Thomas Sowell interview • Hacker News Board

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#401

Post by chrisfinne » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:35 AM UTC

rmellow wrote: post #232

htk wrote: post #155

Someone should create a list of books that comprise a beginners manual of living in a modern society, and “Basic Economics” would fit perfectly in this list.

I think a lot about this. Modern society is very different from what our ancestors grew up with. Any other recommendations on how to do well?

I usually think this, but then I'll see some random piece of advice from thousands of years ago, e.g. Seneca, Sun Tzu, Jesus, Plato and it seems very relevant.

We've got a lot more bells and whistles these days, but maybe the absence of reddit, imgur, youtube and the general dopamine hamster-wheel allowed them to have a better understanding of human nature.

Counter-point is that we are more likely to live longer and have to fight fewer threats of disease, famine, predators and war, so maybe we have more time to contemplate higher thoughts.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#402

Post by ardy42 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 5:18 AM UTC

SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #307

tptacek wrote: post #292

It's difficult for me to come up with a charitable reason why Sowell, an arch-conservative, is somehow interesting to HN (and, to be fair, I'd say the same thing about a sudden surge in interest in Brad DeLong or Matt Bruenig), or why we'd vote City-Journal, the house organ of the Manhattan Institute, to the front page. I think it's especially dicey given the climate. If you're curious about Sowell, some policy posit…

> It's difficult for me to come up with a charitable reason why Sowell, an arch-conservative, is somehow interesting to HN That's pretty easy. It's because tech has a vocal arch-conservative contingent. Why are there so many arch-conservatives in tech? I don't really have an answer to that.

> Why are there so many arch-conservatives in tech? I don't really have an answer to that.

This might be of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

Tech has a lot of libertarians, which vaguely attribute to a couple of things: the appeal of simplistic but clean-seeming free market economic models to kinds of people who are drawn to computers and (to a lesser extent) the influence of startup culture. People in tech are also typically pretty economically secure, which gives them the luxury of a certain amount of aloofness.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#403

Post by hedberg10 » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 6:40 AM UTC

sergiogjr wrote: post #385

hedberg10 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Amazing book.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#404

Post by OwlsParlay » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:11 AM UTC

pas wrote: post #187

Emma_Goldman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New Yorker is an upper-middle class publication. That is its target audience. Other magazines owned by the same media conglomerate, Conde Nast, are broadly similar in orientation: Vogue, Bon Appetit, Vanity Fair, GQ, Architectural Digest. I don't think they 'advocate for the lower classes', subjectively or objectively. I read very few socialists and communists in the New Yorker!

Do socialists/communists really advocate for the lower classes?

That's entirely the point of the idealogy. The problem is that after the anti-communist purges of the 60s', there's no representation of the lower classes in academia or political science. This is less of a problem in European countries where their socialist parties actually have a strong working-class background.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#405

Post by xiler » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:27 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #382

xiler wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

> 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.

They address that in the paper:

> Higher GDP growth rates do not substantially increase the number of children who earn more than their parents because a large fraction of GDP goes to a small number of high income earners today. To see why absolute mobility is insensitive to the growth rate when growth is distributed unequally, consider the extreme case in which one child obtains all of the increase in GDP. In this case, higher GDP growth rates would have no effect on absolute mobility. More generally, GDP growth has larger effects on absolute mobility when growth is spread more broadly, allowing more children to achieve higher living standards than their parents. Higher GDP growth and a broader distribution of growth have a multiplicative effect on absolute mobility: Absolute mobility is highest when GDP growth rates are high and growth is spread broadly across the distribution.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6336/398.full

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#406

Post by deadgunslinger » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 7:57 AM UTC

RoboticWater wrote: post #305

deadgunslinger wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it were immeasurable and undefinable, then we wouldn't have studies showing disproportionate sentencing of Black people By the same standard, do you agree that there is systemic sexism against men?

Of course, patriarch theory completely accounts for this. The common view that men are more powerful and autonomous, and therefore dangerous, can probably account for some degree of their harsher treatment under the justice system, just like this view probably helps them in acquiring positions of power in the workplace.

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

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#407

Post by jahaja » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 8:26 AM UTC

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #394

jahaja wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By "indirectly coerced" you mean that they need food and shelter Yes, and more. > and they don't have slaves to grow their food and build their house for them? Is this the level you sink to as soon as Capitalist dogma is questioned? It's not the poor and workers that have servants in modern society.

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.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

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Post by ramblerman » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 11:46 AM UTC

SantalBlush wrote: post #206

HPsquared wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematical rigour doesn't necessarily translate to correctness. A mathematics-first approach encourages oversimplified assumptions. An example is the efficient markets hypothesis, which is the "spherical frictionless cow" of economics.

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.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#409

Post by spopejoy » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

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…

If you're a little older and were reading papers in the late 80s and 90s, Thomas Sowell was a fixture of the Op-Ed as a reliable apologist for capitalism and white supremacy.

It's definitely _why_ he was so prolific at that time because back then papers published hardly any Black views in editorials, much less left/liberal Black ones. Concepts that are common now (slavery's legacy is still with us; criminal justice is a huge problem for minorities; etc) would get you banned from pretty much anywhere then. But cheerily offering views like "Stop helping Black people" and "people are poor because they're lazy" with a Black writer was positively applauded.

There was kind of a moment around then, you had Ward Connerly on the UC board of directors busily dismantling affirmative action, Clarence Thomas' appointment, and Sowell blowing up the op-ed pages. There was no question that if you were a conservative Black you would be amplified and supported all over the place.

Needless to say, this led me to dismiss him intellectually then, as his political arguments are threadbare paleoconservativism. I haven't looked at his economic work, but given the appaling history of arch-conservative economics from "giants" like Friedman, I can't imagine I'd find anything very persuasive.

Re: Thomas Sowell interview

#410

Post by RoboticWater » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

deadgunslinger wrote: post #406

RoboticWater wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, patriarch theory completely accounts for this. The common view that men are more powerful and autonomous, and therefore dangerous, can probably account for some degree of their harsher treatment under the justice system, just like this view probably helps them in acquiring positions of power in the workplace.

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.