Toleration

Toleration means putting up with, not using force against others for their beliefs or actions that do not directly threaten me.

It does not imply approval, just acceptance that it is their business and not harming me. Too many people try to leverage toleration to mean approval - Leftists in their continuing attack on any standards in their continuing attempt to destroy civilization, especially industrial civilization, and Conservatives in their continuing attempt to destroy freedom of expression in their continuing attempt to homogenize culture into their mindless morass of Judeo-Christian faith.

Meaningless Philosophy

Philosophy that is not accessible to the field that is supposedly being analyzed, for example, philosophy of science that cannot be grasped by scientists because of idiosyncratic terms and proofs, is just intellectual masturbation.

Marketing Yourself

If you want to receive credit for what you do, you need to make sure that those who you want credit from know that you did it. If no one knows what you have done, not only will you not receive credit, but you will not receive anything else for your work either. Unless you are doing something for yourself, which will not be of interest to others, you need to let potentially interested parties know of it. You cannot sell items that no one knows about, you cannot provide services or skills that no one knows you possess. Even if you let them know, they may not buy, but if they don't know they CANNOT buy.

The obverse of marketing yourself is captured in the quote: "It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." The earliest version I have found is attributed to Harry S Truman.

The Austrian Method

Based on Economic Science and the Austrian Method by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

This book is very dry and difficult reading, as bad as Mises "Human Action", though thankfully much shorter, or I never would have read it, as I never finished "Human Action".

The Austrians try to base everything on fundamental ideas, what they call "synthetic a priori" after Kant; I have never read Kant so I can't tell you whether their claim that their ideas are Kant's "synthetic a priori" or not; but they are the same types of ideas I have been calling for years "undefinable primitives". These ideas that they try to base everything on, "action", "value", "cause and effect" aren't some mystical information from nowhere, which is what earlier reading about Kant had suggested he thought - I think they are ideas absorbed from observation of reality and how humans act (and, unfortunately, what people have absorbed through reading and stories, which is why so much "intuition" on larger issues where people don't have direct experience is often so irrational), but they are so basic that they are hard even to discuss intelligibly, much less define.

A second part of the Austrians' disagreement with conventional economics is based on the supposed differences between human motivations and interests and the natural world - "the impossiblity of causal predictions in the field of human knowledge and actions" (p.43). Human preditions must be based on actions and goals, and what the particular human knows at the time he chooses his actions and goals. The particualrity of what a human knows is another reason they dislike and distrust statistical knowledge, like the GDP, it loses too much necessary information.

"... empirical knowledge which is based on understanding - just as according to our intuitions economic propositions claim to be based on understanding - rather than on observations." (p.57) Actually, as I suggested above, our intuitions and understanding are based on internalized observations and knowledge received from others.

"In explicitly understanding knowledge as displayed in argumentation as a peculiar category of action, it becomes clear immediately why the perennial rationalist claim that the laws of logic - ... - are a priori true propositions about reality and not mere verbal stipulations regarding the transformation rules of arbitrarily chosen signs, as empiricist-formalists would have it, is indeed correct." (p.71)

A part of Hoppe's argument in the book is a misguided (in my opinion) attack on a sort of naive empiricism that I have never actually encountered. I haven't read much technical economics literature, so it's possible some economists are making these sort of shallow mistakes, but what I have read in economics suggests this is unlikely.

Another part of his argument is an attack on historicism in economics, I think this is even more misguided, without historical knowledge Austrian economics could not have been developed. Also, some of the best economic reading I have done has been by Thomas Sowell, an economic historian. Another good economics writer is David D Friedman, a non-economist.

The best part of Austrian economics is that they give a clear rational account of the few things nearly all economists agree on: minimum wages increase unemployment, wage and price and rent controls cause other (non-price) forms of rationing, and so on.

Overcoming Bias and Learning from the WWW

continuation of "The Web Is Still Not Adequate for Serious Study"

The theme of Overcoming Bias is more comprehensive than the name suggests. It is about improving, or at least not dis-improving, the future. Overcoming bias is only one of the means it discusses. Transhumanism, idea futures, friendly AI, all fit neatly into this more inclusive theme.

Robin Hanson writes about textbooks for satisfying reading in a comment to
Recommended Rationalist Reading.
"My general advice for undervalued reading: textbooks. Go to your nearest college bookstore, sit in the aisles, and browse and read textbooks on your main subjects of interest. Until you've read and understood textbooks, why bother with anything else?"
- - Posted by: Robin Hanson | October 01, 2007 at 07:36 PM

The WWW is diametrically opposed to that sort of reading and learning. Like television, but even more so because you are interacting with it, it encourages a scatterring of attention. Bored, or don't feel like working out the meaning of a difficult section? Click a link or Google a keyword - maybe you'll find an easier explanation, but at least you won't have to keep working at it.

