Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Taleb (above)  also, on October 19th, put his response to Krugman's dissing of Gould in twitter form: "How econ models fragilize (or how Krugman blames others yet does not understand much risk & economics)." Daniel Davies then took up the twittering cudgels on behalf of Krugman, telling Taleb "your stuff always has one or two things in in that just can't be stood up." Tweet fight! A wonky tweet fight about economic and evolutionary theory, but a tweet fight still. It came to my attention through Salmon's column, here . And with that, I have said most of what I want to say on all this, except for three points: who is Daniel Davies?  how much of a Ricardian is Krugman really? and, where do I stand on the underlying Krugman/Taleb debate over trade? 1. Davies? I don't know.  His twitter account has nearly 3,000 followers, though. 2. Krugman and Ricardo. Here I admit my earlier reference was rather slighting. I said Friday that Krugman a...

Continuing... How has Taleb made his name? Look at the above graph. The blue line represents a normal or Gaussian distribution, also known as the "bell curve." Events on the far right or ar left side of that line, where the blue is approaching zero along the X axis, are sometimes call hundred-year storms. If we think of this in a finance/business context, the blue line may represent what a certain business thinks are its profits for the coming year. The tip of the bell represents the most likely result (a modest profit in line with that of most of its competitors, perhaps.) Toward the right end of the curve you get to ever higher but more unlikely profits, to the left you get losses, and then ever larger losses, though here too the fall-off in the line toward the zerobase of the X axis implies that certain disastrous results are very unlikely. But what if probabilities in finance don't have a normal outcome distribution? If you draw a flattened curve with "fa...

Headnote: I have just learned that the great scholar Jacques Barzun has died. It is hardly a life cut short -- he was born on November 30, 1907, so he was about a month short of turning 105. Still, for those of us to whom his life and work mattered, he had come to seem immortal. And in any sense that scholarship can secure: he is. For now, I will proceed with the material prepared for this and the following two entries in this blog. But I will have more to say about Barzun here soon enough.] Stephen Jay Gould, the paleontologist who did a good deal to educate the non-scientists of the world about the biology of evolution, passed away back in 2002. He might be surprised to learn that his name has now become a bone of contention [a fossilized bone of contention?] among economists. Of course it isn't all that surprising that there should be cross-fertilization between biology and economics. Ask Malthus about this. Ask Herbert Spencer. Still, my understanding is that this wasn...

I've recently read a fascinating item in Smithsonian.com, part of its Hominid Hunting blog. Clues to Evolution That's the link. If you follow that and read the material, you'll understand the headline of this post. I will have nothing more to say about it, except ... well, two points. First, the notions discussed there fit in rather nicely with a theme of some of the posts in the precursor to this blog. Those of my readers who have followed me from "Pragmatism Refreshed" will recall my discussions of human evolution as an example of path dependence. If you don't recall that, here's a link. Second, the next three posts in this blog will all involve Stephen Jay Gould, even though in a rather elliptical manner, so ... perhaps Hominid Hunting will help get you in the right frame of mind for that.

Allow me to get in my own two cents (and yes, I realize I'm rather late to this party) about the EU's receipt of the Peace Prize. The Peace Prize is awarded by a committee that is selected by Norway's Parliament.   Follow that link for some particulars. It is fitting, then (nay, it is pragmatically compelling) to observe that Norway isn't a member of the EU. Norway has twice held referenda to determine whether it would join, and in both cases the go-it-alone faction prevailed: 1972 and 1994. The Peace Prize is apparently justified this year by a simple and seemingly pragmatic tie: Europe hasn't gone to war since the nations thereof became a single economic unit. That is pretty clearly a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, and thus a fallacy. Heck, the US hasn't had a civil war since the EU was created either, but even the Nobel Committee doesn't seem to draw that connection. I'll only note as a counter that Norway itself has managed to s...

Meanwhile, in the baseball world, the Orioles/Yankees played a truly epic five-game series to determine which of them would get into the League Championship. [Can include usual grousing here about how the seasons have gotten too long, going into November is ridiculous, remember tjhe lyrics from a certain Broadway show, etc.] Game three of the series went 12 innings, and ended in a Yankee victory, putting them up two ganes to one. Raul Ibanez was the hero. Game four was another marathon. This one went 13 innings, and this time the Birds eeked it out, on a RBI double from the bat of J.J. Hardy, to make the final score 2 to 1, and to tie the series at 2 games each. It is fair to surmise that after those two back-to-back marathons, both bullpens were exhausted. Something had to give. Unfortunately (for my personal biases) it was Baltimore that "gave." I grew up a Boston Red Sox fan, so my natural reaction in such situations is that the team to root for is the team tha...

Walter Block is one of my favorite free-market oriented scholars. He is the author, most notably, of a sparklingly iconoclastic book called Defending the Undefendable , the various  chapters of which say positive things about: pimps, drug pushers, drug addicts, blackmailers, ticket scalpers, and dishonest cops! The argument in favor of legalizing blackmail has been especially influential: not because there has been any groundswell of support for such a policy change but because the academic reception of that chapter has shown that Block hit a nerve, among free market advocates. Block's case for legalizing blackmail drew responses in particular from Robert Nozick, Richard Posner, Richard Epstein,  and James Lindgren, an honor role of libertarian theorists. Each gave his reasons why he was unpersuaded. Block has responded. Note that blackmail (for purposes of this debate) is different from extortion. Blackmail is the threat to do something you would otherwi...