Late last year, I bought Penn Jillette’s God, No! book. I brought it on my vacation to Vegas, and had both Penn & Teller sign it for me after one of their shows. Unfortunately, I’d only read a bit of it by then, and my wife thought it would be a bad idea to mar that signed edition after that.

But, fortunately, she also gave me a three-book trial gift subscription to Audible.com, and I picked that book as my first one. I’m glad I did.

The book is really a series of personal anecdotes (built around the idea of an Atheist Ten Commandments), and hearing Penn read it in his own voice, with the intended emphasis, really adds a dimension to it that makes it much better than merely reading it yourself. I got a real kick out of the book. Penn is great; and he’s much more thoughtful and intellectually humble than the impression many have of him.

So, you should get it (in the audible form if possible). Be warned that it’s probably not for the easily offended (he talks about going to a San Francisco bath house in the 80’s, having sex underwater, losing his parents, etc.)

Twenty-five years ago today, my wife and I exchanged wedding vows in front of a guy, in Las Vegas, who reminded us of a game-show host.

We’re both very happy we did.

And, now (well, beginning June 7th, actually), it’s possible for gay couples in Washington State to get married, too.

Progress can be slow, but it’s happening.

I’m fascinated by thinking.

I really want to know about what kinds of biases and errors our brains are prone to; both because the subject is inherently interesting, and because I want to have the best possible chance to avoid mistakes.

So, I’m happy to report that I really enjoyed reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It’s very well written and filled with great insights about all sorts of cognitive errors that we all tend to make.

I did have a few quibbles toward the end where he seemed to endorse the “libertarian paternalism” of Nudge, and the idea that money ceases to improve happiness beyond a certain point (see this Justin Wolfers interview video to hear the other side).

But, I’ll try not to fall for the common bias of letting the ending overwhelm my judgement of the book, nor ignore the quantity (duration) of great content.

Reading the book has made me smarter, and I suspect it will have that effect on almost everybody who reads it.

So, if the troops overwhelmingly support Ron Paul, shouldn’t those who claim to “support the troops” support Ron Paul, too?

Otherwise, it seems like they don’t really support the troops at all. They support sending the troops to fight and die for causes that the troops think are mistaken.

I hope such people never support me.

My family is going to continue our recent tradition of heading to Vegas for a week to celebrate my birthday (on the 21st) and Isaac Newton’s (on the 25th). We’re flying out tomorrow.

I wish you all a great holiday season.

I’m not rich enough, and I lack the level of professional ambition, to be in the “1%” but I stand with the 1% against the bullies of the 99%.

I’m not religious, but I’ve always said that I’m jewish if there are anti-semites around.

I stand with any intended victims against any mob that makes unwarranted claims, by virtue of their numbers or physical power or ability to muster political influence, against an identifiable group of scapegoats, or just against the rest of us.

If scenes like this make you want to join the crowd, then we’re very different.

I am the 1%.

Most of the 1% (people in the 99th percentile of wealth) got there because they contributed much, much, more than average (their fair share, it seems to me) to the well-being of the entire population (as measured by the willingness of other people to trade wealth for the products of their labor). Some, small number, of them got there because others who contributed much more than their fair share wanted their wealth to go to these people. Some, very very few, are scumbags who got there because they manipulate government power to enrich themselves; And they will continue to do that, regardless of the tax code, so long as governments have power over vast resources and people respond to incentives.

If you think that they should pay more in taxes because (as Willie Sutton apparently never said) “That’s where the money is.” Then, be honest (at least in that respect) and say so.

If you think so because you are so offended by wealth inequality that you’d prefer that we were all more equal and less successful, then say that (you jerk!).

But all of this blather about the rich not paying their fair share is just annoying nonsense.

I haven’t been following the Occupy Wall Street protests very closely. The little that I’ve seen and read makes me think of it as a bunch of people who recognize some problems with crony corporatism, cannot stand wealth inequality, and have no ideas about where wealth comes from or how to address the problems. Mostly, they seem to like the idea of protesting, and making richer people suffer for poorer people. They want wealth separated from politics, and the political system to pay for all of their wants.

I think George Will captured my sense of the main problem best in this article.

Still, OWS’s defenders correctly say it represents progressivism’s spirit and intellect. Because it embraces spontaneity and deplores elitism, it eschews deliberation and leadership. Hence its agenda, beyond eliminating one of the seven deadly sins (avarice), is opaque. Its meta-theory is, however, clear: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.

They’re abusing their power. It’s attracting lots of resources to try to control it…so let’s give them more power over more wealth.

Brilliant.

I was going to title this post “Big Numbers Make People Stupid,” but I thought this one was kinder.

Most of us do pretty well with thinking about a few orders of magnitude. We can contemplate 10s, 100s, 1,000s of things pretty naturally, and with effort can understand how these relate to millions (some of us have retirement goals of millions of dollars, and think about what it would actually take to accumulate that amount over time).

But, when we start dealing with numbers that are much larger (or smaller) than those we personally deal with regularly we don’t do nearly as well (without sustained effort), and I think this leads us to many errors.

For example, people are notoriously bad at judging relative risks, and expected costs and benefits; especially when they involve things with very high impacts and very low probabilities. This causes us to be vulnerable to arguments for bad policies with respect to things like responses to terror attacks, climate change, technological innovations, etc.

Another instance of this, I think, is that the large size of government budgets makes it difficult for us to reason well about what prudent and moral governmental policies entail. There is so much money in these budgets, that many are likely to view all of their favored policies as affordable, and any shortfalls as easily handled by cutting some of their disfavored expenses and adjusting revenue policies in ways that make groups that they disfavor pay more.

All of these can be believed without doing the actual math because it’s just such a gigantic pile of money (mostly taken from other people) that we have trouble taking the idea that we can’t afford all of the programs that appeal to us seriously.

So, we have many people who resent, for example, the money that the US government spends on foreign aid (“When we should be focusing on problems here at home”), but favor large entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, thinking that cutting the former will solve the problems of the latter (even though we’re talking about billions for the former and trillions for the latter). Likewise for those who think that the “rich” aren’t paying their “fair share” of taxes, and that correcting that injustice will bridge the fiscal gap.

Stupid.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

I took my family to see “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert last night, and we really enjoyed it. It’s nice to see that, at 51, he still has a lot of energy and can put on an amazing and hilarious performance.

Most of the songs were from his recent Alpocalypse album, but he did many older favorites as well. Here’s the setlist.

Of the new songs that he performed I really like TMZ (here’s the official video):

Skipper Dan:

CNR:

and his Jim Morrison style parody, “Craigslist” (here’s a concert video
that’s similar to what I saw):

And my wife really likes his Party in the CIA song:

And, of course there’s his Lady Gaga parody, Perform This Way:

If you get a chance, go see the concert.