Viewing profile — rvern

No, this is one of the greatest arguments for small government or no government. People are more rational when the cost to them of being irrational is larger. Voting for good polic…

“Suppose you’re on a game show, and you’re given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows …

Bayes’ theorem says no such thing. Your friend is wrong, but please do not let this reflect badly on the Bayesian interpretation of probability in general—it has nothing to do with…

Open borders are truly one of our civilization’s best low-hanging fruits. https://openborders.info/double-world-gdp/

Live a modern life, comfortable by modern standards? You’re right about that. But people in the past lived in worse conditions that were considered modern and comfortable then and …

The institutions give you cheap loans in exchange. This has opportunity costs. Giving you cheap loans is not free for these institutions. They could be investing their money elsewh…

There is no externality here because the costs fall entirely on the person who takes the decision. People, myself and quite possibly yourself included, really do want to sign up wi…

Equifax has an incentive not to get things wrong because their customers care about having accurate information. Nationalizing credit ratings would remove this incentive. That Equi…

There are public instances running GitLab CE at framagit.org and 0xacab.org.

Matthew Butterick wrote a response to this study last week: https://practicaltypography.com/are-two-spaces-better-than-o... .

> I'd believe Wikipedia less than either. That's where you make a mistake. Whatever the reason, the Wikipedia articles on the g factor, the intelligence quotient and Cattell–Horn–C…

I cannot find much valuable content on deletionpedia.org in general and nothing interesting about clocks. If you know about articles with valuable information that were lost, you c…

Not Occam’s razor. http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/13/6/1076

Most information goods are non-rival, whereas food is not.

Yes, at least in the sense of succeeding the article talks about. India is the third country in the world by GDP at purchasing power parity, which is consistent with its population…

Rather mostly China succeeded because it had a population larger than any other country. Production depends primarily on resources and human labor is one of the most valuable resou…

Many are not, indeed. But if you care about the truth, you should argue against the best arguments of the strongest advocates. You have to challenge the arguments in the chapter on…

They are not the freest market feasible.

Do they consume as much as half the world? If the money is invested, where's the problem? Wealth inequality only matters for the well-being of the poor insofar as it affects consum…

You are entirely right. But if we admit that education’s purpose is mostly signaling (without denying that some parts of it do have uses for some students), we can’t justify spendi…

My first comment said that sensible economic policies are not politically feasible. I certainly don't predict that sensible policies are going to be adopted or sensible systems cre…