Tag Archives: Eric Weinstein

Andrew Sullivan joins the IDW

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He writes,

My own brilliant conclusion: Group differences in IQ are indeed explicable through both environmental and genetic factors and we don’t yet know quite what the balance is.

Read the whole thing.

I think about this issue by using a computer metaphor, with the layers of hardware, operating system and application software. The hardware is our physical bodies. The operating system is our cognitive systems, as shaped by evolution and our individual genetics. The applications come from culture, by which I mean the norms, behaviors, and technology that we absorb from others.

If you think of cognitive ability or how the sexes relate, all three layers matter. But people on the extreme left argue as if the hardware and operating system don’t matter, and people on the extreme right argue as if the hardware and the operating system are all that matter. As Sullivan puts it,

Leftists tend to believe that all inequality is created; liberals tend to believe we can constantly improve the world in every generation, forever perfecting our societies. Rightists believe that human nature is utterly unchanging; conservatives tend to see the world as less plastic than liberals, and attempts to remake it wholesale dangerous and often counterproductive. I think of myself as moderately conservative. It’s both undeniable to me that much human progress has occurred, especially on race, gender, and sexual orientation; and yet I’m suspicious of the idea that our core nature can be remade or denied. I completely respect the role of liberals in countering this. It’s their role. I think the genius of the West lies in having all these strands in our politics competing with one another.

Again, read the whole thing. Sullivan makes a complaint, which I share, that on these issues the left tries to demonize and shut down conservatives. The more vehemently the left asserts its moral superiority, the more I doubt that moral superiority.

Mr. Sullivan, welcome to the Intellectual Dark Web.

IDW discovered by NYT

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Bari Weiss writes,

First, they are willing to disagree ferociously, but talk civilly, about nearly every meaningful subject: religion, abortion, immigration, the nature of consciousness. Second, in an age in which popular feelings about the way things ought to be often override facts about the way things actually are, each is determined to resist parroting what’s politically convenient. And third, some have paid for this commitment by being purged from institutions that have become increasingly hostile to unorthodox thought — and have found receptive audiences elsewhere.

I wish that her piece had honed in more closely on some basic questions:

1. Is the Intellectual Dark Web important?

2. If so, why?

3. Why does it seem to fit the format of long-form YouTube videos and podcasts?

I see the IDW as an attempt to model dignified, open-minded discussions. Perhaps the answer to (3) is that this goal is better achieved in long-form conversations or lectures than tweets or Facebook posts.

Really, the principles of good intellectual debate are not that obscure. Just make arguments as if you were trying to change the mind of a reasonable person on the other side. I believe that the reason that we don’t observe much of this is that most people are trying to raise their status within their own tribe rather than engage in reasoned discourse. It’s sad that reasoned discourse does not raise one’s status as much as put-downs and expressions of outrage.

The current situation is that the left’s bullying tactics have migrated from college campuses to corporations. President Trump answers left-wing bullies in kind, but that does not move us in the direction of dignified, open-minded discussions. I think that the effort of the IDW is worthwhile, but I am pessimistic that we will see an improvement in the quality of intellectual debate overall.

Eric Weinstein on economics

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I found my way to what he wrote a couple years ago.

So long as public goods make up a minority of a market economy, taxes on non-public goods can be used to pay for the exception where price and value gap. But in the modern era, things made of atoms (e.g. vinyl albums) are being replaced by things made of bits (e.g. MP3 files). While 3D printing is still immature, it vividly showcases how the plans for an object will allow us to disintermediate its manufacturer. Hence, the previous edge case of market failure should be expected to claim an increasingly dominant share of the pie.

This reminds me of my 2002 essay, asymptotically free goods.

An asymptotically free good is a good where almost of all of the cost involved consists of research and development. It differs from a natural monopoly in two ways.

1. In contrast with an amusement park or a utility, the cost of maintaining the capital for an asymptotically free good is relatively low. Once the research is complete and the idea is proven, the costs are trivial. In the absence of patent protection, there is nothing to stop a competititor from taking the idea and driving the price close to zero.

For example, once you have undertaken the research to produce a new miracle drug, the marginal and average costs of producing it are low. To take another example, once devices have been designed and protocols established for a high-speed wireless network, the cost of providing and maintaining the equipment for a network may be low relative to the number of users.

