The music labels tried to hang on to their deal, suing napster and grokster and your grandma. And they won every battle, right? So now they're happy, right? Kazaa & emule etc. Has Apple saved their business? They're on life support. That industry, music distribution, got socialized - now everyone owns it. No more stupid lawyer tricks, no more getting the government to subsidize your business model, and the whole idea of intellectual property has a black eye. This is revolutionary entrepreneurship. Who's next?
Sunday, September 30, 2012
No, I Won't Sue
I adopted my motto, "Breakfast impossible" back in the 1980s, though I doubt I can prove it. How long has this blog been sitting around gathering dust on blogger.com? Well, no longer than blogger.com has existed, anyhow.
Now a google search reveals that youtube is hosting a web video series titled "Breakfast Impossible". Crud. There goes my SEO. What shall I do?
Hmmm, maybe someone looking for a fan site for an extreme low budget Americanized Dr. Who superhero ironyfest will enjoy getting bait-&-switched to my self-indulgent rants on cognitive biases, skepticism, epistemology, and libertarian theorizing?
Maybe they should make me a character in the series. But instead of a superpower, all I do is sit around making blog posts and sending them into the past of the primitive internet (series is set in 2171) in order to alter history.
There you go.
Now a google search reveals that youtube is hosting a web video series titled "Breakfast Impossible". Crud. There goes my SEO. What shall I do?
Hmmm, maybe someone looking for a fan site for an extreme low budget Americanized Dr. Who superhero ironyfest will enjoy getting bait-&-switched to my self-indulgent rants on cognitive biases, skepticism, epistemology, and libertarian theorizing?
Maybe they should make me a character in the series. But instead of a superpower, all I do is sit around making blog posts and sending them into the past of the primitive internet (series is set in 2171) in order to alter history.
There you go.
Inconvenient Geniuses and Annoying Saints on Damascus Pilgrimage
We easily fall into the trap of explaining our political, religious, philosophical, etc. differences as caused by the ignorance, laziness, selfishness, stubbornness, or stupidity of those with whom we disagree. Surprise me by showing me someone who never feels this temptation. Some of us try to resist, but none escape the impulse.
I claim that everyone who has a position on some significant idea could find, if they cared to, the name of some person widely regarded as a genius or a saint that opposes them on this particular issue (or once opposed them, if the genius/saint is dead or experienced a change of mind/heart). (Feel free to send me counterexamples, I'd love to receive them.)
In some ideal rational world (Plato's Republic?) we would all be open-minded and look dispassionately at reasons and evidence, and if we disagreed, we would disagree exclusively on values, not on facts or theories. Perhaps, in these circumstances, we would more easily find agreement, and find disagreement less divisive. The saints and geniuses, at least, would all be in agreement in regard to the facts.
We do not live in that world. Debates rarely (never?) change anyone's mind. When we encounter an idea that contradicts our intuition, we ask ourselves "Must I believe this?" Often the answer is no, and any small perceived ambiguity or difficulty in the evidence or reasoning lets us off the hook. In other cases, when presented with arguments that appeal to our intuition, we instead ask "Can I believe it?" and we find that just a crumb of credibility will suffice.
I've stolen this "Can I/Must I" from Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind. He claims that intuition evolved as a quick and dirty guide to action, and that reasoning evolved to defend the decisions made by the intuition. From this standpoint, our thinking fails to bring us to agreement because we have pushed beyond the boundaries of the circumstances where it evolved. We face decisions about abstract ideas that impact us only indirectly, while our thinking excels at dealing with immediate concrete decisions that impact us and our immediate social group directly.
We could examine the implications of all this, and the difficulties and weaknesses, and perhaps I'll make another blog post on that someday (or you can send suggestions). What I am actually interested in now (finally!) is to wonder about those persons who finally do change their minds. Perhaps it reveals my bias, but I easily thought of some famous right-wingers who repudiated the left: David Horowitz, Whittaker Chambers, Ronald Reagan. John Stuart Mill supposedly moved toward socialism at the end of his life, though I'm not sure whether he repudiated his individualism or merely radicalized it (Fabian society? Karl Marx? or Henry George? Lysander Spooner?) And we cannot overlook Saul's experience on the road to Damascus. Friedrich Hayek? John Stossel? Julian Simon? Bjorn Lomborg? David Ramsay Steele.
I hope my readers will suggest names to add to this list, but even more urgently, names of scholars or scientists who have examined this question of how someone's passionate dedication to one side of a debate moves them to passionately support the opposite.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Skeptical Libertarianism or Skeptical of Libertarianism?
My political beliefs are among my most unusual thoughts (though not unique). Extraordinary beliefs call for extraordinary evidence, so I ought to feel suspicious toward them. But its not easy.
When I look at government, it seems so hidebound, inflexible, non-adaptive. My father-in-law is very convinced that the Scandinavian social democracies have everything licked, so that is evidence against me. My confirmation bias makes me uninterested in actually looking at Sweden, and eager to listen to persons who explain it away with ideas about small ethnically homogenous groups having better tools for dealing with free-riders.
