12 ms·

On being brought up by libertarian economists

118 points by Bostonian 2y ago

dctoedt 2y ago
Trivial point: At least Friedman correctly talks about "attenders" at a party and not "attendees." (An "attendee" is someone being attended, e.g., King Charles is attended by his attendants — they are the attenders, he is the attendee.) </rant>
kazinator 2y ago
> I still regret that I did not happen to encounter him after getting my PhD in physics to tell him that by his criterion, educational status not arguments, he was now wrong. That would only be the case if Friedman, even after getting his PhD in physics, still continued to disagree with that teacher and that textbook.
- greyface- 2y ago
  In the comments, he expresses that he continues to disagree, and provides reasoning. https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/on-being-brought-up-by-libertarian/comment/56892821 https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/on-being-brought-up-by...
  - dools 2y ago
    > What is true is that the 50mph collision with a brick wall is equivalent to a 100 mph collision with a car that is standing still, but that wasn't the claim. Ummmm ... what? I mean, sure if you assume that the dynamics of a brick wall and a car are different, then they won't be identical but if you just take a parked car and a brick wall to both be "immovable objects at rest" which for all intents and purposes is true for the driver, then I don't see how this statement could possibly be true.
    - chmod775 2y ago
      As a driver you mostly care about the amount of deceleration you will personally experience. If you have 1m of hood to work with, you're decelerating 100km/h to 0km/h over 1m in the wall case. In the hood-to-hood case, depending on reference frame, you're either decelerating 50km/h to 0km/h over 1m or 100km/h to 0km/h over 2m (both hoods). Either way it should be trivially obvious that running into a wall is going to be a much more violent experience. Likely the wall crumpling up the front of your car won't be enough to bring you to a stop before you personally impact something.
      - dools 2y ago
        Not true, because when you exert a force on the vehicle coming the other direction, an equal and opposite force is exerted on your car. Then you also have the force exerted by their car attempting to accelerate you backwards. For each car, there are 2 forces: the force that you exert due to your trying to accelerate them in your direction of travel and the opposing force. What you're saying is the same as saying that if you fall from the roof of an elevator at rest, the effect is the same as if you fall from the roof of an elevator that travels upwards at the same time as you fall. That's obviously not true, but the physics you need to prove it are F = ma and Newton's 3rd law.
        chmod775 2y ago
        This would make sense as a refutation if this was perfectly elastic rigid body physics, which wasn't precisely what we were doing here.
        dools 2y ago
        So sum the forces: For Car A: - Force of Car B accelerating Car A opposite to direction of travel - Force of Car B opposing force of Car A trying to accelerate Car B And vice versa for Car B. EDIT: Like if you hit a wall, the wall feels the force of your car. The force that crushes the car is the force opposing that, which is the wall acting on the car. EDIT2 (because I can't reply): the force acting on the driver will be the sum of the force of Car B acting on Car A opposing the force of Car A acting on Car B plus the force of Car B acting on Car A. There are 2 forces in each direction of travel that are exerted by the cars. The force felt by the driver is the sum of these 2 forces, exerted by the dashboard on the driver's face. If the car hits a brick wall, the only force opposing the direction of travel of the car is the force of the wall acting on the car, which opposes the force of the car acting on the wall. As such the force felt by the driver of the dashboard acting on their face is halved. EDIT3 (still because I can’t reply): the dynamics of the materials is not the issue. Yes bricks behave differently than cars, but that’s not the basis of the author’s argument.
    - kazinator 2y ago
      We would never treat a parked car as an immovable object. It only makes sense to use the "brick wall" symbolism for am idealized, immovable barrier that suffers no damage. A parked car will move when struck. The combination of the two cars continues to have kinetic energy, which is lost by friction.
      - dools 2y ago
        That’s not the argument he is making. He is making the argument that if you imagine a sheet of paper in between the 2 cars into which they crash, then since they both stop since they are perfectly symmetrical then the fact that there is another car on the other side of the sheet is immaterial. It’s complete garbage.
        kazinator 2y ago
        Pardon me, I seem to have made exactly the same argument myself, completely with crude pictures. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40629971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40629971 It is entirely unassailable; all you can argue with is the realism of my assumptions. (Real head-on collisions won't be precise mirror images.) When two identical objects are moving toward each other with a relative speed v, the collision is like hitting an ideal barrier at speed v/2.
        dools 2y ago
        CROSS POST: I posted this in reply to your linked explanation. Okay yep I get it now. The 4mv2 did it for me mathematically but I still couldn't get it intuitively until I imagined a car going 50mph rear ending a car going 40mph. If they wind up going the same speed as a result of the collision then the deceleration felt by the car in the back would only be 10mph if the car in front didn't change speed because it was like, an ocean liner. If the cars are the same size and the collision is perfect and all that then the car in front would gain 5mph and the car behind would lose 5mph. Since in a head on, they are both changing speed then the deceleration must be half the combined relative deceleration. The way I was imagining it was as if the car collides with another car going 50mph in a head on collision and the other car doesn't slow down due to the collision. So it appears that it is I who am confidently wrong about physics (although I still hold that Milton Friedman is confidently wrong about economics!).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  Sounded like it still bothered him
  - dmix 2y ago
    I think it was the underlying dynamic that bothered him, not that particular problem, which led him to not forget it and still think about it. Smarts kids probably often have resentment when they first discover their teachers/elders whom they hold up to a naturally realistic high regard are less inquisitive or intellectually rigorous than they are (or hope to be). That sort of thing has a way of sticking in your brain.
- chmod775 2y ago
  Likely. It's a bad example to illustrate "relative speeds" (not in the "fast" sense), since it's usually set up terribly any time I read it and ends up being plain wrong if you forget to squint. As a driver I'd rather run into another car than a brick wall. No amount of simplified textbook physics is going to convince me otherwise. On a related school anecdote: A test problem once asked us to calculate the length/angle a ladder would have to be extended from a firefighting vehicle to reach a window, given height of the window and distance of the firefighting vehicle to the house. I had about twenty minutes left and was a bit of a cheeky student, so I explained how I could not answer that question since I did not know the height at which the ladder originates from the vehicle. That got me full points since I had a great teacher. That said, you have to be a bit of a jackass to intentionally miss the point in either case.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- kazinator 2y ago
  He has a reason to continue to disagree. In fact, if we assume a perfectly mirror-like collision between two identical cars going 50 mph in opposite directions, then each one experiences a brick wall collision at 50 mph. This is four times less severe than a 100 mph strike against an ideal wall (indestructible, infinitely rigid barrier with a vast inertial mass). Animation frames in ASCII: _____ . _____ / \___ ____/ \ / \ . / \ _____ . _____ / \___ ____/ \ / \./ \ _____ . _____ / \___ ____/ \ / | \ _____ . _____ / \_/ \__/ \ / | \ The dots at the center of the collision demarcate a virtual brick wall that either car experiences due to the exact and opposite momentum and deceleration of the other. Each car crumples against the dotted line, not passing through it at all. (In our idealized example with a perfectly mirror-like collision in which both cars crumple identically, it behaves like an ideal brick wall: the worst kind.) Hitting an ideal brick wall at 50 is far less severe than doing so at 100. If the collision is perfectly inelastic, then in the two car case, the energy dissipated is 2mv² where v is 50 mph. In in the one car case where it is going double (2v) it the energy is m(2v)² which is 4mv². We assume the brick wall has no kinetic energy to contribute. We also assume the brick wall is not damaged so the 4mv² is absorbed by one car. Whereas in the two car case 2mv² energy is absorbed by two cars, so mv² each. Thus, from the point of view of one car, the 100 mph brick wall collision is 4 times more energetic than the 50 mph head-on collision. From that alone you can intuit that head-on is same as brick wall, since the damage scales 4 times with a doubling in velocity. (Now yes, hitting an identical parked car at 100 mph would me more similar to the head-on collision. A parked car is not a brick wall. It will move in the direction of the collision in addition to crumpling. Books for drivers should probably not talk about either brick walls or parked cars, but just convey that kinetic energy follows a square law, quadrupling when speed doubles.)