2. Asymptotically free goods are like public goods in that it is costly to exclude someone from enjoying the benefit of an asymptotically free good.

–It is costly to hook someone up to the electric grid. It is costly to keep someone off a wireless network.

–The cost of setting up and maintaining a gate at an amusement park is relatively low. The cost of policing the Internet to stop music swapping is enormous.

Later, Weinstein says,

Advertising and privacy transfer (rather than user fees) have become the business model of last resort for the Internet corporate giants.

We are not in a neoclassical world. In my essay, I conclude

Problems are being solved not by throwing capital and labor at them, but by undertaking research and development which, when completed, leads to solutions that cost relatively little in terms of traditional factors of production. . .

For those who tend to view government as an instrument of the public good whenever the free-market outcome may be flawed, asymptotically free goods provide an excuse for more government intervention. For those who tend to see government as providing an instrument by which status quo interests can impede change, asymptotically free goods are a reason for keeping government hands off.

For his part, Weinstein concludes

Capitalism and Communism which briefly resembled victor and vanquished, increasingly look more like Thelma and Louise; a tragic couple sent over the edge by forces beyond their control. What comes next is anyone’s guess and the world hangs in the balance.

Dave Rubin and the Weinstein Brothers

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They talk for almost three hours, and you have to hang with it until the end to hear my three-axes model invoked by Eric Weinstein. His point is that libertarians will not be helpful if they (we?) deny that sometimes the other points of view are legitimate.

I met Eric at Foo camp, and I was hoping to get together with him a couple of weeks ago, but I had a snafu that messed up my travel. Until about a week ago, I had never connected him with Bret Weinstein, the professor who was at the center of the Evergreen State College controversy last May.

One of the interesting points that Eric makes early in the video is that in the United States we went from having 8 percent of the population pursue education beyond high school prior to World War II to close to 50 percent by 1970. That growth spurt created some major distortions in higher education. One can infer what those distortions included:

1. Some dilution of student quality. We have to be careful here, because prior to 1950, colleges were more selective on social class than academic ability. So what probably happened is that quality went up at the top schools. Where the dilution of quality was felt was more likely the mediocre institutions that expanded rapidly, notably mid-tier and lower-tier state schools.

2. A sort of phase change in the demand for new faculty toward the end of the 1970s. Until then, the demand for Ph.D’s soared. The system kept producing Ph.D’s as if demand would continue to rise at this unsustainable rate. By the 1980s, the attempt to maintain high demand for Ph.D’s starts to become dysfunctional, with universities creating pseudo-disciplines and superfluous administrative positions.

A lot of the discussion concerns the issue of orthodoxy vs. dissent. Recall that I wrote about Eliezer Yudkowski’s case that one should doubt oneself when defying orthodoxy. Eric Weinsten offers a different perspective on this. He says that the way to tell a cult from a group that pursues truth is that the cult will not tolerate any dissent. What is odd about our current environment is that it is the mainstream in many fields that is behaving like a cult, and it is a small group outside the mainstream that is open-minded.

In Specialization and Trade, I include the quote attributed to Andre Gide: trust those who seek the truth; doubt those who find it. By that standard, it is the mainstream that cannot be trusted. For example, both Eric and Bret argue there are rational reasons to fear anthropogenic climate change. But the mainstream climate scientists are acting in ways that make themselves untrustworthy to anyone alert to cult behavior.

The discussants take the view that journalism, academia, and major political parties are so cult-like at present that the future of humanity is in doubt. Our world is fragile, due to a combination of technological dangers and mainstream institutions that are insular and complacent.

The participants talk about a “Game B” that somehow enables institutional improvement. It all sounds a bit conspiratorial. Nassim Taleb would be an example of a Game B sort of intellectual. Is Jordan Peterson part of Game B? Perhaps. Is Donald Trump part of Game B? No, but his victory in part reflects the dysfunctionality and corruption of mainstream institutions.

Whether the current political environment redounds to the benefit of Game B is highly uncertain. Eric’s fear is that things could get really ugly for the Game B types. If you read my moonshot essay, you know which side I am on as an economist.