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The Soviet Star Wars Fallacy
A new concept I sort of came up, or at least categorized – I define it as not taking easily available substitutes into account. For example it is a common belief that the Soviet Union collapsed because Reagan (and Congress) tricked them into an arms race, and they went bankrupt trying to keep up. However, this does not take into account that the Soviets were going to spend the money on something, and spend it poorly. Failure to use resources wisely is pretty much the definition of the Soviet system, and if they didn’t spend it on their military they would have blown it on a five year plans, canal to nowhere, sea draining or something like that.
For econ nerds, let it be said that they did not have a meaningful price structure, which basically meant that whatever they did was inherently wasteful.
Similarly people claim that if drugs are legalized that hard drug use would skyrocket, forgetting that the readily available hard drug, (and substitute) alcohol is already legal. There would be some switching between the two, but no meaningful increase, or so I would predict.
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Across the street
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The internet of things and the garrison state
This is more of a placeholder – but one thing I need to think out is how the Internet of things will come to resemble Woodrow Wilson’s idea of the “Garrison State”, i.e. something wonderful, the internet in our case, democracy in Wilson’s, stuck in a world so dangerous that it can’t survive in it’s wonderful form, but instead much become permanently occupied by security concerns if it’s going to survive at all.
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More quotes of the day from Slate Star Codes
Communism, which basically took all of the worst ideas in history, combined them together into a package deal, and said “Let’s do all of these at once”
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Random thought about the SC horrors – illustrated nicely by Marginal Revolution
Normative sociology, the study of what the causes of problems ought to be, greatly fascinates us all
That sums up a lot of the next round of media coverage. The navel gazing has begun about the killings, namely media criticism about differences in coverage, the deeper motivations of the shooter, making him the internet celebrity he seems to want to be.
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I found a turtle by the creek
Not sure what we’re going to do with him.
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Me and mo
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Me and porkchop
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Greatest comeback ever – Alexandre Dumas edition
It turns out he was of mixed race – or so says wikipedia anyway
Despite Dumas’ aristocratic background and personal success, the writer had to deal with discrimination related to his mixed-race ancestry. In 1843 he wrote a short novel, Georges, that addressed some of the issues of race and the effects of colonialism. His response to a man who insulted him about his African ancestry has become famous. Dumas said:
My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.
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Ever More Quotes of the day
Again from Slate Star Codex
The difference between “religion” and “culture” has always been pretty vague. Shinto is the best example; it’s less a coherent metaphysical narrative than a bunch of things Japanese people do and a repository for Japanese traditions and rituals. A quick look at Hinduism reveals that they have no idea what gods they believe in, it’s a bunch of different religions stuck together under one umbrella, but the point is that it’s the sort of thing Indian people do and a repository of Indian traditions. Even though Jews have a pretty coherent religion, the line between “Jewish culture” and “Jewish religion” is equally fuzzy. Religion as distinct from culture seems like a pretty Western phenomenon, the result of a triumphant Christianity colonizing cultures it never originated from, ending out with the modern conception of culture as ethnic food + silly costumes.
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