  - dools 2y ago
    Okay yep I get it now. The 4mv2 did it for me mathematically but I still couldn't get it intuitively until I imagined a car going 50mph rear ending a car going 40mph. If they wind up going the same speed as a result of the collision then the deceleration felt by the car in the back would only be 10mph if the car in front didn't change speed because it was like, an ocean liner. If the cars are the same size and the collision is perfect and all that then the car in front would gain 5mph and the car behind would lose 5mph. Since in a head on, they are both changing speed then the deceleration must be half the combined relative deceleration. The way I was imagining it was as if the car collides with another car going 50mph in a head on collision and the other car doesn't slow down due to the collision. So it appears that it is I who am confidently wrong about physics (although I still hold that Milton Friedman is confidently wrong about economics!).
monocasa 2y ago
Total aside, but > My wife likes to quote the advice “never go to bed with an argument unsettled” I've never found that to be true. Sleep it off, cooler heads will prevail tomorrow.
- causality0 2y ago
  He specifically differentiates between arguments and quarrels. You refer to a quarrel.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    Indeed. But the morning could find you smarter, in a better position to resolve the argument. Sleeping on either quarrels or arguments could be good.
  - monocasa 2y ago
    Yes, he differentiates quarrels and arguments. He believes his wife is actually referring to a quarrel and and therefore her advice doesn't apply when it's actually an argument. My aside is that I haven't found the advice to apply well to quarrels either.
    - fmajid 2y ago
      Trying to resolve it before the sleep deadline is what turns the argument into a quarrel...
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > He specifically differentiates between arguments and quarrels. My experience was neither was impacted by any different resolution strategy. Also - with 5 kids, getting sleep was always the point.
- kevin_nisbet 2y ago
  I'm totally with you, I find drawing things out, especially when dealing with someone who is clearly upset and acting out on their feelings is an incredibly important de-escalation technique.
firesteelrain 2y ago
Dr Friedman is giving off young Sheldon vibes
dools 2y ago
[flagged]
WalterBright 2y ago
> My high school driver’s ed textbook asserted that a head on collision between two cars each going 50 miles an hour had the same effect on each as running into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. I've intuitively believed this to be true for a long time. But the article made me think about it, and the textbook is quite wrong. It's a test similar to if you're in a train in motion, and you drop a ball in the aisle, does it fall towards the front or the back of the train?
- didgeoridoo 2y ago
  I’m still confused about why the textbook is wrong. Is there something about the energy or momentum scaling differently in the brick wall case vs. the head-on collision case?
  - fmajid 2y ago
    Perhaps the fact the wall is to a first approximation an unmovable object, the oncoming car isn't.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Consider hitting a brick wall. The energy of the moving car is all dissipated in the collision, leaving a mangled wreck. With two cars hitting head on, the energy to be dissipated is twice as much, but it is equally distributed to each car, and so the energy dissipated in each car is the same as if each independently hit a brick wall. In other words, conservation of energy.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - gruez 2y ago
      >Consider hitting a brick wall. The energy of the moving car is all dissipated in the collision, leaving a mangled wreck. That might be correct but it comes off as a smart-ass answer unless the course covered deformation, which I suspect it did not given it was a high school course.
juancn 2y ago
It reminds me a bit about my family, but maybe in a different way. We were allowed to challenge everything (even though, my parents had final say). But what I think was great about my parents was that we were encouraged to find out the answers to any questions we had. It was pre-internet time, so it basically was looking something up on a dictionary or on the Encyclopedia Brittanica (a Spanish language version my parents still have today), many times it was rather hard to figure something out. No question left unanswered, at least as best as we could. Even if it meant that my dad went out and bought me a book about basic electricity (Ohms law and such) just to give to me because I wanted to know something. That care about knowledge and logic (my mom was great at logical arguments and she knows a lot of crap, seriously) helped me succeed. I hope I'm doing as good a job with my kids (ideally even better). Raising people is weird and can be so fulfilling.
- dmix 2y ago
  You were a very lucky kid to grow up in such an environment. It was probably easier raising an inquisitive kid in such an environment when you would refer to books and issues of the day, I'd imagine myself today going down internet rabbitholes and thinking myself an expert on a new thing every week. Which would probably often resort to the parent's exhaustion and just resorting to "that's great, son".
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  This is exactly how we raise our kids so I’m glad to hear that (someday!) they’ll appreciate it.
banish-m4 2y ago
American libertarianism is a utopian, privileged political philosophy seemingly perfectly favored by a large swath of the moderately and absurdly rich while denying the preferential welfare they enjoy while there is simultaneously insufficient social investment for the middle-class and the poor. No one is an island, can get ahead in isolation, nor fund essential commonwealth infrastructure.
- 9991 2y ago
  Having an internal rather than external locus of control leads one to be both richer and more Libertarian.
  - wcarss 2y ago
    > Having an internal rather than external locus of control leads one to be both richer and more Libertarian Believing this statement certainly makes one more libertarian. I wonder how many people have internally locus'd their way into their dad's business, or out of a cancer diagnosis.
    - 9991 2y ago
      Most wealthy people in the US didn’t inherit their wealth. There’s probably also a heritable component to this.
      - petermcneeley 2y ago
        So they did inherit their wealth just not directly.
        demondemidi 2y ago
        Wat?
        whythre 2y ago
kccqzy 2y ago
> Many years later I heard an elderly man of whom I had a generally favorable opinion tell a child who had disagreed with him not to contradict his elders. I was shocked — the statement struck me as heresy, very nearly obscenity. If your elders are wrong, you have as much cause to contradict them as they would to contradict you if you were wrong. Personally I would split this into two aspects: the tone that the argument is expressed in, and the meat of the argument. People who tell you not to contradict with elders (which I take to mean not just older relatives but also just people in a more senior position) usually only care about the tone of your voice, and the fact that your tone displays respect towards elders. And this is usually good advice: you want to avoid hurting their ego, because they are in a position of power and they can inflict harm and misery on you. On the other hand, once you speak in a sufficiently respectful tone these people don't really mind changing their mind in an argument. They don't like to be confronted and be forced to change their mind; they just like to feel respected while changing their mind. It's an art to speak in a way that protects the fragile ego of the counterparty while still contradicting them.
- EGreg 2y ago
  This isnt true. Not in front of others Regardless of tone, leaders being corrected in front of others carries an undercurrent of antagonism, and can develop into outright hostility. This happens with leaders of animals and alphas as well. Challenging their assertions is a step away from challenging their leadership and authority, especially if you do so repeatedly. Leaders are often hard to get ahold of privately, because of how many people they deal with, and usually sycophants and well-connected supporters are prioritized for these meetings rather than someone who disagrees on substance The best you’re gonna get is if you’re a sponsor or a fellow leader who offers them to come on your show, or you come on theirs, and debate. No matter how respectful your tone is, you can’t challenge them unless they’ve agreed to debate: https://youtu.be/Mwe91SXEyaM?si=sI8dzC9YTQzAPbmu https://youtu.be/Mwe91SXEyaM?si=sI8dzC9YTQzAPbmu
