I asked a friend of mine several months ago how a Libertarian parent could live with the inherent lack of freedom a parent forces on their children. He had a quick and simple answer. “It all boils down to money. A kid is economically dependent on the parent, so the kid isn’t entitled to anything.”

I thought about that when an unexpected problem in traditional teaching methods was pointed out to me. Right now, as long as students show up to school and are unconcerned about their own academic performance, schools can’t threaten anything to students that would cause the student harm. So the only way to bring an unruly but nonviolent high school student into line is through parental intervention. (For examples of this unruliness, think not following dress code or using cell phones in class. Little things that are disruptive but not illegal.) But that’s not really an option if the student is economically independent from the parent(s). And this is a surprisingly common situation with students in inner-city schools.

How do you deal with students who just don’t feel like playing the school game, and can’t be quickly threatened to fall into line? This is one of many problems that modern education theory doesn’t seem to have a good answer to.

Understanding differences between myself and others is important to me. My own quest to overcome my own biases, I suppose. Your potential (and probability) of understanding situations and being correct in your actions is reduced when you don’t understand how the people involved (including myself) are different from you. So here’s today edition of that

I am usually a linear thinker. And I’m good about putting my thoughts into words. (Not always beautifully written or without quirks, but functional.) This is how I’ve been since I was very young. So I’ve always assumed that if someone can understand the ideas behind a topic and discuss them in a coherent way then they can write an essay on that topic.

This is, apparently, wrong.

First counter-example is IH. IH can understand the ideas behind a piece of pop-culture and discuss them (quite forcefully). But he has trouble organizing his ideas. Especially organizing them enough to write an outline of a paper. IH’s thought processes don’t flow in overly constrained patterns like that.

The second is P. P also understands ideas and can discuss them. He’s ok organizing his thought processes and writing outlines, too. But transforming the broad structure into writing is difficult for him.

This is good to know. I wonder in what other ways the process of going from topic to essay can go awry, especially which other ways that I wouldn’t have expected.

It’s winter, so the weather is gloomy, the daytime is scarce, and free time is wanting. Which makes it really easy to get into moody introspective bouts of self-reflection.

This, of course, leads to blog posts of unbearable self-centered egotism. It’s the natural way of the world. This is the first, but I’ll have several others over the next few weeks.

So consider this a warning: if you’re not in the mood for such a post then don’t bother reading further.

Martin Wolf has an opinion piece in the Financial Times today. He spends 10 paragraphs comparing 2000-2010 with 1900-1910. He ends the article by quoting Benjamin Franklin. I find this to be an unacceptable level of dissonance. He needed to quote someone from the 1900-1910 era. That is all.

It seems like there are two situations about boring jobs. If you don’t have any other options, then they’ll pay you as little as possible. If you have other options (i.e. some particular skills) then you get a “useless-at-cocktail-parties premium”, more pay than the work exactly merits simply because it’s mind-numbing or uninteresting.

However, I’m unsure whether the above thought is content-less or not. It feels so obvious that I shouldn’t bother saying it. And yet it also feels like it explains some things I’ve been baffled by.

In addition to my most absurd belief, I have a host of other beliefs that might be characterized as absurd.

1. Nature vs. Nurture. I come down pretty hard on the side of nurture. As far as I can tell from research summaries I’ve read, not to mention my own experience, nature mostly matters when all other things are approximately equal. Most importantly, that includes the prevailing culture, education level, and resources of someone’s family/guardians. But I think the culture, education level, and resources of someone’s family are stronger predictors of performance than anything genetic. Not to mention there don’t seem to be mechanisms for how exactly the genetics affects things, only fancy statistical tests. This makes me suspicious.
2. Value of Education? Even though I consider Robin Hanson, at Overcoming Bias, and many economists, more than a little crazy and taken with their theories, I think they have a bit of a point about modern university education. A common argument for the value of higher education is that even if the students don’t use skills they were taught in college, they do use critical thinking abilities they learned. I like this idea, and hope it is true. However, it’s very untestable. An alternative idea, pushed by economists, is essentially that higher education is used as a signaling device to advertise you have a particular middle-class culture, work ethic, desire for wealth, and basic level of skills. In other words, it’s just a sorting device for employers to use, and it’s left up in the air whether  what you were taught matters at all. That alternative argument is also hard to test, but it appeals to my cynical side a great deal.
3. Much Academic Research is Overvalued. I have a belief, somewhat patently absurd, that most academic research is of very little value. While many people might feel comfortable saying that about philosophy, humanities, or social science research, I’m anomalous in extending it to physical and biological science fields as well. It’s true that we’re making all sorts of new discoveries and publishing all sorts of new findings, but it’s unclear what difference academic research is making, despite the onward march of new products and technologies. This isn’t a belief I can defend in any way, and it’s easy to knock down in many specific circumstances. But I often feel it’s true nonetheless.

