Thomas Sowell interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#381

Post by niyikiza » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #227

deiznof wrote: post #17

His economics are sound, but I often find that his takes on social issues are extremely reductionist. His social views a lot of the time are just standard conservative views (and wrong IMO), I wish he wasn't being praised for that. One example being his view on systemic racism, which he described as: “It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels in the age of the Nazis, in which he was supposed to h…

Sowell has some well-thought-out views on these issues, and he’s been expressing many of them for decades, but he has a curmudgeonly side as well. And I think if you understand his more well-thought-out views on these issues, I think you’ll also at least understand his curmudgeonly attitude. Oddly enough, what you’re doing now—if it were done to dismiss the thoughts of a “progressive” black person—would probably be c…

I cannot agree more. I think he's brilliant, and I've learned a lot from his ideas. However, I've seen him in multiple interviews putting forth evidence-free ideas aligned with Republican talk points.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#382

Post by refurb » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

xiler wrote: post #375

refurb wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And when you try and track people across decades, things start to look different. https://medium.com/@russroberts/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-...

Interesting read, but supposedly when we're talking about changes in social mobility we really care about the change in the percentage of people that are richer than their parents? Indeed towards the end of the article the author says: > There is one study of progress over time that follows parents and children that is gloomy and that is “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Mobility Since 1940” by Raj Chett…

I'm not sure "richer than their parents" alone, is a fair metric for social mobility. If you're born in the top 20% and stay in the top 20% (not advancing higher), is that really a social concern? I mean, Bill Gates kids are unlikely to do better than their parents, but that's ok.

From what I've read, most social mobility metrics are from low quintiles to higher quintiles.

So if in 1984, 50% of children do better than their parents, and that 50% is mostly the bottom half (I have no idea if it is), then you're doing pretty good in terms of social mobility, no? People making below the median are doing better.

And I would also expect that social mobility would decrease as an economy "matures". If you're in a developing country seeing 7-10% GDP growth, then you'd hope mobility is higher than an economy growing at 1-2% per year.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#383

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 10:45 PM UTC

> The prevailing notion today is that your skin color, your chromosomes, your sexual orientation, and other markers of identity determine how you think. And it is generally those who see themselves as the most freethinking—“woke,” while the rest of us are asleep—who apply the strictest and most backward formulas.

Beautifully said.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#384

Post by Shraal » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #374

Shraal wrote: post #186

Am I the only one here who thinks that "Basic Economics" is overrated? I loved the first chapters but I didn't finish it because of his obvious bias against regulations. While I enjoyed his analyses of failed regulations, the book makes it seem like there're no successful market regulation laws in place and every attempt is doomed to be short-sighted like all his examples. This [1] review on Amazon from someone else…

> because of his obvious bias against regulations Could it be that you, the person who has almost certainly not had the degree and intensity of experience in this field as Thomas Sowell (as so few have), are the one with the bias in favour of regulations that are not strictly necessary?

1. I'm sorry if you misunderstood me and think that I'm downplaying his work in this field. But I'm also kindly asking you to not just argue with appeal to authority [1].

2. Why do you think that I rule out that I'm not biased? If you read my other comment [2], I actually want to finish this book someday to challenge my assumptions and because his critique seemed reasonable! Unfortunately this book seems to paint an incomplete picture of my reality. The economy in my country should be totally unstable because of its regulations according to his views in this book but that's not the case. I want to understand the whole picture and this book falls short of doing it.

3. Why do you think that I'm generally in favor of regulations? It's simply not all black and white.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24041550

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#385

Post by sergiogjr » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 11:06 PM UTC

hedberg10 wrote: post #71

mc32 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish other writers would take this to heart. Reading The New Yorker it’s as if their language is a shibboleth and if they didn’t use it, it would alienate their audience for using average language, yet they are the same people who pontificate and pretend they advocate for the lower classes.

Let them. If you have the psychological need to constantly show how smart you are, your life will be very stressful indeed. You will want to manipulate others to get confirmation of your acrobatics and always be on the lookout for disproof. This will lead to you limiting your life severely for fear of actually finding it. -former smartness showoff who now acts betterer

They are the anointed ones of which Thomas talks about in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3044.The_Vision_of_the_A...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#386

Post by mixmastamyk » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #263

tshaddox wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> many conservatives were once liberals, while the reverse is typically not true. Is there any data to support that claim? It’s the opposite of my own personal anecdata.

Opposite of my personal anecdata as well. In the 90s I was a National Review-reading, Limbaugh-listening conservative. It started changing in the early 2000s when GWB invaded Iraq. Voted for Obama in '08 (a centrist) and Bernie in '16 (a Leftist). Now I identify as a mostly Left of center progressive.