  - marcus_holmes 2y ago
    This is really cultural - I've worked in Anglophone organisations where leaders expect to be challenged on their assertions, and in Asia where this would be considered offensive (like taking a dump on your boss's desk) even in private.
plussed_reader 2y ago
I tuned out when the broadbrush came out for the economists. Handwashing nonsense for Money.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
> The central fact about child rearing by my parents was the equal intellectual status of everyone in the family. My sister and I did not get a vote on the family budget; we were not the ones who had earned the money. But in any disagreement the question was always who had good arguments, not who was older. That belief implies that: 1) All relevant knowledge about something can be expressed as arguments. 2) There is a canonical way to interpret arguments Most of the important things worth arguing about cannot be expressed a pure logical syllogisms. Assumptions and relative weights are very subjective. There is also the existence of sophistry, where logic is used not to enlighten but to hide. For example, I may have some disagreements with Anders Hejlsberg about language design. Even if I present a better argument about something, you would probably be better off taking into consideration Anders' view over mine.
- ip26 2y ago
  It also implies that: 3) Children never argue in bad faith (e.g. as a hourslong stalling tactic at bedtime) 4) Children never argue during time sensitive disagreements (e.g. why do I have to get out of the street!?) 5) Children understand probability and risk-benefit analysis (e.g. why shouldn't I play the knife game, I'm not going to cut myself and it's fun) I've also discovered leaving everything open to debate and having to convince kids of everything leaves them unprepared for life around authority figures. It is not appropriate to argue with an on-duty lifeguard about basic water safety, but a kid who has never had to follow a single command or order will try.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I guess it depends on the children. It is a good strategy for intelligent and respectful children who are capable of managing all of these factors.
  - dclowd9901 2y ago
    Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I just spent 5 minutes arguing with my 2 year old about 1) why she needed to go to bed (it’s 10:20), and 2) why she needed to take her hands out of her nighttime diaper. To which, she rebutted with a “no” and no further discussion on her position. Guess I’m just not breaking down my argument well enough (gigantic fucking eyeroll).
breakyerself 2y ago
I love that he slipped in some climate denialism in there. Definitely Milton Friedman's son. Anything that might require government intervention is probably bogus in libertarian world.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  His post with more details was pretty interesting: https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/my-first-post-done-again https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/my-first-post-done-aga... Basically he doesn’t deny that there is warming, he just says we shouldn’t be so confident it’s bad in net. I don’t personally agree with that but it’s hard unscientific.
  - Daishiman 2y ago
    I read the post and found it to be the sort of titanic hubris many economists are known for; serious reductionism in arguments and profound ignorance for the complexity and nonlinear effects that actual experts on the topic manage. No consideration for social effects, cherry-picked effects, etc. I have no idea why economists are so guilty of thinking that their layman knowledge of various topics is somehow better than real experts.
    - doctor_eval 2y ago
      This is exactly what I took away from it. For me the key sentence is this: > This would be a serious problem if we were facing rapid change, but we are not. My understanding is that, geologically speaking, climate change is happening extremely quickly. But he goes on to say, > Other species can [adapt] by evolution or by changing their range, but that could be a problem for species such as trees that evolve slowly and shift their range slowly So he incorrectly claims that climate change is “slow” because it is happening over a period of decades or even centuries, and he does not seem to understand evolution at all, which I understand happens on a timescale several orders of magnitude longer. What a pile of easily refutable nonsense, spewed out as fact. It’s just the usual blather, someone influential who thinks they understand everything, failing to accept even the basic, provable tenets of something inconvenient for their personal world view. If that’s the quality of the “arguments” he had with his parents, little wonder we’re all fucked.
protocolture 2y ago
Honestly some very good reflections. I think this is an ideal however, much like no screen time and other parenting tips that are not practical in all cases. Certainly something to aspire to.
rayiner 2y ago
The problem with this approach is that the brains of children aren’t fully developed until their mid-20s: https://journeytocollege.mo.gov/when-does-the-brain-reach-maturity-its-later-than-you-think/ https://journeytocollege.mo.gov/when-does-the-brain-reach-ma.... You can’t have a system based on who has the more logical argument when some parties are incapable of understanding the shortcomings in their own logic. It’s also the case that many things are not amenable to logical analysis, and humans must instead formulate actions based on values and precedent. Young people generally have less capacity to appreciate how adhering to these values will work in their favor in the long run.
- petermcneeley 2y ago
  Shhhhhh ... you are ruining the illusion.
- MoreSEMI 2y ago
  Just because they fully developed doesn’t mean the argument they are presenting isn’t logical. It might not be, and that might be because they aren’t fully developed, but you would never know. You must treat every argument you hear as if were generated in good faith. Saying that you can’t rely on them to understand their own shortcomings in their own logic is inconsistent with the idea of logical debate in the first place. How would one ever know the difference between someone who is not convincible vs a non convincing argument. And the idea that young people should just adhere to values is not only inconsistent with the idea that the elders are more logical, since that is merely an appeal to authority, but also won’t be an argument that a young person will listen to, since in your own words, they are irrational.
  - saulpw 2y ago
    > You must treat every argument you hear as if were generated in good faith. Many arguments are generated carelessly or maliciously, in which case you will be swamped by bullshit or actively infected with a conspiracy theory. I know better than to trust my own logic brain completely, especially in the short-term. What's that bumper sticker, "Don't Believe Everything You Think"?
  - 2y ago
iandanforth 2y ago
I get the feeling that this guy is an insufferable twat.
- SamPatt 2y ago
  For what it's worth, I've met him, and he's very nice in person. He seems to genuinely enjoy talking with strangers about topics of mutual interest. I've met several academics / ideological celebrities who were indeed insufferable. It's hard to determine this solely from someone's writing.
- EnigmaFlare 2y ago
  Probably true to the people who go around asserting false claims and enjoy people pretending to believe them because of their social status. But those people are also insufferable twats to the logical argument types.
- demondemidi 2y ago
  Illusions of grandeur in every paragraph.
- ursuscamp 2y ago
  I emailed him about his book Machinery of Freedom in my 20s (15+ years ago) and he was willing to engage in good faith debate with a complete nobody on the internet who emailed him out of the blue. He was not remotely pretentious or insufferable.
catlover76 2y ago
[dead]
Barrin92 2y ago
"If your elders are wrong, you have as much cause to contradict them as they would to contradict you if you were wrong. [...] Once, long after I became an adult with children of my own, my parents asked me if it would have been better for them to have brought me up in their parents’ religion: Judaism. I replied that I preferred having been brought up in what they believed in: 18th century rationalism, the belief system of Adam Smith and David Hume." This is very emblematic of the sort of thinking you also get from other modernist Enlightenment advocates like Steven Pinker or 20th century positivists but it's simply an extremely cartoonish position. For no good reason it assumes that everything worth doing is legible to individuals, even children in this case, and if you can't present an explicit "rational" argument for it, there's no good reason for it to be around. Of course the fundamental problem is that there's no reason to believe that everything of value in the world is legible, in particular to individuals, and throwing long traditions away just because you can't defend them at any given point doesn't mean that in them isn't encoded some institutional knowledge that nobody can directly articulate. If an entire community acted like this household of eccentric libertarian economists it'd look like an insane asylum. In many ways a good analogy for what's wrong with this worldview is the whole old vs new AI debate where you had the Chomsky rationalist, let's explicitly construct all knowledge camp vs the learning approaches. The philosophical insight for why the latter won out is because most valuable knowledge in the world can't be articulated, it's just embedded in practices.