I just found out about an interesting organization. GiveWell is a small group that studies the effectiveness of various non-profits and reports on them. They generally find that non-profits don’t perform particularly well. But they had a number of interesting statistics and blog posts. Generally depressing, but remarkably honest about the difficulties of improving lives. They also are quite direct in noting that charity in the US and in developing countries mean two different things. In developing countries you’re trying to save the lives of people dying from easily and cheaply preventable causes, while in the US you’re, at heart, generally trying to improve the socioeconomic status of people compared to where they would have been without the intervention.

Unfortunately, their website is somewhat poorly designed, but here are some of the interesting pages I’ve found on it.

1. Their About page mentions that, annually, individual donors give 100 times as much to charity as the Gates Foundation, and 6 times as much as all foundations combined.
2. They have excellent overview of why most charities are not nearly as effective as they sound, and another overview of social programs that don’t work. (Or at least haven’t been made to work despite numerous attempts.) I think acknowledging these failures to meet hopes is important for improving programs, or ultimately determining what we can and can’t hope to accomplish.
3. A short table showing how donated money has a bigger impact overseas, in developing countries.
4. They have some interesting posts about the limitations of better schooling. One points out that the achievement gap between socioeconomic classes starts before kindergarten. Another more forcefully argues better education isn’t the key to improved life outcomes. Those posts focus on domestic issues, but they talk about international educational charities as well, coming to similarly depression conclusions.

A few years ago Tyler Cowen asked his commenters on his blog “What is the most absurd claim you believe?” I think it’s an interesting question, and I’m fairly sure I know which claim I believe is the most absurd. But  there are several competing for second most absurd, which I’ll mention too.

My most absurd belief is, possibly, the following: within another 100 to 150 years our increases in wealth will run up against hard environmental constraints, and lead to a period of severe troubles in the world.

The belief that we have environmental constraints we’re starting to bump up against isn’t the absurd part. Here are some reasons, without links.

1. The world has a water usage problem–specifically we’re over using it in farming. Available water, both above and below ground, has been decreasing for some time due to unsustainable practices. This is a worldwide problem; as true in India as in the US.
2. There’s also our oil problems. Generating energy is a big deal, and we haven’t really found another way than oil. Wind and solar are nice, but they have limits. Nuclear is also nice, if you ignore the potential for disaster, but (and I don’t have a link) soon demand for uranium will be greater than the available yearly supply. Coal is feasible, but also very harmful environmentally. And, aside from energy, petroleum is used in many, many industrial practices where there’s no clear substitute. (e.g. Use in high yield farming, which, apparently, is corrosive enough to soil that once started can’t be stopped.)
3. Fish. We’re over-fishing, basically everywhere. Many fish stocks are headed for collapse, if they haven’t already. This is a problem for places where fish are very important to diets.
4. Meat. We’re eating too much meat too. Raising lots of animals is a very energy intensive process and hard on the environment. It’s unsustainable.
5. Global Warming. I’m fairly convinced that it’s real, as are most climate scientists. It exacerbates many of the above problems. It will make agriculture more difficult, and make many places more arid. It affects snow melt, a major problem for places that rely on snow melt for yearly water. Also it will (and is) screwing with oceans and fish.