Conventional attitudes seem just as problematic, but they have the advantages of familiarity and popularity.
I need good evidence, but good evidence is scarce in politics. The sample size of government experiments is usually 1, and there is almost never a control group. Supporters love the stimulus and are certain it saved us from far worse. Detractors look at the same outcome and draw the opposite conclusion. There are almost certainly collective goods and coordination problems where the right collective decision could improve significantly over laissez faire, but once the mechanism exists it is vulnerable to serious abuse.
Political events happen at a different scale, what I do about my political beliefs has little/no impact on my life, so weak feedback fails to steer me clear of error.
Market advocates and critics both tend to concentrate their attention on markets. Public choice theorists tried to analyze the government, with varying success. The Chicago guys usually find that government is efficient, despite their association with market advocacy. I'm thinking of Gary Becker. (I of course prefer Bryan Caplan.)
Is there/could there be a Hayek of big government, someone with a deep, relatively optimistic and inspiring understanding of how government can work? There are many kinds of actual markets and actual governments. Hayek explained how markets work and why we need them. Who did that for government, as elegantly? Is it possible? (Update - the Nobel committee seems to be suggesting Elinor Ostrom as a sort of Hayek of the left - I'll have to get her book!)
How is corporate governance different from city governance, or national? Too many variables.
Our theories of the firm are weak, and public choice theories confused.
Could governments use rivalry more? In the US, different levels of government compete in some sense for jurisdiction. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are rivals in some sense. Different bureaus compete for resources, different legislators compete for influence, votes, and contributions. Could technology, or creativity, take us further in this direction? Would it be an improvement?
Open source software and Wikipedia are examples of collective decentralized non-market non-government phenomena. The gift economy is not the same as government. How can we cultivate it?
Governments vary in size, in democracy, in dynamism, and in centralization. Size consists of scope, budget, revenue, debt, and employment (at least).
Can we also think of government as the stable equilibrium in the big game? Molyneux points out that it is rarely government employees who are the ones that enforce our attitudes toward government, we do it to each other, punishing defection and rewarding loyalty. When I gripe about bureaucrats, its not a buraucrat (usually) that tries to take me down a notch on the internet.
Markets can be thought of as skeptical, as many different approaches can strive, and failure will weed out those corresponding to weaker hypotheses. What is it that weeds out the failures of government? Where could the feedback come from? What are the hypotheses, and how could we test them? Do the various employees and officers of government have the right incentives and information?
Lessig says that code is law. But lately entrepreneurs have used proprietary protocols to add new capabilities to the web, causing concerns about privacy, transparency, monopoly, etc. Diaspora, identica, vs Facebook and google. So in a way, Facebook is writing law. OTOH, I can use diaspora instead.
Is it possible to limit a government with a constitution? Can competition limit government growth? Is government growth inevitable? Can we govern without monopoly? What experiments would reveal the limits of the possibilities, and what would it be worth to know? Is any sort of constitutional change possible in the US now? To what degree has the constitution succeeded in restraining government? The supreme court has guarded certain rights jealously and consistently, abandoned others. Or do I read the constitution with bias?
In my notes I mention that Claude Shannon developed information theory to explain and predict the capacity of noisy circuits to carry information. I've forgotten why I thought that was relevant here. Maybe government is made up of noisy circuits? Or the market is?
When I look at government, it seems so hidebound, inflexible, non-adaptive. My father-in-law is very convinced that the Scandinavian social democracies have everything licked, so that is evidence against me. My confirmation bias makes me uninterested in actually looking at Sweden, and eager to listen to persons who explain it away with ideas about small ethnically homogenous groups having better tools for dealing with free-riders.
Conventional attitudes seem just as problematic, but they have the advantages of familiarity and popularity.
I need good evidence, but good evidence is scarce in politics. The sample size of government experiments is usually 1, and there is almost never a control group. Supporters love the stimulus and are certain it saved us from far worse. Detractors look at the same outcome and draw the opposite conclusion. There are almost certainly collective goods and coordination problems where the right collective decision could improve significantly over laissez faire, but once the mechanism exists it is vulnerable to serious abuse.
Political events happen at a different scale, what I do about my political beliefs has little/no impact on my life, so weak feedback fails to steer me clear of error.
Market advocates and critics both tend to concentrate their attention on markets. Public choice theorists tried to analyze the government, with varying success. The Chicago guys usually find that government is efficient, despite their association with market advocacy. I'm thinking of Gary Becker. (I of course prefer Bryan Caplan.)
Is there/could there be a Hayek of big government, someone with a deep, relatively optimistic and inspiring understanding of how government can work? There are many kinds of actual markets and actual governments. Hayek explained how markets work and why we need them. Who did that for government, as elegantly? Is it possible? (Update - the Nobel committee seems to be suggesting Elinor Ostrom as a sort of Hayek of the left - I'll have to get her book!)
How is corporate governance different from city governance, or national? Too many variables.
Our theories of the firm are weak, and public choice theories confused.