- brigandish 2y ago
  If you're part of a long tradition and yet still can't provide rational arguments for its continued existence then it only exists because of feelings, which will inevitably, fade. Learning incrementally is not the same as following an unjustifiable tradition, nor is it in opposition to wanting to provide arguments based on what we know now. A tradition is in opposition to learning incrementally, because when it is wrong there will be unjustifiable resistance to correction.
- calf 2y ago
  Then "learning approaches" camp (which BTW is also an academic camps and somehow able to do science) cannot prove that knowledge embedded in practices is actually being learned at all by their machines, if one rejects legibility. It's not even non-legible: it's self contradictory, i.e., unintelligible (which means a different thing than merely legible).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
snitzr 2y ago
If you are a libertarian and want to debate me, please don't. I don't want confrontational "debate" from someone who already labeled themselves and won't ever consider changing their own ideology. Reread Ayn Rand or something.
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  And the sort of dogma libertarians subscribe to is that especially unhealthy dogma where waves hand “the market” will just handle it, never mind the details. It’s basically a religion (I used the word “dogma” very deliberately). Hell, Adam Smith coined the “invisible hand” terminology as a dovetail to the invisible forces of the Christian God.
dclowd9901 2y ago
Reading this, I remembered how many times my Econ profs in college would tell us “… and that’s why economists are never invited to parties!” Usually on the back of explaining some kind of unpopular position an economist would take due to its purely reasonable basis. But I think the reason nobody likes economists isn’t because they have unpopular opinions. It’s because, despite being wrong almost constantly, they have no humility at all. I’ve never read anything by an economist that didn’t absolutely drip with ego and posturing and this piece is not different at all.
hiddencost 2y ago
[flagged]
kmeisthax 2y ago
As a libertarian, if there's one thing I don't like about Libertarianism[0], it is specifically the economists. The problem with libertarians of all stripes is that we're blind to informal power structures[1]. In right-wing libertarian economics this manifests as: - A supreme allergy to competition law. - Externality denialism as a nervous tic. As an example of the latter: >When climate change replaced population growth as the looming catastrophe that all of the authorities insisted something should be done about, I took the same approach to that issue and reached the same conclusion. I'll give this guy the benefit of the doubt solely because overpopulation was, as far as I can tell, veiled Nazi shit. On the other hand, the argument against climate change here boils down to "well humans will adapt", which... I mean... technically yes? The biggest adaptation is going to be people moving out of their home countries, which isn't an option for the vast majority of humanity. Immigration is not recognized by most countries as a right. If we bake the Middle East or Africa and it becomes unlivably hot, the answer countries are going to choose isn't going to be "admit hundreds of millions of climate refugees". I'm absolutely one of those "migration is a human right" people, and if David Friedman is anything close to consistent, he'll be too. But most governments are run by people who vehemently disagree with that and you're not going to sell people on open borders as an alternative to climate change mitigation. Also, some of the actual arguments this guy uses are just... oh my god: - Sea level rise isn't a problem because most land will not be flooded. Land ISN'T FUNGIBLE, improvements on land CAN'T BE MOVED, and the people getting flooded can't sell their homes to Aquaman. As an economist, it's your literal job to know this. - Warming is Good Actually because more people die of extreme cold than extreme warm. How are you THIS sure global warming will only result in local warming?! Global warming is an average, and so far, we've seen local increases in both warming and cooling (e.g. the polar vortex weakening). Yes, humans can adapt, but that adaptation isn't anywhere close to free, and that cost is not going to be borne by the people emitting. [0] Capital L, or right-libertarianism specifically. And of course excluding all the authoritarians cosplaying as libertarians because being the Supreme Leader feels a lot like freedom if you squint. [1] See also: The Structurelessness of Tyranny, which was targeted at left-libertarians
- DavidFriedman 2y ago
  Sea level rise isn't a problem because the amount projected is tiny, in contrast to the rhetoric. Less than a meter by the end of the century, about half the difference between high tide and low. Land doesn't have to be fungible for decreasing available land by about twenty thousand square km and increasing available land by about ten million (https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/land-gained-and-lost)to https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/land-gained-and-lost)t... be a net gain. What is your reason to expect warming to increase temperature related mortality? Are you assuming that it makes hot times and places hotter and cold colder? That is inconsistent with the IPCC projections, which show both minimal and maximal temperatures rising. It's true that adjusting to changed circumstances costs something but warming so far has been about a tenth of a degree a decade, may be rising to two tenths, pretty slow change compared to all the other changes people are adjusting to. That aside, why do you think the temperature of a century ago was optimal? It wasn't designed for us, we weren't designed for it, and it varied much more over parts of the world where people lived successfully than it is going to change in the next century. If you, or any reader, is interested in my arguments, which are not mostly about adaptation, you can find my climate posts at: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Sorted_Posts.html#Climate http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Sorted_Posts.html#Climate
thyrsus 2y ago
Unlike Dr. Friedman, I believe that reaching judgements based on evidence and explicit values is orthogonal to libertarianism: I grew up in a similar intellectual environment, but where the economic political leaning was european style democratic socialist. In those pre-internet times, it also surfaced a problem with that environment: a sibling who vehemently averred to facts they did not have. They have since matured to be sufficiently tethered to reality to be an excellent parent and employee, but now cherry pick the internet for justification of social policy preferences.
tdullien 2y ago
I was brought up by Keynesian folks in much the same spirit. I am not sure the author isn't conflating "libertarian economists" with "good parents".
xg15 2y ago
With all due respect to Mr. Friedman, but if as a 10 year old, you're winning 50% of the intellectual exchanges with your parents through having the better arguments, then you're either Young Sheldon or the intellectual exchanges weren't very intellectual to begin with. (Not making this assertion out of some "respect your elders" orthodoxy but out of empirical observations of the typical knowledge level of 10 year olds.)
- JeremyNT 2y ago
  As a parent myself, I find myself repeating a mantra learned from Star Wars: > Let the wookie win To Friedman, I suppose, his childhood self is simply a rational actor who is arguing from first principles - as all children of rationalists and libertarians clearly would! The possibility that "maybe I was an irrational child (like every other child) and my parents simply gave up trying to correct me because I was a terror" doesn't appear to cross Friedman's mind, which is incredibly amusing to me.
mrmetanoia 2y ago
[flagged]
- Supermancho 2y ago
  The subject wanders all over the place. From dont contradict your elders, to learning about externalities (which weren't considered originally), to reality is a great teacher...which is why "don't contradict your elders" is born of. Experience. Many people, especially those that are immature in some way, don't accept reality, which is hinted at, throughout. Being right, isn't enough to justify reprioritizing/wasting disinterested people's time - re: The head-on collision story. Take it up with the Textbook author, rather than pretending that taking it out on some poor physics teacher is virtuous.

