Thomas Sowell interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#411

Post by mr_overalls » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

bergstromm466 wrote: post #395

mr_overalls wrote: post #218

I'm going to be a nonconformist myself and oppose the near-univeral approval of Sowell in this discussion. His book Basic Economics was the first book on econ that I read, and I was very impressed by it. It reaffirmed the rather right-wing political views that I'd inherited from my parents. However, after taking a few introductory econ classes at university and doing further reading on my own, Sowell starts to appear…

> I'm going to be a nonconformist myself and oppose the near-univeral approval of Sowell in this discussion. > It reaffirmed the rather right-wing political views that I'd inherited from my parents. I really did not know HN was this conservative. I am very surprised at all this unanimous approval of Sowell.

Same here - it's really quite baffling.

Sowell even thinks that racial discrimination in hiring doesn't require government intervention. He constructs an argument in Basic Economics that market forces will rectify this kind of social ill.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#412

Post by cma » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:37 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #228

cma wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be charitable, he could be talking about the Dixie Chicks or anchors that were fired for questioning the Iraq war. Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president.

> Or for the biggest example of modern cancel culture, Kaepernick's firing after targeting by the president. Kaepernick was "fired" because he was poor at his job. Defenses started to understand his 1-dimensional attack and then shut it down. He was cut after the 2016 season, but had been benched in 2015 because the 49ers offense was struggling.[1] This was nine months before he ever took a knee before a game.[2] Did…

> Which anchors lost their jobs for questioning Iraq?

Ashleigh Banfield, Phil Donahue (should have called him a host, not anchor).

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#413

Post by googthrowaway42 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 3:48 PM UTC

jahaja wrote: post #407

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not dogma to suggest that people want to be compensated for building houses and growing food and won't do that for free unless a gun is put to their head.

Of course it is. Assuming that the only other option to Capitalism is slavery is dogma.

You're using the word Capitalism as though it's representative of an ideology. "Capitalism" is a term created by Marxists to describe a system that allows people to freely exchange with one another without force. No one is going to grow your food or build you a house without compensation. That's why Marxism requires slavery (public slavery).

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#414

Post by SantalBlush » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #408

SantalBlush wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t use mathematical models because they are correct. We use them because they are more concretely measurable, and thus falsifiable. Without them, it becomes too easy to make vague statements about economics then make ad hoc explanations for why you were right. This is what so-called economists like Sowell do. >A mathematics-first approach encourages oversimplified assumptions. Wrong. It makes the oversimplified…

Perhaps, but in physics the maths and experiments run very close. In fields like economics it's easier to make a grandiose and "falsifiable" piece of math that is absolutely correct but doesn't actually reflect anything real. Or more often reflects a tiny part of a first order effect. Yet people get blinded because the math is right.

Nobody is "blinded because the math is right". You're using the same sort of argumentation that is used in all of the pseudo sciences.

If you know of a way to improve upon the existing methodologies, then show it to us, and be precise. Then you will have an argument that deserves to be engaged with. Ambiguous claims that the math "doesn't actually reflect anything real" sound intelligent, but really aren't saying much at all.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#415

Post by MisterBastahrd » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #396

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kaepernick was blackballed by the league, full stop. Find me another instance of an uninjured QB under the age of 35 who led a team to a Super Bowl 3 years prior who was not only cut by his current team but not signed for even a backup role by another club. There's a reason that Cam Newton has a job today and Kaepernick doesn't, and it's because Newton didn't get cancelled.

Both players debuted in the NFL in 2011. In 2015, Kaepernick led the 49ers to a 2-6 start, while Newton led the Panthers 8-0 (and to a Super Bowl berth). Sure, the QB isn't the only player responsible, but he is the single point of failure. Isn't it possible that Cam Newton is just a much better player than Kaepernick, all else being equal? If Kaepernick were so good and such a talent that teams should have been pick…

In 2013, Kapernick lead his team to the Super Bowl. By the end of 2016, he was completely out of the league after being blackballed. He hasn't played for a team in any capacity since. While one can argue whether his stats were great or not, he certainly was not anywhere near the worst STARTING quarterback in football.