The curious case of Benjamin Button comes to mind.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#387

Post by theicfire » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

Thomas Sowell is a critic of the climate change/environmental science initiatives, and it's one of the reasons I heavily question his other views. Here's a 3 min video of him talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rweblFwt-BM

The points he makes are quite fair. The science isn't perfect, yes. Often, people try to hide that the science isn't perfect, too. But the impact is roughly the product of the magnitude of the impact and the probability of the event. In this case, the magnitude is enormous and the probability is less than 100% but seemingly quite large. Dr. Sowell seems to simply argue that climate reports suggest that the probability is higher than it truly is. But if a report suggest 95%, and Dr. Sowell thinks it's more like 40%, the core issue is still enormous. I would want him to talk about why he thinks the huge effects of anthropogenic climate change are such a vanishingly small probability to the point that we shouldn't do anything about it.

Here's another article by him: https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2002/06-08/0002_thoma...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#388

Post by gpanders » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

Shraal wrote: post #186

Am I the only one here who thinks that "Basic Economics" is overrated? I loved the first chapters but I didn't finish it because of his obvious bias against regulations. While I enjoyed his analyses of failed regulations, the book makes it seem like there're no successful market regulation laws in place and every attempt is doomed to be short-sighted like all his examples. This [1] review on Amazon from someone else…

Try "Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan [1]. In my opinion, he does a good job of providing examples both of failed regulation and also situations where regulation is necessary and beneficial.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Economics-Undressing-Dismal-Sci...

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#389

Post by RoboticWater » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #362

RoboticWater wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were immeasurable and undefinable, then we wouldn't have studies showing disproportionate sentencing of Black people [1] or the persistent negative effects of redlining [2]. And if it were unchangeable, we wouldn't be able to construct studies to show the specific choke-points of racial inequality, nor suggest policy solutions to remedy them. > What is the systemic racism measure for Canada vs US? I don't under…

Thank you for linking to studies on the systemic racism issue. "Using rich data linking federal cases from arrest through to sentencing, we find that initial case and defendant characteristics, including arrest offense and criminal history, can explain most of the large raw racial disparity in federal sentences, but significant gaps remain. Across the distribution, blacks receive sentences that are almost 10 percent…

Physics is also a purposefully nebulous term used to capture and group a collection of specific issues that can be measured. God forbid people want to group together racial disparities caused by institutional practices under the term "systemic racism." We could call them "fiddledydoop" for all I care, but there is obviously a good reason to group these things together.

Of course, you seem to be implying that people aren't actually trying to address these issues individually, and you couldn't be more wrong. Academics and policymakers alike are forming and implementing solutions all the time. You might just be looking too closely at Twitter.

It's frankly insulting that, despite the ongoing tragedy of racial inequality and the abundance of experts actively working to resolve it, that you and others are so caught up in such meaningless semantic games.

> It should also be noted that the vast majority of people talking about the sentencing disparity ascribe 100% of the sentencing difference to racism

I'm not sure how you can substantiate that claim.

> it's actually a 10% delta

You say that like a 10% delta because the color of your skin isn't tragic.

> It's not like activists ever cared about nuance.

Are they supposed to? We have a representative democracy for a reason: average people and activists push for change, and experts and representatives try to enact that push a reasonably as possible. I wouldn't expect the average person to approach policy failures with moderation. Most don't have years of higher education or a heterogeneous voter base to appease to moderate them. That goes for all sides. Don't act like the constituency who decry systemic racism approach it with the same nuance as Sowell.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#390

Post by djrobstep » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 12:04 AM UTC

jakebasile wrote: post #323

djrobstep wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "other people's money" in the first place, that's the point. Packed into that notion is the idea it rightfully or originally belongs to the rich. It doesn't. It rightfully belongs to the poor who need food and healthcare.

Again, there is no reference to "rich" vs "poor" in his argument. The argument is just a basic restatement of property rights - people own that which they've purchased through trading goods, services, or money. This applies just as much to any human being, except the truly indigent with no property whatsoever. Why is it greed for someone to keep what income/wealth/property they've earned while also is not greed to cl…

> The argument is just a basic restatement of property rights - people own that which they've purchased through trading goods, services, or money.

Your contention is that some institutions count as property rights (contract law etc), but taxation law doesn't. I'm telling you the line between them that you draw is drawn purely with ideology.

Taxation law isn't some adjustment that takes place after property law, it is part of property law. $X of tax paid by party A that ends up funding $X of social security payments to party B, literally belongs to party B. It is the property of party B. Not party A. It is not "someone else's" in any way.