118 points by Bostonian 2y ago

Trivial point: At least Friedman correctly talks about "attenders" at a party and not "attendees." (An "attendee" is someone being attended, e.g., King Charles is attended by his attendants — they are the attenders, he is the attendee.) </rant>

kazinator 2y ago

> I still regret that I did not happen to encounter him after getting my PhD in physics to tell him that by his criterion, educational status not arguments, he was now wrong. That would only be the case if Friedman, even after getting his PhD in physics, still continued to disagree with that teacher and that textbook.

greyface- 2y ago
In the comments, he expresses that he continues to disagree, and provides reasoning. https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/on-being-brought-up-by-libertarian/comment/56892821 https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/on-being-brought-up-by...
- dools 2y ago
  > What is true is that the 50mph collision with a brick wall is equivalent to a 100 mph collision with a car that is standing still, but that wasn't the claim. Ummmm ... what? I mean, sure if you assume that the dynamics of a brick wall and a car are different, then they won't be identical but if you just take a parked car and a brick wall to both be "immovable objects at rest" which for all intents and purposes is true for the driver, then I don't see how this statement could possibly be true.
  - chmod775 2y ago
    As a driver you mostly care about the amount of deceleration you will personally experience. If you have 1m of hood to work with, you're decelerating 100km/h to 0km/h over 1m in the wall case. In the hood-to-hood case, depending on reference frame, you're either decelerating 50km/h to 0km/h over 1m or 100km/h to 0km/h over 2m (both hoods). Either way it should be trivially obvious that running into a wall is going to be a much more violent experience. Likely the wall crumpling up the front of your car won't be enough to bring you to a stop before you personally impact something.
    - dools 2y ago
      Not true, because when you exert a force on the vehicle coming the other direction, an equal and opposite force is exerted on your car. Then you also have the force exerted by their car attempting to accelerate you backwards. For each car, there are 2 forces: the force that you exert due to your trying to accelerate them in your direction of travel and the opposing force. What you're saying is the same as saying that if you fall from the roof of an elevator at rest, the effect is the same as if you fall from the roof of an elevator that travels upwards at the same time as you fall. That's obviously not true, but the physics you need to prove it are F = ma and Newton's 3rd law.
      - chmod775 2y ago
        This would make sense as a refutation if this was perfectly elastic rigid body physics, which wasn't precisely what we were doing here.
        dools 2y ago
        So sum the forces: For Car A: - Force of Car B accelerating Car A opposite to direction of travel - Force of Car B opposing force of Car A trying to accelerate Car B And vice versa for Car B. EDIT: Like if you hit a wall, the wall feels the force of your car. The force that crushes the car is the force opposing that, which is the wall acting on the car. EDIT2 (because I can't reply): the force acting on the driver will be the sum of the force of Car B acting on Car A opposing the force of Car A acting on Car B plus the force of Car B acting on Car A. There are 2 forces in each direction of travel that are exerted by the cars. The force felt by the driver is the sum of these 2 forces, exerted by the dashboard on the driver's face. If the car hits a brick wall, the only force opposing the direction of travel of the car is the force of the wall acting on the car, which opposes the force of the car acting on the wall. As such the force felt by the driver of the dashboard acting on their face is halved. EDIT3 (still because I can’t reply): the dynamics of the materials is not the issue. Yes bricks behave differently than cars, but that’s not the basis of the author’s argument.
  - kazinator 2y ago
    We would never treat a parked car as an immovable object. It only makes sense to use the "brick wall" symbolism for am idealized, immovable barrier that suffers no damage. A parked car will move when struck. The combination of the two cars continues to have kinetic energy, which is lost by friction.
    - dools 2y ago
      That’s not the argument he is making. He is making the argument that if you imagine a sheet of paper in between the 2 cars into which they crash, then since they both stop since they are perfectly symmetrical then the fact that there is another car on the other side of the sheet is immaterial. It’s complete garbage.
      - kazinator 2y ago
        Pardon me, I seem to have made exactly the same argument myself, completely with crude pictures. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40629971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40629971 It is entirely unassailable; all you can argue with is the realism of my assumptions. (Real head-on collisions won't be precise mirror images.) When two identical objects are moving toward each other with a relative speed v, the collision is like hitting an ideal barrier at speed v/2.
        dools 2y ago
        CROSS POST: I posted this in reply to your linked explanation. Okay yep I get it now. The 4mv2 did it for me mathematically but I still couldn't get it intuitively until I imagined a car going 50mph rear ending a car going 40mph. If they wind up going the same speed as a result of the collision then the deceleration felt by the car in the back would only be 10mph if the car in front didn't change speed because it was like, an ocean liner. If the cars are the same size and the collision is perfect and all that then the car in front would gain 5mph and the car behind would lose 5mph. Since in a head on, they are both changing speed then the deceleration must be half the combined relative deceleration. The way I was imagining it was as if the car collides with another car going 50mph in a head on collision and the other car doesn't slow down due to the collision. So it appears that it is I who am confidently wrong about physics (although I still hold that Milton Friedman is confidently wrong about economics!).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
firesteelrain 2y ago
Sounded like it still bothered him
- dmix 2y ago
  I think it was the underlying dynamic that bothered him, not that particular problem, which led him to not forget it and still think about it. Smarts kids probably often have resentment when they first discover their teachers/elders whom they hold up to a naturally realistic high regard are less inquisitive or intellectually rigorous than they are (or hope to be). That sort of thing has a way of sticking in your brain.
chmod775 2y ago
Likely. It's a bad example to illustrate "relative speeds" (not in the "fast" sense), since it's usually set up terribly any time I read it and ends up being plain wrong if you forget to squint. As a driver I'd rather run into another car than a brick wall. No amount of simplified textbook physics is going to convince me otherwise. On a related school anecdote: A test problem once asked us to calculate the length/angle a ladder would have to be extended from a firefighting vehicle to reach a window, given height of the window and distance of the firefighting vehicle to the house. I had about twenty minutes left and was a bit of a cheeky student, so I explained how I could not answer that question since I did not know the height at which the ladder originates from the vehicle. That got me full points since I had a great teacher. That said, you have to be a bit of a jackass to intentionally miss the point in either case.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
kazinator 2y ago
He has a reason to continue to disagree. In fact, if we assume a perfectly mirror-like collision between two identical cars going 50 mph in opposite directions, then each one experiences a brick wall collision at 50 mph. This is four times less severe than a 100 mph strike against an ideal wall (indestructible, infinitely rigid barrier with a vast inertial mass). Animation frames in ASCII: _____ . _____ / \___ ____/ \ / \ . / \ _____ . _____ / \___ ____/ \ / \./ \ _____ . _____ / \___ ____/ \ / | \ _____ . _____ / \_/ \__/ \ / | \ The dots at the center of the collision demarcate a virtual brick wall that either car experiences due to the exact and opposite momentum and deceleration of the other. Each car crumples against the dotted line, not passing through it at all. (In our idealized example with a perfectly mirror-like collision in which both cars crumple identically, it behaves like an ideal brick wall: the worst kind.) Hitting an ideal brick wall at 50 is far less severe than doing so at 100. If the collision is perfectly inelastic, then in the two car case, the energy dissipated is 2mv² where v is 50 mph. In in the one car case where it is going double (2v) it the energy is m(2v)² which is 4mv². We assume the brick wall has no kinetic energy to contribute. We also assume the brick wall is not damaged so the 4mv² is absorbed by one car. Whereas in the two car case 2mv² energy is absorbed by two cars, so mv² each. Thus, from the point of view of one car, the 100 mph brick wall collision is 4 times more energetic than the 50 mph head-on collision. From that alone you can intuit that head-on is same as brick wall, since the damage scales 4 times with a doubling in velocity. (Now yes, hitting an identical parked car at 100 mph would me more similar to the head-on collision. A parked car is not a brick wall. It will move in the direction of the collision in addition to crumpling. Books for drivers should probably not talk about either brick walls or parked cars, but just convey that kinetic energy follows a square law, quadrupling when speed doubles.)
- dools 2y ago
  Okay yep I get it now. The 4mv2 did it for me mathematically but I still couldn't get it intuitively until I imagined a car going 50mph rear ending a car going 40mph. If they wind up going the same speed as a result of the collision then the deceleration felt by the car in the back would only be 10mph if the car in front didn't change speed because it was like, an ocean liner. If the cars are the same size and the collision is perfect and all that then the car in front would gain 5mph and the car behind would lose 5mph. Since in a head on, they are both changing speed then the deceleration must be half the combined relative deceleration. The way I was imagining it was as if the car collides with another car going 50mph in a head on collision and the other car doesn't slow down due to the collision. So it appears that it is I who am confidently wrong about physics (although I still hold that Milton Friedman is confidently wrong about economics!).

