about black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created. This trope has been common for at least several decades among the people who call for a political system that would impose their ideas by force and reduce the world to servitude and poverty. For example, I read in the Philadelphia Enquirer about a sex therapist and activist (“To End Fatfobia, We Need To Dismantle Western Civilization, Says Phily Therapist Sonalee Rashatwar,” July 3, 2019): Rashatwar, though, considers how sizeism is affected by racism, misogyny, classism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. … Citing researcher-advocate Caleb Luna, Rashatwar said curing anti-fatness would mean dismantling society’s foundation: “I love to talk about undoing Western civilization because it’s just so romantic to me.” From all we know about history and economics, only the Western civilization could bring freedom of speech and inquiry, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution that followed. The latter event allowed not only an unheard-of jump in population but also an increase in the standard of living as had never happened in the history of mankind. The chart nearby is reproduced from my review of economic historian Joel Mokyr’s book A Culture of Growth in the Summer 2018 issue of Regulation (the data come from the Maddison Project‘s estimates). Quoting my review: From Year 1 of the Common Era until the 18th century, human living standards scarcely changed. World gross domestic product per capita inched up slightly from less than $500 per year during the first millennium, to $616 in 1700, and $712 in 1820. Then, production and income exploded. In less than two centuries, GDP per capita multiplied by more than 10, reaching $7,814 in 2010 (the last year available in this series). These figures are averages over the whole world, estimated in constant 1990 dollars. In the United States, GDP per capita (again in constant 1990 dollars) reached $30,491 in 2010. This one dramatic transformation is the story of mankind from an economic standpoint. In comparison, the last century’s Great Depression barely registered. Another book, Walter Scheidel’s Escape from Rome, explains how, contrary to the relatively anarchic character of the Western civilization following the fall of the Roman empire, the East remained dominated by dirigiste and stifling empires. Assume that human flourishing and individual liberty are values to be pursued. Then, if Western civilization had never existed, it is likely that the world would be bare. It is true that we have no way of measuring the utility (“happiness” or, more precisely in economics, preferred position) of individuals in the West and comparing it with the utility of individuals in the East. We cannot meaningfully say, “people in the West are happier than people in the East” or, even worse, “the West is happier than the East.” Interpersonal comparisons of utility are impossible. But this is not an argument for believing that people living under tyranny are happier than free individuals. On the contrary, it is an argument for letting each individual free to pursue his own conception of happiness to all extent possible. (0 COMMENTS)