From 2012 to 2016, Newton's Adjusted Net Yards per Play were .04 higher than Kaepernick's, a virtually statistical dead heat. After the 2015 season, Newton got a shiny new $100M contract for those efforts, and Kaepernick was shown the door after 2016.

In Kaepernick's 11 starts during the 2016 season, his team gave up more than 30 points 9 times. He had a new head coach that had just gotten run out of Philly for having no chemistry with his team, and he had one of the worst receiving corps in NFL history. He still managed 16 TDs to just 4 INTs.

So, for having one of the worst defenses in the league, coached by one of the worst coaches in the league, and throwing to easily the worst group of receivers in the league, his team didn't do so hot. But there's no reason why he shouldn't have immediately found another competition elsewhere, because he WAS a starting-caliber QB, and unlike Newton who was a similar player, Kaepernick had no outstanding injury issues. He wasn't coming off of foot surgery and shoulder surgery like Newton is today.

Except that he spoke up.

And that was the end of his career.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#416

Post by JPKab » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

RoboticWater wrote: post #389

JPKab wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Your analogy isn't correct. Physics isn't used as a catch-all to explain things that haven't been researched.

And I never said the 10% delta wasn't awful. That is of course a horrific thing that must be addressed. It's also a specific issue that can be measured and solved.

Systemic racism is used just like God was when I, growing up in the south, had to defend my belief in evolution. The favorite weapon of the biblical creationists is termed "God of the gaps". They would look for some biological feature (their favorite was the human eye) that wasn't fully explained by evolutionary science, and then claim that gap in science had to be filled by God's existence.

Systemic racism is "racism of the gaps". Every discrepancy between two arbitrarily separated groups is termed evidence of some non-specific, internal bigotry that absolutely must exist. The fact that various cultural groups behave and raise children differently is ignored. Southern whites are much poorer than norther whites. Must be bigotry. It couldn't be cultural differences.....

Women are radically underrepresented as victims of police violence. There must be systemic bigotry towards men by police. Asians are underrepresented in police killings. Police must systemically favor them.

We know that this isn't true, and that women are underrepresented in police killings because they are dramatically less likely to be in confrontations with police. But this logic is willfully ignored in place of the "systemic racism" canard when looking at black male overrepresentation in police killings. It's exactly what you would expect when people who seek power instead of truth are dominating the conversation.

And since you are defending activists willfully misrepresenting data to feed emotional narratives, let's talk about the fact that BLM's hyperbolic language around police killings of black men has caused a large percentage of the population to think that police are a statistically significant threat to the lives of black men in America. The other impression left on the minds of the public is that black men are exclusively the victims of police violence, when the data says otherwise.

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

Here, you see that 76% of the people killed by police are non-black in the US. And yes, black men are overrepresented, and so are latinos. Asians are underrepresented. Activists have SUCCEEDED in manipulating the public on this, and have created social pressure that academics are yielding to.

Ask yourself why you have to use Google to find the name of a Latino who was unjustly killed by police in the last 5 years, but you (if you are like me) can list the names of multiple black men unjustly killed by police in the same time frame? Do you think that discrepancy in knowledge is natural, fair, or just?

The ethno-centric activists have taken the very real issue of police violence, and turned it into a race specific one, needlessly. Racial issues are easy to weaponize, and that's probably the motivation, but it comes at the cost of actual truth. Police kill citizens of all colors with impunity. George Floyd's murderers were arrested a day later. The killer of Daniel Shaver (the second most egregious police killing video I've seen after George Floyd) was given early retirement with a full pension.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#417

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #343

chmod600 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overall, I like his writing, but his style can also come across as dismissive; as though he is obviously right, before he has really addressed all lines of criticism. When used to explain something, this style is great, because he gets his point across efficiently and provides enough backing so that you can remember it. And if you read enough of his writing, he brings out the nuance in other books and the intellectua…

This is why I've never been tempted by his books. His editorials come off not so much dismissive as smugly dismissive: he's not only obviously right, anyone who questions him is obviously stupid. I don't know about him as a teacher, but as a thought leader, he is successful because he says the things that the right people want to hear.