monocasa 2y ago

Total aside, but > My wife likes to quote the advice “never go to bed with an argument unsettled” I've never found that to be true. Sleep it off, cooler heads will prevail tomorrow.

causality0 2y ago
He specifically differentiates between arguments and quarrels. You refer to a quarrel.
- kazinator 2y ago
  Indeed. But the morning could find you smarter, in a better position to resolve the argument. Sleeping on either quarrels or arguments could be good.
- monocasa 2y ago
  Yes, he differentiates quarrels and arguments. He believes his wife is actually referring to a quarrel and and therefore her advice doesn't apply when it's actually an argument. My aside is that I haven't found the advice to apply well to quarrels either.
  - fmajid 2y ago
    Trying to resolve it before the sleep deadline is what turns the argument into a quarrel...
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > He specifically differentiates between arguments and quarrels. My experience was neither was impacted by any different resolution strategy. Also - with 5 kids, getting sleep was always the point.
kevin_nisbet 2y ago
I'm totally with you, I find drawing things out, especially when dealing with someone who is clearly upset and acting out on their feelings is an incredibly important de-escalation technique.

firesteelrain 2y ago

Dr Friedman is giving off young Sheldon vibes

dools 2y ago

[flagged]

WalterBright 2y ago

> My high school driver’s ed textbook asserted that a head on collision between two cars each going 50 miles an hour had the same effect on each as running into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. I've intuitively believed this to be true for a long time. But the article made me think about it, and the textbook is quite wrong. It's a test similar to if you're in a train in motion, and you drop a ball in the aisle, does it fall towards the front or the back of the train?

didgeoridoo 2y ago
I’m still confused about why the textbook is wrong. Is there something about the energy or momentum scaling differently in the brick wall case vs. the head-on collision case?
- fmajid 2y ago
  Perhaps the fact the wall is to a first approximation an unmovable object, the oncoming car isn't.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Consider hitting a brick wall. The energy of the moving car is all dissipated in the collision, leaving a mangled wreck. With two cars hitting head on, the energy to be dissipated is twice as much, but it is equally distributed to each car, and so the energy dissipated in each car is the same as if each independently hit a brick wall. In other words, conservation of energy.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Consider hitting a brick wall. The energy of the moving car is all dissipated in the collision, leaving a mangled wreck. That might be correct but it comes off as a smart-ass answer unless the course covered deformation, which I suspect it did not given it was a high school course.

juancn 2y ago

It reminds me a bit about my family, but maybe in a different way. We were allowed to challenge everything (even though, my parents had final say). But what I think was great about my parents was that we were encouraged to find out the answers to any questions we had. It was pre-internet time, so it basically was looking something up on a dictionary or on the Encyclopedia Brittanica (a Spanish language version my parents still have today), many times it was rather hard to figure something out. No question left unanswered, at least as best as we could. Even if it meant that my dad went out and bought me a book about basic electricity (Ohms law and such) just to give to me because I wanted to know something. That care about knowledge and logic (my mom was great at logical arguments and she knows a lot of crap, seriously) helped me succeed. I hope I'm doing as good a job with my kids (ideally even better). Raising people is weird and can be so fulfilling.

dmix 2y ago
You were a very lucky kid to grow up in such an environment. It was probably easier raising an inquisitive kid in such an environment when you would refer to books and issues of the day, I'd imagine myself today going down internet rabbitholes and thinking myself an expert on a new thing every week. Which would probably often resort to the parent's exhaustion and just resorting to "that's great, son".
dclowd9901 2y ago
This is exactly how we raise our kids so I’m glad to hear that (someday!) they’ll appreciate it.

banish-m4 2y ago

American libertarianism is a utopian, privileged political philosophy seemingly perfectly favored by a large swath of the moderately and absurdly rich while denying the preferential welfare they enjoy while there is simultaneously insufficient social investment for the middle-class and the poor. No one is an island, can get ahead in isolation, nor fund essential commonwealth infrastructure.

9991 2y ago
Having an internal rather than external locus of control leads one to be both richer and more Libertarian.
- wcarss 2y ago
  > Having an internal rather than external locus of control leads one to be both richer and more Libertarian Believing this statement certainly makes one more libertarian. I wonder how many people have internally locus'd their way into their dad's business, or out of a cancer diagnosis.
  - 9991 2y ago
    Most wealthy people in the US didn’t inherit their wealth. There’s probably also a heritable component to this.
    - petermcneeley 2y ago
      So they did inherit their wealth just not directly.
      - demondemidi 2y ago
        Wat?
        whythre 2y ago

kccqzy 2y ago

> Many years later I heard an elderly man of whom I had a generally favorable opinion tell a child who had disagreed with him not to contradict his elders. I was shocked — the statement struck me as heresy, very nearly obscenity. If your elders are wrong, you have as much cause to contradict them as they would to contradict you if you were wrong. Personally I would split this into two aspects: the tone that the argument is expressed in, and the meat of the argument. People who tell you not to contradict with elders (which I take to mean not just older relatives but also just people in a more senior position) usually only care about the tone of your voice, and the fact that your tone displays respect towards elders. And this is usually good advice: you want to avoid hurting their ego, because they are in a position of power and they can inflict harm and misery on you. On the other hand, once you speak in a sufficiently respectful tone these people don't really mind changing their mind in an argument. They don't like to be confronted and be forced to change their mind; they just like to feel respected while changing their mind. It's an art to speak in a way that protects the fragile ego of the counterparty while still contradicting them.

