I just listened to an Econtalk podcast between Russ Roberts and Joe Posnanski about Posnanski’s recent book about Harry Houdini.  It was very enjoyable.  They discussed fame and self-promotion and other interesting things about art and artists.  You should give it a listen.

The thing that most interested me was the idea of “wonder”; something Posnanski realized had been a theme through all of his books (the others have been about sports).

There’s a great anecdote about the meeting between Houdini and the actress Sarah Bernhardt.  Bernhardt asked Houdini to use his magical powers to restore her amputated leg.  Houdini explained that he didn’t really have magical powers and what she was asking was impossible.  She said that he did the impossible all the time.

Posnanski wrote:  There is the amazing. And, there is the impossible.

In the interview, Posnanski says:

Yeah. The original title of this book was “The Amazing and the Impossible.” That was the original title. And then, as you well know with publishing houses, they were like, ‘You’re really going to write a book about Houdini and not have his name in the title? You’re not going to do that.’ So that goes.

But yeah; there is a very small but incredibly important line between what is amazing and what is impossible, and the greatest magicians–but I think also the greatest athletes and the greatest performers, the greatest musicians, the greatest singers and actors and–they walked that line. So that you see what Mike Trout does and you think, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s impossible. It’s impossible for somebody to be this good at this game, with that ball coming at him 100 miles an hour and this and that the other.’ And it’s not. It’s amazing, and it’s just right at that line between amazing and impossible.

That line (between the amazing and the impossible) is something that I love.

I really enjoy watching incredibly skilled athletes do things that are amazing.  I also like to see magic tricks that I can’t figure out.  I suppose that there might be an instant of “wonder” at how this could be possible, but that’s immediately followed by appreciation of how much talent and work and ingenuity went into preparing for the moment of being able to perform such amazing feats.  I want to be enthralled by human excellence, not fooled into a bad model of the universe where the supernatural is possible.

Again, I admit, that a small aspect of the charm might be in spending a short while thinking about what the world would be like if it didn’t obey the laws of physics as we understand them, and there were other ways to cause things to happen.  This is probably part of the charm of fantasy books (which aren’t my favorites).  I like an instant of this kind of wonder, but I don’t want to live there.  I want to live learning about the best theories available (at the level of interest to me) about how things really work.

I was reminded of the Penn & Teller “Honor System” trick, which involves Teller doing an escape and getting to another part of the stage.  The audience is invited to keep their eyes open and see exactly how it’s done, or to close their eyes and then only open them when told to, and leave the mystery intact.  I always wanted to look (and I did).  I can understand and respect people who preferred to close their eyes, if they believed that keeping the mystery was their preferred way of appreciating the trick.  To each his own.

But, I don’t respect using the mystery in order to make it easier to maintain a false belief about how the world works. Some people prefer to do that, or to exploit others by causing them to do that.  To me, that’s a sub-human way to want to live.

I don’t think we have to (or should) sabotage our models of reality in order to enjoy life.

We can love the amazing without confusing ourselves about what is possible.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted this yesterday:

Undocumented immigrants pay more in US taxes than Amazon or Facebook do.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 8, 2020

I agree with her that nativists mischaracterize the drain that undocumented immigrants put on government resources.  They actually contribute quite a bit, and it’s unclear to me what the net fiscal impact is, but it could very well be positive. But, the most important reason that I support a much more open immigration policy is not the fiscal impact on the government, but the social impact on the people involved.  That’s a huge net benefit.  It greatly promotes human flourishing.

It’s also not true that “Amazon” and “Facebook” do not contribute much to the treasury, or society.  These corporations are collections of thousands of individuals who pay a tremendous amount of taxes.  The corporate entities themselves also try to minimize the additional corporate income taxes they face by complying with laws designed to incentivize them to invest their profits in socially useful ways.  And, they do that very well.  But, not to the extent of the “no taxes” claim that many people have been making.  See this recent blog post from Amazon.

What struck me about this tweet was that she didn’t just make a point to correct those who think that these immigrants pay no taxes.  She felt obliged to add on an attack on some big corporations, making similarly misleading allegations.

I’m impressed by how economically she demonstrated that she’s just as much of a tribal bad actor as those she opposes.