I don't agree with much in Steve Talbott's book The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst, but he has a few good ideas, that's where I originally saw the "scattering of attention" criticism.

BMI and the Anti-Weightloss Crowd

It is possible, actually likely, that some fringe fanatics overstate the value of the BMI (body-mass index), but the most extreme statements I have seen from a fairly reputable source are Michael Fumento's in The Fat of the Land: The Obesity Epidemic and How Overweight Americans Can Help Themselves.

On page 3 he mentions a Norwegian study [H. T. Waaler,"Height, Weight, and Mortality: The Norwegian Experience", Acta Medica Scandinavia 679 (supp.[1984]): 1-56] that "found that the lowest death rates for men was below the Body Mass Index (BMI) 25 level, while for women it was a 27 BMI." And he shows how to calculate the BMI on this page.

On pages 8 and 9 he discusses BMI, calipers, underwater weighing, and the newer electircal methods of measuring overweight, as he points out the benefit of the BMI is that you can do it yourself to monitor your weight, the others all need knowledgable assistance (calipers) to expensive equipment.

Page 27 he writes, "In exceptional cases such as bodybuilders, BMI is not an accurate measurement, but for most of us it is accurate, and it is certainly accurate for studying the population in general." I am substantially stronger than average, though definitely no bodybuilder or powerlifter, at 22 before I started really gaining weight, I weighed 170 pounds at 5 feet, 9 or 10 inches tall, almost exactly a BMI of 25. My weight had varied between 160 and 180 pounds over the previous five years. Over the next four years I gained 10 pounds a year, so that by my 26th birthday I weighed 210 pounds. That is the lowest my weight has been since. Over the last 22 years my weight has gotten as high as 250 pounds (thankfully only once and briefly) and twice I've gotten it back down to 210. Mostly I run between 220 and 230 pounds. I got on this personal note because I am more muscular than most people, yet BMI was an accurate measure of my being overweight.

You might notice how many people who attack BMI write that it wouldn't work for Arnold Schwartzenegger. Which is true, but irrelevant. Even people who are substantially stronger than average, but not serious bodybuilders or powerlifters, are not going to have a large enough muscle mass to make it more than slightly off.

And the people who use this excuse are obviously not bodybuilders.

Also, the lower your body fat the healthier you are going to be, so overstating your BMI is not going to be a significant problem anyway. I have just started another attempt to get my body weight down (I'll let you know if it actually works this time) with the intention of getting my BMI as low as I can, I hope to end up getting my weight down to 155 pounds, a BMI of 22. Even if I start getting it down there, I am weight training as part of my effort, and my lean body weight might go up a little. We'll see.

By the way, I don't strongly recommend "Fat of the Land". Fumento too often overstates the case for what he wants to believe. The chapter on fiber is one case, he admits the case for fiber is weak but then says you should eat it anyway because it displaces caloric foods, which is one of the things investigated, and the evidence for this claim is weak. He also dismisses low-carb diets like the Atkins mostly with ad hominem attacks and appeals to authority. But if you really want to know current nutritional understanding this is a good presentation of the mainstream medical position.

(page numbers above are from the hardcover edition)

Effectiveness

Working More Effectively
Stop worrying, straining, trying, and just do it and you will probably do it better. Relax and you can be faster, more powerful, and more accurate.

Worrying about anything will interfere with doing it. To do something well, focus on what you are doing, set your emotions aside. Emotions are necessary to doing - as motivation to do anything in the first place and as further motivation to do it well. But emotion while you are working is a distraction and will interfere with doing first class work.

You need to prepare and learn in advance to do something well, all worrying when you are trying to do it does is interfere with your actions. No matter how poorly you may have prepared, when it comes time to act, then act without worrying, because worrying will only reduce your effectiveness even further.

Efficiency amounts to being effective using as few resources as possible.

Effective Ends
Effectiveness is most often used in relation to activities and processes and to how well they lead to achieving your goals. But it can also be used about the goals themselves. A more effective goal is one that contributes more to your highest Values; less effective, or even ineffective, goals only satisfy themselves and momentary interests or pleasures.

You should consider the effectiveness of your goals before investing too much time and resources in them.

Physical Effectiveness (capacity & capabilities) is more or less obvious, but I may do a post on this later.