Could governments use rivalry more? In the US, different levels of government compete in some sense for jurisdiction. The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are rivals in some sense. Different bureaus compete for resources, different legislators compete for influence, votes, and contributions. Could technology, or creativity, take us further in this direction? Would it be an improvement?
Open source software and Wikipedia are examples of collective decentralized non-market non-government phenomena. The gift economy is not the same as government. How can we cultivate it?
Governments vary in size, in democracy, in dynamism, and in centralization. Size consists of scope, budget, revenue, debt, and employment (at least).
Can we also think of government as the stable equilibrium in the big game? Molyneux points out that it is rarely government employees who are the ones that enforce our attitudes toward government, we do it to each other, punishing defection and rewarding loyalty. When I gripe about bureaucrats, its not a buraucrat (usually) that tries to take me down a notch on the internet.
Markets can be thought of as skeptical, as many different approaches can strive, and failure will weed out those corresponding to weaker hypotheses. What is it that weeds out the failures of government? Where could the feedback come from? What are the hypotheses, and how could we test them? Do the various employees and officers of government have the right incentives and information?
Lessig says that code is law. But lately entrepreneurs have used proprietary protocols to add new capabilities to the web, causing concerns about privacy, transparency, monopoly, etc. Diaspora, identica, vs Facebook and google. So in a way, Facebook is writing law. OTOH, I can use diaspora instead.
Is it possible to limit a government with a constitution? Can competition limit government growth? Is government growth inevitable? Can we govern without monopoly? What experiments would reveal the limits of the possibilities, and what would it be worth to know? Is any sort of constitutional change possible in the US now? To what degree has the constitution succeeded in restraining government? The supreme court has guarded certain rights jealously and consistently, abandoned others. Or do I read the constitution with bias?
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Is Libertarianism a Cult?
I don't think so. The liberty movement is too disorganized to qualify. The Libertarian Party? Don't make me laugh. They are terrible at recruiting and retaining members. They are famous for schisms and infighting. Maybe they'd like to be, but if so they haven't done their homework.
To me a cult is characterized by a rigid hierarchical leadership structure, secrecy, an us vs. them culture, and emphasis on recruiting and maintaining members. This varies.
Are libertarians cult-proof? I doubt it. Interest in Libertarianism means that a person tends to be idealistic and interested in abstract arguments. These sorts of things a big part of the bait that cults tend to use. Someone who wants to do the right thing and change the world may be persuaded to join a strange group, sever contact with family and friends, and donate time and money to a worthy cause.
Doomsday cults want to survive the end times. Some will sell you self-improvement (scam). What sort of cult would people join willingly? 7 tactics of coercive mind control
To me a cult is characterized by a rigid hierarchical leadership structure, secrecy, an us vs. them culture, and emphasis on recruiting and maintaining members. This varies.
Are libertarians cult-proof? I doubt it. Interest in Libertarianism means that a person tends to be idealistic and interested in abstract arguments. These sorts of things a big part of the bait that cults tend to use. Someone who wants to do the right thing and change the world may be persuaded to join a strange group, sever contact with family and friends, and donate time and money to a worthy cause.
Doomsday cults want to survive the end times. Some will sell you self-improvement (scam). What sort of cult would people join willingly? 7 tactics of coercive mind control
More truth and action
Skepticism helps learning, certainty helps action. Someone who is too skeptical and reflective will never get anything done. Someone who is not skeptical enough will get scammed.
What is the opposite of a conspiracy? A large group, operating in total transparency, attempting to accomplish nothing? Can a conspiracy be transparent? I want to accomplish things, and a small group is all I can hope for initially. But I don't like secrecy.
What is the opposite of a conspiracy? A large group, operating in total transparency, attempting to accomplish nothing? Can a conspiracy be transparent? I want to accomplish things, and a small group is all I can hope for initially. But I don't like secrecy.
Books and links
I keep a list of books I've read or want to read or am reading at http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6094809?shelf=to-read .
Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html .
Steve Hassan's web page on cults is here: http://freedomofmind.com/index.php
Coercive mind control tactics: http://www.factnet.org/node/357
Book depository (rival for amazon?) http://www.bookdepository.com/Libertarian-Anarchy-Gerard-Casey/9781441144676
Occupy wall street NYC general assembly decentralism: http://internet.nycga.net/
Freedom engineers http://freedomengineering.org/
Freedom box http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
Divia Melwani http://meaningandmagic.com/blog/
Econophysics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics
Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" is online at http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html .
Steve Hassan's web page on cults is here: http://freedomofmind.com/index.php
Coercive mind control tactics: http://www.factnet.org/node/357
Book depository (rival for amazon?) http://www.bookdepository.com/Libertarian-Anarchy-Gerard-Casey/9781441144676
Occupy wall street NYC general assembly decentralism: http://internet.nycga.net/
Freedom engineers http://freedomengineering.org/
Freedom box http://freedomboxfoundation.org/
Divia Melwani http://meaningandmagic.com/blog/
Econophysics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econophysics
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