Except for oil, all of the above have political solutions, but I don’t believe they’re going to happen. Water could be priced differently (all over the world), leading to better usage, but it isn’t. Caps and trade systems have been successfully implemented in fishing, but they aren’t always implemented. Subsidies on various meats (especially beef) could be removed, but no one screws with the US beef lobby. And global warming could won’t be tackled until rather late, after the effects are very apparent.

When I read economists on such issues, some seem pretty confident that “new technology” will come to the rescue on some of the above. More efficient methods of agriculture and clean energy, for example. I’m unconvinced. It’s true we develop new technology all the time, but it seems relatively rare that we get to choose what new technologies are developed next, or the timeline in which they’re developed. I hear that capitalism will save us much more from people who don’t understand the technical issues than from ones that do, which makes me suspicious.

Unfortunately I don’t really have any numbers, or definite links, to back up the above. I’ve read about the issues a fair amount, but whether that makes me better informed overall or just better informed about things that feed my pessimism is unclear.

However, this is probably my most absurd belief.

Four good reasons to break up with someone.

1. Divergence of Long-Term Goals. She wants kids. You want to make a difference rather than a family. She wants to spend several of her prime years as a stay-at-home-mom. You’re ambivalent about using an expensive elite-college education for raising a child during prime productive years. Besides, she doesn’t know what she wants beyond that. She’s happy to follow the path of least resistance, to let life happen to her. And that lack of vitality in someone you love and see so much potential in, is a constant source of disappointment, even depression.
2. Constant Low-Level Drama. If you don’t have a problem, such as issues with the relationship, a broken bone, or a depressive issue, then she does. Things like a laptop just accidentally killed, some sort of infection, loss of balance and ability to walk, or something. No matter what, there’s always something. This is not needed in life. One can only keep up with there always being something for so long before their physical and emotional safety nets completely break down. It could be different, if she had more close friends and a larger support network. But she’s too scared to reach out to her friends.
3. Broken Interactions That Never Get Fixed. You talk to each other all the time and love each other’s company. But you’re always holding back because you can’t quite trust her. She’s hurt you or let you down too many times for that kind of trust. You don’t know how to have the hard conversations with her. You don’t know how to tell her you love her, but you can’t stay if things don’t change.
4. Learning. You realize you need to grow in new ways, and she’s not helping you. You realize you don’t even know how to bring her with you on the experiences you need to have to grow. You use your concern for and devotion to her as a way of avoiding change. You use your fear of looking silly in front of her as an excuse to never try to things, especially around her. You would give anything for her to take the lead occasionally, to help you learn what you need, to solve your problems for you. But she never does.

Reasons, reasons. I want to call them good reasons, but I would, wouldn’t I? They’re all long-term reasons. At any given moment it’s easy to remember that nothing that bad is happening, really. And, after all, you care for her. You two converse easily and deeply. And she’s so comfortable to hold. It’ll all turn out alright…right?

I never really believed it would. I’m not capable of that kind of faith. Yet I sometimes wonder if things would have turned out alright if I had simply believed in it…

The subheading for this blog is “Lord, Enlighten Thou Our Enemies.” It’s part of a longer prayer of John Stuart Mill’s for his opponents to be intelligent, thoughtful, and honest. It’s an important quality, and something worth acknowledging when you find it. Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution and Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias, both George Mason economics professors, are certainly such people.

However, it’s taken me a long time to appreciate the inherent value of their honest thinking even when I vehemently disagreed. But Prof. Cowen makes a wonderful argument about the value of Robin Hanson as an intellectual, despite his obvious insane beliefs. It’s not whether Prof. Hanson is right or wrong, it’s whether you learn interesting things and have interesting thoughts when you read him. For example, four of his most recent posts are fascinating, regardless how much I disagree with his conclusions. They deal with topics of paternity testing for all children, comparison of how much a man is harmed by being cuckholded vs. a woman harmed by being raped, how wierd the viewpoint on resources of people within the medical world is, and how few times people who claimed to have been given date-rape drugs were actually drugged. And those are just his recent posts.