It looks to me like she’s saying:

I’ll see your ignorant, misleading, vilification of a group of people that your tribe hates and mine likes, and raise you more ignorant, misleading, vilification of a group of people that my tribe hates and yours likes.

I see that I haven’t posted in a long time.  I don’t have anything profound to post about now, but I thought I’d catch up a bit.

I really enjoyed my vacation to Europe, but came back sick, and got knocked out of my normal habits, and neglected this blog.  I’m fine now.

The big story, lately, has been Trump’s impeachment over his Ukraine shenanigans, and obstruction.  I agree that his behavior was terrible, justifies impeachment, and the world would be better if he were not president, and other similarly unqualified and corrupt people do not try to repeat this embarrassing period in our history.

I’m not sure, however, whether an impeachment followed by a failure to remove him will end up being a net positive. I guess we’ll see.  Some people might be more motivated to remove him via the ballot, but others will be motivated to override what they see as an unfair persecution.

Thus far, the Democrats have fielded terrible candidates, and I can imagine that many people will cast another vote for Trump as the lesser evil.

I don’t know what will happen, but I’m hoping for the best, as always.

Happy New Year, everyone!

I’m going on a vacation to Europe soon (Italy and Greece).

I’m a bit curious about what people on the street there think about the United States, and what they think about Donald Trump.

I’ve been to Mexico since Trump has become president, and it was very predictable what they would think about him.  There were some great t-shirts available.

But, I’d like to know if Europeans think as poorly of him as I do, and if they also think very poorly of the country as a whole.

My guess is that there will be a range of opinions. And, feelings about the country could be very different from feelings about its president.  But, some of those views might be clearly dominant.

We’ll see (maybe).

I just came across this article on Libertarianism.org. I’m mostly posting this to help myself refer to it when somebody accuses libertarianism of being primarily an expression of anti-social selfishness. It’s really not. I wasn’t aware of the Oscar Wilde quote, but I like it:

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

Of course, that only captures part of the story.

It isn’t selfish to respect everybody’s right to be free of coercion. It’s selfish to deny it, and forcibly impose your own schemes upon others who disagree with the policies. (It’s not only selfish, it’s also arrogant and foolish…)

I also agree with the point that just as it’s a mistake to assume libertarians are acting in bad faith, it’s also a mistake to assume that non-libertarians are acting out of a desire to “domineer and control” rather than out of the mistaken idea that state is the best way to achieve attractive social goals. We can and should argue about the means, but not automatically assume bad intentions.

Donald Trump is a Bullshitter. He doesn’t just say things that he knows to be false; he says things without concern for whether or not they are false. He says things because he thinks it’s convenient at the moment to say them.

The most recent dust-up in this respect is his denial that he ever called Meghan Markle “nasty”, even though there is clear audio evidence that he responded to information in an interview about things she said about him with: “I never knew she was nasty.”

Now, I suppose it’s possible to parse that response as something other than “calling her” nasty (à la Bill Clinton quibbling about what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is). But, I don’t think that’s what the dispute is about.

I think Trump didn’t want it to be true that he called her “nasty”, so he forcefully denied having done it. This is different from lying, and I think it could be worse.

Like Winston Churchill, I think democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried from time to time. We often do not get people who are good at performing the duties of the office. We get people who are good at campaigning; and, that’s a completely different skill.

The main benefit of democracy is that it allows for error correction. If current office holders are objectively bad then a majority is likely to realize it and be motivated to correct the previous error and replace them with (hopefully) better candidates.

That is, of course, assuming that the electorate actually cares about what’s better, what’s worse, what’s true, and what’s false. If they stop caring about that, and only care about whether their team is “winning” (or, as is often the case, whether the other team is “losing”), then things can go horribly wrong without getting corrected.

That’s the danger with Trump and his supporters. If they deny facts, and lose all concern for whether or not they are true, then things can get very, very, bad.

It would be one thing if it were just some blowhard in a bar trying to impress his foolish friends. But, it’s a serious problem to have the words of the Commander In Chief be so unreliable that foreign governments learn to ignore them. Many people can die over lack of clarity of this sort.