Try a Conflict Of Visions. It's not at all smug or dismissive. In fact it's one of the most balanced books I've ever read. I didn't know who the author was before I read it, and by the time I finished, I felt I still knew nothing about the author. But I also felt I suddenly understood politics and the world, for the first time in my life. It was a mind-expanding experience. I immediately bought several copies so I could give them away to friends and family.

Later I found his videos and was surprised to learn he's a black conservative. That wasn't apparent from the book.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#418

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

peterpeppers wrote: post #361

chmod600 wrote: post #145

One important impact he had on my thinking is that he rejects groupings of people based on snapshots in time. For instance, it is very common to use income as a proxy for your economic success, and then to group people into quintiles, calling the bottom quintile "the poor". It seems reasonable, but it's wrong enough to lead to very wrong conclusions. A college student living on their own will appear to be a "poor hou…

The problem with Dr. Sowell is that he believes that "when he adds everything up" that it tells an accurate and whole picture. To him, people are a simple variable to plug into an even simpler economics equation. He could learn a few things concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty from Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman. A few points... + Sowell never truly questions the data that's the foundat…

Hmm, I don't recognise that description. His books "A Conflict of Visions" and "Intellectuals and society" are all about human decision making, judgement and uncertainty.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#419

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

pinko wrote: post #104

sradman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He does take a conservative approach to a lot of topics... Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles [1] is, ironically, a very good starting point in understanding what makes Sowell "conservative" (the Constrained Vision) vs "progressive" (the Unconstrained Vision). I think this is the work that impressed Steven Pinker. The categories get really messy, for example when he desc…

Just about every Marxist on the planet believes that we are "made better by social structure", so I think that characterization of what Marxists vs. non-Marxists believe is unhelpful.

Isn't that the opposite of what Marx believed? His world view was that a perfect society (communism) would arise when virtually all institutions were abolished, because in his view, the imperfections of human nature were all caused by "alienation" which itself came from the capitalist system.

Actual communists tended to start out living that creed: they'd systematically destroy any existing institution. But then they'd find society didn't work at all without them, so they'd pretty rapidly build new institutions, that all happened to be controlled by them.

Conservatives on the other hand are, by their nature, conservative about changing things. They tend to regard existing social structures as evolved and thus encoding great wisdom, even if it can't be easily articulated. To change those institutions is thus highly risky, even if it may not be immediately apparent why that is. This is the opposite of Marxism, which is a utopian ideology in which changing everything at once is not too much.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#420

Post by thu2111 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 6:30 PM UTC

RoboticWater wrote: post #410

deadgunslinger wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patriarchy theory is contradicting itself on that issue. It's the pinnacle of doublethink.

I don't see how. If men are perceived as being stronger and more rational, that will help them in acquiring jobs, but hurt them when being found culpable of a crime. I'm not sure where you learned feminist theory, but it's fairly resolute about the fact that Patriarchy is deleterious to both men and women.

Nobody learns feminist theory because it's not a learnable topic, it's just a collection of nonsensical anecdotes bound together with clever sounding words.

If men get sentenced more harshly because they are "stronger" and "more rational", or even just perceived that way, then there's no problem with them dominating roles that benefit from a lot of strength or rationality, roles like CEO of a company. But feminists have a big problem with that notion. They're all about how women are just as good as men at everything, equal in all respects and thus deserving of equal outcomes, right until there's an outcome that's better for women than men. Then suddenly there's an intellectual sounding but illogical explanation.