One of my recurring themes is that people underrate epistemic discipline: doing the most basic legwork of good thinking. Both critical thinking books and rationalist writings often focus on fallacies involving subtleties like the Monty Hall problem and
“If we soberly look at the facts, we notice that companies are the subject of many regulations they’d rather avoid.” Sometimes, but there’s a long-standing theory, going back to Stigler in the 1970s, that regulation is purchased by the regulated industry, to provide barriers to entry.
I certainly agree with the premise of it though, epistemology is arguably the most important thing missing from the world we live in. **Gee, I wonder why it isn't taught in school....PURELY an innocent oversight I'm sure!!** (Disclosure: speculative rhetoric.)
Had this idea the other day that every political jurisdiction should have a webpage that ranks the issues it is or should be contending with. You could have a few different rankings: one based on financial costs, one based on something like DALYs and one based on WELLBYs for example. And then for each issue you could list potential solutions and their costs and benefits. I think this could be a good way maintaining focus on what really matters. Base it on the Wikipedia model. Issuepedia? Maybe this particular idea wouldn’t work in practice but some sort of objective set of rankings seems like a valuable exercise to me.
“If we soberly look at the facts, we notice that companies are the subject of many regulations they’d rather avoid.” Sometimes, but there’s a long-standing theory, going back to Stigler in the 1970s, that regulation is purchased by the regulated industry, to provide barriers to entry.
This article suffers from reductionism, at least.
I certainly agree with the premise of it though, epistemology is arguably the most important thing missing from the world we live in. **Gee, I wonder why it isn't taught in school....PURELY an innocent oversight I'm sure!!** (Disclosure: speculative rhetoric.)
“Pay attention to what actually matters.”
Had this idea the other day that every political jurisdiction should have a webpage that ranks the issues it is or should be contending with. You could have a few different rankings: one based on financial costs, one based on something like DALYs and one based on WELLBYs for example. And then for each issue you could list potential solutions and their costs and benefits. I think this could be a good way maintaining focus on what really matters. Base it on the Wikipedia model. Issuepedia? Maybe this particular idea wouldn’t work in practice but some sort of objective set of rankings seems like a valuable exercise to me.
What actually matters in an ordinary conversation is usually status. Therefore, ...
> The most common error was bare assertion: not giving any argument whatsoever.
... bare assertion is probably not an error. It means, “I’m above needing to prove anything to you”.