Curt Doolittle

Form: Short Note

  • Who Are The Most Influential Economists Alive?

    INFLUENTIAL TO WHOM?

    • Economists influence each other.
    • Economists influence other academics.
    • Economists influence policy makers.
    • Economists influence members of the financial system
    • Economists influence business and industry leaders
    • Economists influence the interested public.

    The group of economists who influence each group varies considerably.  In fact those who influence each other are very different from those who influence policy and society. 

    Unfortunately, the economists who write for newspapers are the most influential outside of academia.  Within academia, influence is largely determined by citations, as someone else in this thread has stated.

    THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE
    Which economists are the most influential?
    Contains opinions by economists themselves.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-most-influential-economists-alive

  • What Does It Feel Like To Be Intelligent Enough To Understand How Dumb One Often Is?

    Well, it makes you feel like you’re profoundly stupid actually. And to feel horrified about how much more stupid everyone else is.  But to live in AWE of how we manage to work together using habits, norms, traditions, myths, narratives, writing, property rights, money, prices, accounting, contracts, law, measurements, and the scientific method.  That’s actually as close to magic as I think we’ve come.

    As for the problem of competency, the Dunning-Kreuger graph says it all. 

    • While people vary little in their perception of competence or incompetence, about all competence is actually held by only 20-25% of people.

    This statistic correlates with two other interesting rules of thumb:

    • The Pareto observation that 20% of the population owns 80% of the property. The reason being that they’re the only ones competent to make use of it. 
    • The IQ distribution that suggests that the minimum intelligence necessary to do anything meaningful is what we currently consider 106 or so.  That no more than 10% of the population can actually understand a liberal arts education.




    https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-intelligent-enough-to-understand-how-dumb-one-often-is

  • Who Are The Most Influential Economists Alive?

    INFLUENTIAL TO WHOM?

    • Economists influence each other.
    • Economists influence other academics.
    • Economists influence policy makers.
    • Economists influence members of the financial system
    • Economists influence business and industry leaders
    • Economists influence the interested public.

    The group of economists who influence each group varies considerably.  In fact those who influence each other are very different from those who influence policy and society. 

    Unfortunately, the economists who write for newspapers are the most influential outside of academia.  Within academia, influence is largely determined by citations, as someone else in this thread has stated.

    THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE
    Which economists are the most influential?
    Contains opinions by economists themselves.

    https://www.quora.com/Who-are-the-most-influential-economists-alive

  • What Does It Feel Like To Be Intelligent Enough To Understand How Dumb One Often Is?

    Well, it makes you feel like you’re profoundly stupid actually. And to feel horrified about how much more stupid everyone else is.  But to live in AWE of how we manage to work together using habits, norms, traditions, myths, narratives, writing, property rights, money, prices, accounting, contracts, law, measurements, and the scientific method.  That’s actually as close to magic as I think we’ve come.

    As for the problem of competency, the Dunning-Kreuger graph says it all. 

    • While people vary little in their perception of competence or incompetence, about all competence is actually held by only 20-25% of people.

    This statistic correlates with two other interesting rules of thumb:

    • The Pareto observation that 20% of the population owns 80% of the property. The reason being that they’re the only ones competent to make use of it. 
    • The IQ distribution that suggests that the minimum intelligence necessary to do anything meaningful is what we currently consider 106 or so.  That no more than 10% of the population can actually understand a liberal arts education.




    https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-intelligent-enough-to-understand-how-dumb-one-often-is

  • WHEN SUBJECTIVE TESTING IS OBJECTIVE Using the methods of science we reduce phen

    WHEN SUBJECTIVE TESTING IS OBJECTIVE

    Using the methods of science we reduce phenomenon to something we can experience, and test. I don’t like that we describe these processes as apodictically certain. But it is irrational to state that I can use science to reduce something beyond experience to experience, so that I can interpret it, but on the other hand, suggest that sympathetic interpretation of incentives is less ‘scientific’. It’s just as scientific as anything else, because human cognitive biases are reasonably universal, and need to be INCLUDED in any such analysis of human behavior – not excluded from it. That’s not logical either.

    (Excerpt from longer post.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-24 07:41:00 UTC

  • VAMPIRES IN WASHINGTON DC You know, this whole ‘farming’ the productive citizen

    VAMPIRES IN WASHINGTON DC

    You know, this whole ‘farming’ the productive citizen thing is really a wonderful analogy to what the federal government has become.

