Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

freakonomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 453 posts

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#371

Post by notahacker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #305
notahacker wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced the legislature explicitly killing or dramatically reconstituting agencies is a significantly rarer event than large companies going bankrupt. More to the point, the executive is seldom shy about embarking upon restructuring or adjusting funding and objectives of its administrative bureaucracies, not least because it faces its own acute existential threat from not being seen to give its taxpayers va…

> I'm not convinced the legislature explicitly killing or dramatically reconstituting agencies is a significantly rarer event than large companies going bankrupt In Western European and North American history, at least, it dramatically is. Look at a list of the Dow or S&P 500's founding components. Look at those lists now. Now look at a list of U.S. departments in 1850, and compare them to today.

My reference point is the UK, where we killed 89 civil service departments in the early 90s alone.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#372

Post by Nursie »

User23 wrote: post #301
Nursie wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of individual or small group actions that have the capability to seriously fuck things up for everyone else, what other position is rational?

Local control of communities and migration to an amenable community for your desires instead of trying to force your preferences on others with the barrel of a gun.

There is no such thing as 'local' when we are talking about CFC production.

Try again.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#374

Post by cageface »

opo wrote: post #346
rebuilder wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland, as a male, refusal to perform military or civil service is a crime punishable by approximately 6 months of imprisonment. I understand that very recently that has been put on hold as a result of a legal challenge on the grounds that a certain religious minority is exempted from such service, the claim being that this constitutes inequal treatment.

I guess that is how being a conscientous objector worked in the US during the Viet Nam war - anyone declaring themselves a conscientous objector had to due some kind of public service or face jail time (probably more than 6 months). In the US the draft just allowed the US government to continue the Viet Nam war far longer than it otherwise would have gone, I am glad we don't have an active draft here.

If anything the draft brought the war to a close sooner. Once kids of upper and middle class parents started getting drafted and killed they started putting pressure on the government to end the war.

Now that American wars are mostly being fought by volunteers from classes without political power they can drag on for decades and most Americans barely even think about them anymore.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#375

Post by varjag »

wizzairflyer wrote: post #353
rebuilder wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Finland, as a male, refusal to perform military or civil service is a crime punishable by approximately 6 months of imprisonment. I understand that very recently that has been put on hold as a result of a legal challenge on the grounds that a certain religious minority is exempted from such service, the claim being that this constitutes inequal treatment.

>a legal challenge on the grounds that a certain religious minority is exempted from such service, the claim being that this constitutes inequal treatment. Kind of amazing that this is ground for a legal challenge but the fact that female aren't drafted isn't. That's one of the part of Western societies around which I can't wrap my mind.

There's increasing pressure to fix that too. Norway has introduced gender neutral draft two years ago.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#376

Post by dimillian »

jjoonathan wrote: post #243
HenryTheHorse wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or earnest.

The descriptive work of he-who-shall-not-be-named is leagues ahead of his prescriptive work (not surprising -- fixing problems tends to be harder than finding them). The problems he addresses still abound and it's really a pity we have culturally suppressed the vocabulary and arguments he put forward to talk about them. So, my guess: serious.

So the crowd forbid to name Karl Marx here of what?

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#377

Post by grosjona »

>> THALER: So my toast began by saying that my fellow winners had discovered things like gravitational waves, and circadian rhythms. And I discovered the existence of humans in the economy.

Funny quote. It's a testament to how complex things are and how far people go to simplify them.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#378

Post by exikyut »

grzm wrote: post #228
skadamat wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish I could edit my first comment to include this, not sure why I can't.

Comments are only editable for a limited duration (20 minutes, IIRC) after creation.

FWIW, I've found it to be a bit over an hour (maybe 1h15m or 1h30m).

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#379

Post by freeflight »

dimillian wrote: post #376
jjoonathan wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The descriptive work of he-who-shall-not-be-named is leagues ahead of his prescriptive work (not surprising -- fixing problems tends to be harder than finding them). The problems he addresses still abound and it's really a pity we have culturally suppressed the vocabulary and arguments he put forward to talk about them. So, my guess: serious.

So the crowd forbid to name Karl Marx here of what?

Not the crown, but the Overton window.

Re: People Aren’t Dumb, the World Is Hard

#380

Post by deltron3030 »

Rainymood wrote: post #365
simonh wrote: post #358

I think people are dumb, and I'm not being derogatory about 'the 'masses' or any such crap. I'm unbelievably dumb. It often takes me a ridiculously long time to come to a solution to a problem, where the answer seems like it should be obvious. Instead my slow, feeble mammal brain takes forever to grope blindly around the issue before getting any traction. Lets say there is a scale of sentience that goes from 1, which…

To truly argue on this point you need to, I think or at least in my opinion, settle on a definition of "smart" and "dumb". I like to view our intellect as a tool for survival of our species. By that measure, we are doing fairly well. We used to get wiped out by minor stuff like not enough food, not enough protection from the elements and other animals, diseases, we have eradicated the majority of these things hinderi…

> Anyway, humans, compared to other animals we compete with for survival, food, and territory, are doing really well. I don't see any cows on the moon yet.

Would all this be possible without other mammals? Or is the ecosystem (including mammals) the enabler for us?

Post reply on HN