(My Eastern New Mexico News column for February 10, 2021)
When something is important to you, you want to share it. If other people don’t understand it, you want to explain it to them.
You usually want others to like and understand it as much as you …
Responsible people who have worthwhile principles have to accept that they have no right to violate others just because they have (or believe they have) a good goal in mind.
As data on the unintended consequences of pandemic policy becomes gloomier, policy makers are beginning to acknowledge tradeoffs.
It’s easy for people with contrarian ideas and opinions to long for public validation. After years of being mocked and worn down, there’s a tendency to fantasize about one great moment where all your opponents are owned and utterly embarrassed.
I had a little back and forth in the comment section on one of my recent podcast episodes with my friend Alex Knight (ARK3). I thought I’d reproduce it here in all it’s glory.
Convenience has a massive effect on your behavior. You rarely shop in your favorite store, eat in your favorite restaurant, or visit your favorite place. Why not? Because doing so is typically inconvenient. They’re too far away, or not open at the right hours, so you settle for second-best or third-best or tenth-best. You usually don’t switch your cell phone company, your streaming service, or your credit card just because a better option comes along. Why not? Because switching is not convenient. Students even pass up financial aid because they don’t feel like filling out the paperwork. Why not? You guessed it: Because paperwork is inconvenient.
I don’t have to have solid true/false answers to everything. Nor do I need to pretend such answers don’t exist. I can approach what I know directly with high probability and lower it with each step beyond experience.
ed with the author’s permission.
I got my Ph.D. in economics from Princeton in 1997. Twenty-three years after graduation, I remain a professor at a mid-ranked school. The odds that I’ll ever get a job at a top-20 department look awfully low. How do I feel about this situation? The socially approved response, at least within social science, is to […]
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The new University of Cambridge paper is the first longitudinal study to trace the mental health effects of lockdowns and social isolation on younger children.