EGreg 2y ago
This isnt true. Not in front of others Regardless of tone, leaders being corrected in front of others carries an undercurrent of antagonism, and can develop into outright hostility. This happens with leaders of animals and alphas as well. Challenging their assertions is a step away from challenging their leadership and authority, especially if you do so repeatedly. Leaders are often hard to get ahold of privately, because of how many people they deal with, and usually sycophants and well-connected supporters are prioritized for these meetings rather than someone who disagrees on substance The best you’re gonna get is if you’re a sponsor or a fellow leader who offers them to come on your show, or you come on theirs, and debate. No matter how respectful your tone is, you can’t challenge them unless they’ve agreed to debate: https://youtu.be/Mwe91SXEyaM?si=sI8dzC9YTQzAPbmu https://youtu.be/Mwe91SXEyaM?si=sI8dzC9YTQzAPbmu
- marcus_holmes 2y ago
  This is really cultural - I've worked in Anglophone organisations where leaders expect to be challenged on their assertions, and in Asia where this would be considered offensive (like taking a dump on your boss's desk) even in private.

plussed_reader 2y ago

I tuned out when the broadbrush came out for the economists. Handwashing nonsense for Money.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago

> The central fact about child rearing by my parents was the equal intellectual status of everyone in the family. My sister and I did not get a vote on the family budget; we were not the ones who had earned the money. But in any disagreement the question was always who had good arguments, not who was older. That belief implies that: 1) All relevant knowledge about something can be expressed as arguments. 2) There is a canonical way to interpret arguments Most of the important things worth arguing about cannot be expressed a pure logical syllogisms. Assumptions and relative weights are very subjective. There is also the existence of sophistry, where logic is used not to enlighten but to hide. For example, I may have some disagreements with Anders Hejlsberg about language design. Even if I present a better argument about something, you would probably be better off taking into consideration Anders' view over mine.

ip26 2y ago
It also implies that: 3) Children never argue in bad faith (e.g. as a hourslong stalling tactic at bedtime) 4) Children never argue during time sensitive disagreements (e.g. why do I have to get out of the street!?) 5) Children understand probability and risk-benefit analysis (e.g. why shouldn't I play the knife game, I'm not going to cut myself and it's fun) I've also discovered leaving everything open to debate and having to convince kids of everything leaves them unprepared for life around authority figures. It is not appropriate to argue with an on-duty lifeguard about basic water safety, but a kid who has never had to follow a single command or order will try.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I guess it depends on the children. It is a good strategy for intelligent and respectful children who are capable of managing all of these factors.
- dclowd9901 2y ago
  Not sure why you’re being downvoted. I just spent 5 minutes arguing with my 2 year old about 1) why she needed to go to bed (it’s 10:20), and 2) why she needed to take her hands out of her nighttime diaper. To which, she rebutted with a “no” and no further discussion on her position. Guess I’m just not breaking down my argument well enough (gigantic fucking eyeroll).

breakyerself 2y ago

I love that he slipped in some climate denialism in there. Definitely Milton Friedman's son. Anything that might require government intervention is probably bogus in libertarian world.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
His post with more details was pretty interesting: https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/my-first-post-done-again https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/my-first-post-done-aga... Basically he doesn’t deny that there is warming, he just says we shouldn’t be so confident it’s bad in net. I don’t personally agree with that but it’s hard unscientific.
- Daishiman 2y ago
  I read the post and found it to be the sort of titanic hubris many economists are known for; serious reductionism in arguments and profound ignorance for the complexity and nonlinear effects that actual experts on the topic manage. No consideration for social effects, cherry-picked effects, etc. I have no idea why economists are so guilty of thinking that their layman knowledge of various topics is somehow better than real experts.
  - doctor_eval 2y ago
    This is exactly what I took away from it. For me the key sentence is this: > This would be a serious problem if we were facing rapid change, but we are not. My understanding is that, geologically speaking, climate change is happening extremely quickly. But he goes on to say, > Other species can [adapt] by evolution or by changing their range, but that could be a problem for species such as trees that evolve slowly and shift their range slowly So he incorrectly claims that climate change is “slow” because it is happening over a period of decades or even centuries, and he does not seem to understand evolution at all, which I understand happens on a timescale several orders of magnitude longer. What a pile of easily refutable nonsense, spewed out as fact. It’s just the usual blather, someone influential who thinks they understand everything, failing to accept even the basic, provable tenets of something inconvenient for their personal world view. If that’s the quality of the “arguments” he had with his parents, little wonder we’re all fucked.

protocolture 2y ago

Honestly some very good reflections. I think this is an ideal however, much like no screen time and other parenting tips that are not practical in all cases. Certainly something to aspire to.

rayiner 2y ago

The problem with this approach is that the brains of children aren’t fully developed until their mid-20s: https://journeytocollege.mo.gov/when-does-the-brain-reach-maturity-its-later-than-you-think/ https://journeytocollege.mo.gov/when-does-the-brain-reach-ma.... You can’t have a system based on who has the more logical argument when some parties are incapable of understanding the shortcomings in their own logic. It’s also the case that many things are not amenable to logical analysis, and humans must instead formulate actions based on values and precedent. Young people generally have less capacity to appreciate how adhering to these values will work in their favor in the long run.

petermcneeley 2y ago
Shhhhhh ... you are ruining the illusion.
MoreSEMI 2y ago
Just because they fully developed doesn’t mean the argument they are presenting isn’t logical. It might not be, and that might be because they aren’t fully developed, but you would never know. You must treat every argument you hear as if were generated in good faith. Saying that you can’t rely on them to understand their own shortcomings in their own logic is inconsistent with the idea of logical debate in the first place. How would one ever know the difference between someone who is not convincible vs a non convincing argument. And the idea that young people should just adhere to values is not only inconsistent with the idea that the elders are more logical, since that is merely an appeal to authority, but also won’t be an argument that a young person will listen to, since in your own words, they are irrational.
- saulpw 2y ago
  > You must treat every argument you hear as if were generated in good faith. Many arguments are generated carelessly or maliciously, in which case you will be swamped by bullshit or actively infected with a conspiracy theory. I know better than to trust my own logic brain completely, especially in the short-term. What's that bumper sticker, "Don't Believe Everything You Think"?
- 2y ago

iandanforth 2y ago

I get the feeling that this guy is an insufferable twat.

SamPatt 2y ago
For what it's worth, I've met him, and he's very nice in person. He seems to genuinely enjoy talking with strangers about topics of mutual interest. I've met several academics / ideological celebrities who were indeed insufferable. It's hard to determine this solely from someone's writing.
EnigmaFlare 2y ago
Probably true to the people who go around asserting false claims and enjoy people pretending to believe them because of their social status. But those people are also insufferable twats to the logical argument types.
demondemidi 2y ago
Illusions of grandeur in every paragraph.
ursuscamp 2y ago
I emailed him about his book Machinery of Freedom in my 20s (15+ years ago) and he was willing to engage in good faith debate with a complete nobody on the internet who emailed him out of the blue. He was not remotely pretentious or insufferable.

catlover76 2y ago

[dead]

Barrin92 2y ago

"If your elders are wrong, you have as much cause to contradict them as they would to contradict you if you were wrong. [...] Once, long after I became an adult with children of my own, my parents asked me if it would have been better for them to have brought me up in their parents’ religion: Judaism. I replied that I preferred having been brought up in what they believed in: 18th century rationalism, the belief system of Adam Smith and David Hume." This is very emblematic of the sort of thinking you also get from other modernist Enlightenment advocates like Steven Pinker or 20th century positivists but it's simply an extremely cartoonish position. For no good reason it assumes that everything worth doing is legible to individuals, even children in this case, and if you can't present an explicit "rational" argument for it, there's no good reason for it to be around. Of course the fundamental problem is that there's no reason to believe that everything of value in the world is legible, in particular to individuals, and throwing long traditions away just because you can't defend them at any given point doesn't mean that in them isn't encoded some institutional knowledge that nobody can directly articulate. If an entire community acted like this household of eccentric libertarian economists it'd look like an insane asylum. In many ways a good analogy for what's wrong with this worldview is the whole old vs new AI debate where you had the Chomsky rationalist, let's explicitly construct all knowledge camp vs the learning approaches. The philosophical insight for why the latter won out is because most valuable knowledge in the world can't be articulated, it's just embedded in practices.