    In one of the Stargate science fiction worlds, there are these vampires that treat human populations as herds of cattle, and they ‘cull’ the herds to feed off of every so often.

    Now, the federal government doesn’t do that. THey just make sure that none of us will ever be self reliant enough to do without them, and so they harvest enough of our productivity through taxation that we continue to labor, but then, have to spend our old age in poverty.

    So, I tend to think of the federal government as an enormous vampire clan.

    Because it is.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 16:39:00 UTC

  • ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION NIT If you and I are in the same community and we operate by

    ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION NIT

    If you and I are in the same community and we operate by the same code, we can use the law to resolve our conflict peacefully. If we are at war, then that isn’t possible. If our legal codes are incompatible, that isnt possible. So if my legal code says I an conquer primitive, illiterate, stone-age people in order to gain territory before one of the other competing nations conquers the illiterate stone age people in order to obtain their land, and my people will not prosecute me for it or they permit it, then it is by definition LEGAL.

    You might confuse illegal with immoral. But that would require that you define MORAL. Because MORAL rules among the tribal people were pretty freaking terrible.

    The ‘LAW’ at that time, was that you could conquer people who were ‘savages’. And they did. It was legal.

    Now, you could in fact, argue that lower classes have an unwritten law, or a moral obligation, that they can conquer others by waves of invasion, just as the whites conquered their ancestors by waves of invasion.

    And that’s true. But the question is not between members of the invaders and the population, it’s between members of the population who WANT the invaders and those that DON”T WANT the invaders.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 12:56:00 UTC

  • WHY YESTERDAY’S ABHU GRAIB ATTACK UNDER OBAMA IS CARTER’S IRAN AND REGAN’S BERUI

    WHY YESTERDAY’S ABHU GRAIB ATTACK UNDER OBAMA IS CARTER’S IRAN AND REGAN’S BERUIT

    You cannot let desert-raiding tribal people attack a standing fortress and win. It is the system of thought and ethics that their culture’s status signal hierarchy is built upon. It’s how their empire was built – by desert raiding the exhausted Byzantines. All that will happen now, is that every single group will try to attack physical assets, after spending the past decade trying to export attacks.

    I’m not countering the libertarian argument that we should or should not do anything. I’m pointing out that if you’re stupid enough to do X, then you need to be smart enough not do to it too badly – externalities often worse than the problem we seek to cure.

    What kind of idiot left that place vulnerable to the OBVIOUS? Gets our guys killed in Bahrain. Gets our people killed, and motivates the opposition in Abhu Graib. This administration is even worse at geopolitics than the last.

    Amateurs. We should eliminate the state department and make the military as independent as the judiciary and the central bank. Soldiers like to sit in barracks and only go out of them when they know they’ll win. This sitting duck in a hazard nonsense is only possible with moronic civilians using the military as a policy tool, rather than a line of last resort.

    If I was on the other side I’d be out recruiting more men, and planning my next ten adventures. A bunch of mobile guys with AK47’s and RPG’s are pretty much Unstoppable. Or did we not learn that using the Seals ourselves way back in Vietnam?

    Sigh.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 10:54:00 UTC

  • SPREAD OF TECHNOLOGY AND INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE IS NOT JUST CAUSING UNEMPLOYMEN

    http://bloom.bg/1bGSoKjTHE SPREAD OF TECHNOLOGY AND INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE IS NOT JUST CAUSING UNEMPLOYMENT FOR PARKING LOT ATTENDANTS – BUT FOR LAWYERS TOO.

    We can never have the 50’s again. We’re in the new normal. Immigration is BAD for this reason.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 09:02:00 UTC

  • I WANT A KING (OR QUEEN) I know that the Queen says that she is the head of the

    I WANT A KING (OR QUEEN)

    I know that the Queen says that she is the head of the English speaking peoples. And in my world, she’s the head of my extended family. But I can’t live under her protection, just her influence. And as a minarchist, I’d prefer to live under her protection, in a private government, with some defense from the predatory state.

    Someday maybe there will be the level of unrest in the UK that there is currently in the states, and Windsor will issue Passports, for which I will gladly pay taxes in exchange for.

    One can only hope. 😉

    Right now I’m farmed by the US Government, the IRS, the NSA, the FBI, and both political parties.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-07-23 08:28:00 UTC