Trump isn’t the only politician who bends the truth for his own convenience, but he seems to be unique in his success at cultivating a base of support that seems impervious to evidence and devoid of concern about what the actual truth of the matter is. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, for example, say things that are dangerously wrong all the time, but I think that their supporters believe they are true, care about them being true, and would be affected by evidence that they are wrong.

I’m not sure what the worst outcome for the country is (there’s a lot of competition for bad outcomes and a lot of uncertainty), but cultivating a lack of concern about the truth is a very bad one.

I’m copying this from a Facebook post, since I haven’t posted to the blog in a while:

I started watching Season 2 of The Tick, on Amazon Video, and the audio was weird. It was stopping and repeating in short bursts. At first I thought it was a streaming glitch, but then I wondered if it was an intentional part of the show, and some super-villain had messed with the space-time continuum or something. I thought the characters looked a bit perplexed, and even saw the video repeat a few times…

I watched that way for over 10 minutes before deciding to exit and start streaming again.

It was just a streaming glitch.

The recent news items about abolishing billionaires and condemning Amazon and other companies for paying poor wages has brought back discussions of living wages in my social media feed.

Here are a couple of old posts that I really liked from Jason Brennan on the Bleeding Heart Libertarians site:

Against the Living Wage/”Subsidy” Arguments

Some Questions For Living Wage Advocates

And, here’s a comment that I made on a thread that explains the fundamental reasons why I think that Living/Minimum Wage arguments and policies are bad:

I understand the desire for people to be able to work to support themselves and the inclination to just make it a mandate that people who work should make enough to support themselves.

But, it doesn’t actually make sense to use that particular method to help people.

People making economic transactions is one thing, and people being able to pay their expenses is a separate, related, thing.

If somebody is willing to work for less than a living wage, and somebody else wants to hire him under mutually agreeable terms (and the work isn’t harming others unreasonably, etc.), then they should be free to do that. It’s not helping poor people to forbid those transactions. It just makes people worse off by reducing work opportunities and putting potential beneficiaries of the project in a worse position to accomplish their goals (which will often include helping others who need it).

Not every job that is good for all parties has to provide a living wage. Some people are still learning to become more productive or are unable to become that productive, some have others to help share expenses, some are doing the work because they find it interesting or educational or fun (not, because they need the money to live on), etc.

People aren’t pawns on a chessboard. They are independent agents with their own plans and priorities and it’s wrong to interfere with their preferences in the name of helping them.

We don’t know enough to declare which voluntary arrangements should be forbidden. We should leave people free to pursue the best opportunities that they can find (and we can help them to find them), and expect that as they become more productive and the economy grows those opportunities will tend to improve.

If some people still need help, then people (not necessarily just their employers) can (and often should) help them. But, forbidding job opportunities that don’t fully provide for all of their expenses is a counterproductive, and I think immoral, way to try to help others.

I haven’t blogged in a while.  Mostly it has been because I was afraid that there was little I could say about the Kavanaugh confirmation and its sexual assault allegations that would avoid offending a lot of people.  Fortunately, that episode seems to be behind us.

But, today I came across a great article by Jonathan Rauch, called The Constitution of Knowledge.  Please read it.

Rauch has a lot of interesting things to say about the modern crisis of epistemic health, Trump’s trolling, and institutions that can help support the success of truth-seeking.

He ends up being optimistic, as I have been, even though there’s plenty to worry about over the short term.  And, that has helped me retain my optimism as well.

Yes, it’s another post about a podcast.

One of my favorites is EconTalk.  In it, Russ Roberts, usually, interviews smart people about modern topics that are related to economics (because that’s really everything that involves decision making), but are mostly just interesting topics.  I’m sure I like it largely because Roberts comes to the issues from a skeptical libertarian perspective (like mine), but I also appreciate Roberts’ fairness and intellectual modesty in his approach.  He’s not afraid to change his mind, or say “I don’t know.”

This post is really just to promote a recent episode that is a monologue by Roberts, rather than the normal interview format.  Roberts reflects on the modern state of political discourse, and has many interesting and thoughtful insights into why it seems to be more polarized than ever, and why it seems that The centre cannot hold.

I don’t want to rehearse Roberts’ arguments and suggestions here, but encourage you to listen to it for yourself.