brigandish 2y ago
If you're part of a long tradition and yet still can't provide rational arguments for its continued existence then it only exists because of feelings, which will inevitably, fade. Learning incrementally is not the same as following an unjustifiable tradition, nor is it in opposition to wanting to provide arguments based on what we know now. A tradition is in opposition to learning incrementally, because when it is wrong there will be unjustifiable resistance to correction.
calf 2y ago
Then "learning approaches" camp (which BTW is also an academic camps and somehow able to do science) cannot prove that knowledge embedded in practices is actually being learned at all by their machines, if one rejects legibility. It's not even non-legible: it's self contradictory, i.e., unintelligible (which means a different thing than merely legible).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

snitzr 2y ago

If you are a libertarian and want to debate me, please don't. I don't want confrontational "debate" from someone who already labeled themselves and won't ever consider changing their own ideology. Reread Ayn Rand or something.

dclowd9901 2y ago
And the sort of dogma libertarians subscribe to is that especially unhealthy dogma where waves hand “the market” will just handle it, never mind the details. It’s basically a religion (I used the word “dogma” very deliberately). Hell, Adam Smith coined the “invisible hand” terminology as a dovetail to the invisible forces of the Christian God.

dclowd9901 2y ago

Reading this, I remembered how many times my Econ profs in college would tell us “… and that’s why economists are never invited to parties!” Usually on the back of explaining some kind of unpopular position an economist would take due to its purely reasonable basis. But I think the reason nobody likes economists isn’t because they have unpopular opinions. It’s because, despite being wrong almost constantly, they have no humility at all. I’ve never read anything by an economist that didn’t absolutely drip with ego and posturing and this piece is not different at all.

hiddencost 2y ago

[flagged]

kmeisthax 2y ago

As a libertarian, if there's one thing I don't like about Libertarianism[0], it is specifically the economists. The problem with libertarians of all stripes is that we're blind to informal power structures[1]. In right-wing libertarian economics this manifests as: - A supreme allergy to competition law. - Externality denialism as a nervous tic. As an example of the latter: >When climate change replaced population growth as the looming catastrophe that all of the authorities insisted something should be done about, I took the same approach to that issue and reached the same conclusion. I'll give this guy the benefit of the doubt solely because overpopulation was, as far as I can tell, veiled Nazi shit. On the other hand, the argument against climate change here boils down to "well humans will adapt", which... I mean... technically yes? The biggest adaptation is going to be people moving out of their home countries, which isn't an option for the vast majority of humanity. Immigration is not recognized by most countries as a right. If we bake the Middle East or Africa and it becomes unlivably hot, the answer countries are going to choose isn't going to be "admit hundreds of millions of climate refugees". I'm absolutely one of those "migration is a human right" people, and if David Friedman is anything close to consistent, he'll be too. But most governments are run by people who vehemently disagree with that and you're not going to sell people on open borders as an alternative to climate change mitigation. Also, some of the actual arguments this guy uses are just... oh my god: - Sea level rise isn't a problem because most land will not be flooded. Land ISN'T FUNGIBLE, improvements on land CAN'T BE MOVED, and the people getting flooded can't sell their homes to Aquaman. As an economist, it's your literal job to know this. - Warming is Good Actually because more people die of extreme cold than extreme warm. How are you THIS sure global warming will only result in local warming?! Global warming is an average, and so far, we've seen local increases in both warming and cooling (e.g. the polar vortex weakening). Yes, humans can adapt, but that adaptation isn't anywhere close to free, and that cost is not going to be borne by the people emitting. [0] Capital L, or right-libertarianism specifically. And of course excluding all the authoritarians cosplaying as libertarians because being the Supreme Leader feels a lot like freedom if you squint. [1] See also: The Structurelessness of Tyranny, which was targeted at left-libertarians

DavidFriedman 2y ago
Sea level rise isn't a problem because the amount projected is tiny, in contrast to the rhetoric. Less than a meter by the end of the century, about half the difference between high tide and low. Land doesn't have to be fungible for decreasing available land by about twenty thousand square km and increasing available land by about ten million (https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/land-gained-and-lost)to https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/land-gained-and-lost)t... be a net gain. What is your reason to expect warming to increase temperature related mortality? Are you assuming that it makes hot times and places hotter and cold colder? That is inconsistent with the IPCC projections, which show both minimal and maximal temperatures rising. It's true that adjusting to changed circumstances costs something but warming so far has been about a tenth of a degree a decade, may be rising to two tenths, pretty slow change compared to all the other changes people are adjusting to. That aside, why do you think the temperature of a century ago was optimal? It wasn't designed for us, we weren't designed for it, and it varied much more over parts of the world where people lived successfully than it is going to change in the next century. If you, or any reader, is interested in my arguments, which are not mostly about adaptation, you can find my climate posts at: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Sorted_Posts.html#Climate http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Sorted_Posts.html#Climate

thyrsus 2y ago

Unlike Dr. Friedman, I believe that reaching judgements based on evidence and explicit values is orthogonal to libertarianism: I grew up in a similar intellectual environment, but where the economic political leaning was european style democratic socialist. In those pre-internet times, it also surfaced a problem with that environment: a sibling who vehemently averred to facts they did not have. They have since matured to be sufficiently tethered to reality to be an excellent parent and employee, but now cherry pick the internet for justification of social policy preferences.

tdullien 2y ago

I was brought up by Keynesian folks in much the same spirit. I am not sure the author isn't conflating "libertarian economists" with "good parents".

xg15 2y ago

With all due respect to Mr. Friedman, but if as a 10 year old, you're winning 50% of the intellectual exchanges with your parents through having the better arguments, then you're either Young Sheldon or the intellectual exchanges weren't very intellectual to begin with. (Not making this assertion out of some "respect your elders" orthodoxy but out of empirical observations of the typical knowledge level of 10 year olds.)

JeremyNT 2y ago
As a parent myself, I find myself repeating a mantra learned from Star Wars: > Let the wookie win To Friedman, I suppose, his childhood self is simply a rational actor who is arguing from first principles - as all children of rationalists and libertarians clearly would! The possibility that "maybe I was an irrational child (like every other child) and my parents simply gave up trying to correct me because I was a terror" doesn't appear to cross Friedman's mind, which is incredibly amusing to me.

mrmetanoia 2y ago

[flagged]

Supermancho 2y ago
The subject wanders all over the place. From dont contradict your elders, to learning about externalities (which weren't considered originally), to reality is a great teacher...which is why "don't contradict your elders" is born of. Experience. Many people, especially those that are immature in some way, don't accept reality, which is hinted at, throughout. Being right, isn't enough to justify reprioritizing/wasting disinterested people's time - re: The head-on collision story. Take it up with the Textbook author, rather than pretending that taking it out on some poor physics teacher is virtuous.