Rorty colloquy
There's been some lively, serious, and very sophisticated discussion of Rorty, of the relationship between his political theory and his general views on philosophy, and of his stance toward religion and pluralism over the past few days. It's been spread across several places, some of them non-obvious (Damon Linker bounces from a TNR online article to Matt Yglesias' site to Open University), so here's a roundup.
Damon Linker
Matt Yglesias
Linker
Yglesias
Linker
Will Wilkinson
John Holbo
Wilkinson
Russell Arben Fox
Patrick Deneen (hey, look! Patrick started a blog. I hadn't known.)
Lots of good stuff therein.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
French higher education
I posted before about the new Paris School for Economics and the changes that it might bode for French higher education.
Without any explicit connection drawn to that institution, some new developments, from the Chronicle.
Of course, not everyone's on board.
I posted before about the new Paris School for Economics and the changes that it might bode for French higher education.
Without any explicit connection drawn to that institution, some new developments, from the Chronicle.
Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to overhaul France's flagging higher-education system is one step closer to reality, after his conservative Gaullist party swept to victory in the first round of National Assembly elections last weekend.
Presenting his plan as part of an ambitious package of economic reforms, the newly elected president of France has pledged to allow universities greater autonomy, giving them leeway to exercise more control over admissions and their budgets and to impose some tuition fees. He has said he will pump billions into higher education, increasing universities' operating budgets by 50 percent over the next five years, and has proposed the creation of a new independent agency to oversee research and higher-education institutions.
Most French universities are public and, like much of France's vast public sector, are subject to extensive bureaucratic oversight and strict labor protections. Overcrowded, underfinanced, and poorly equipped, even renowned universities like the Sorbonne have slid down international-rankings tables.
"It's a catastrophic system," the Sorbonne's president, Jean-Robert Pitte, said of the situation now. Universities like his are bloated with students who enroll simply for lack of alternatives, he said, and their ranks are winnowed only by failure and withdrawal. At the master's-degree level, Mr. Pitte said, his university compares favorably with international rivals, but the costs are debilitating. "The problem is that French universities lack the means to compete and are functioning in a two-tier system," he said, referring to the gulf between the elite grandes écoles, which have long been the training ground for France's political and business leaders, and the universities.
Of course, not everyone's on board.
Students, however, have vociferously opposed many of Mr. Sarkozy's ideas, arguing that they run counter to France's egalitarian ethos.
The main national student union complains that students have been excluded from the political discussion of higher education and that the government is barreling ahead too quickly with its agenda.
"The objective of the reforms must be to permit university access to the largest number of students and to guarantee everyone success", the union said in a statement. [Italics mine-- JTL]
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Old fogie watch
A couple of weeks ago, Paul Devlin wrote an elegy for the tie clip at Slate. It made me a little sad, but I knew he was right; the tie clip is disappearing. It's seen as a too-dressy affectation, even though it serves a useful purpose.
But now Matt Yglesias informs us that "these days few young people wear watches because we're all used to checking the time on our cell phones," a fact that "most older people don't realize." I certainly didn't. A commentator on the thread that follows points to this Daniel Gross article (also at Slate) that confirms the trend with sales numbers.
As I say in comments there: I don't get it. I thought the wave of the future was for my Treo to shrink down and get incorporated into my watch, so I could continue to tell the time with a quick glance but could also do so with my e-mail and calendar.
Instead, it seems like the wave of the future is to return to the pocketwatch-- a bigger, harder-to-get-at, uglier pocketwatch. Do you people really unclip your phone from your belt or reach into a pocket every time you want to check the time? Why isn't that less convenient than just wearing a watch?
In both cases I think there's something aesthetic lost, but I know that over time what was aesthetically pleased and dressy changes, often in the direction of the more-practical. But in both cases the change seems to me less practical than the status quo ante.
A couple of weeks ago, Paul Devlin wrote an elegy for the tie clip at Slate. It made me a little sad, but I knew he was right; the tie clip is disappearing. It's seen as a too-dressy affectation, even though it serves a useful purpose.
But now Matt Yglesias informs us that "these days few young people wear watches because we're all used to checking the time on our cell phones," a fact that "most older people don't realize." I certainly didn't. A commentator on the thread that follows points to this Daniel Gross article (also at Slate) that confirms the trend with sales numbers.
As I say in comments there: I don't get it. I thought the wave of the future was for my Treo to shrink down and get incorporated into my watch, so I could continue to tell the time with a quick glance but could also do so with my e-mail and calendar.
Instead, it seems like the wave of the future is to return to the pocketwatch-- a bigger, harder-to-get-at, uglier pocketwatch. Do you people really unclip your phone from your belt or reach into a pocket every time you want to check the time? Why isn't that less convenient than just wearing a watch?
In both cases I think there's something aesthetic lost, but I know that over time what was aesthetically pleased and dressy changes, often in the direction of the more-practical. But in both cases the change seems to me less practical than the status quo ante.
A great teaching story
...from Princeton. Those are some lucky students; wish I could take the class...
...from Princeton. Those are some lucky students; wish I could take the class...
Monday, June 11, 2007
A request for help
Blogger insists on automatically generating my permalinks incorrectly. The URL for my post on Rorty is
http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/2007_06_03_archive.html#2695670152246089618
but when you click on the permalink "5:57", what comes up is
http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/2007_06_03_archive.html#2695670152246089618#2695670152246089618
(that is, the material after .html that specifies where on the archive page to go is duplicated)
and as a result, people are always directed to the top of a page filled with whitespace. Does anyone know how to fix this, short of abandoning blogger for a grown-up provider?
Blogger insists on automatically generating my permalinks incorrectly. The URL for my post on Rorty is
http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/2007_06_03_archive.html#2695670152246089618
but when you click on the permalink "5:57", what comes up is
http://jacobtlevy.blogspot.com/2007_06_03_archive.html#2695670152246089618#2695670152246089618
(that is, the material after .html that specifies where on the archive page to go is duplicated)
and as a result, people are always directed to the top of a page filled with whitespace. Does anyone know how to fix this, short of abandoning blogger for a grown-up provider?
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Rorty Remembrances
Via Kieran, Richard Rorty has died.
I saw Rorty in action, I believe, four times, three in debate-ish settings. He was an extraordinary speaker, so I count myself lucky.
He and Michael Sandel formed a two-man APSA panel just as Democracy's Discontent was coming out, and Rorty was a dazzling commentator-- appreciative of the book and more generous to it than many commentators, but also jabbing at it with an incredibly effective rapier. I remember having the sense that Sandel was standing still, very earnestly, and Rorty was dancing around him, amusing himself to no end.
But that was nothing compared with the Rorty-Habermas debate at... Loyola University of Chicago, I think (might have been DePaul, but I think it was Loyola) some ten years later. It's famously true that the great theorist of communicative action is not the most effective communicator in person, particularly but not only in his nonnative English. He's a brilliant writer but simply not an effective public speaker. They were debating the obvious stuff: is there truth, including moral truth; can we know anything by reason; is Kantian enlightenment the way forward or an intellectual dead end. The official topic was in there somewhere, but it was basically just Rorty and Habermas doing their respective things about moral truth, moral knowledge, and the history of philosophy. In a packed, overheated room, Habermas' under-his-breath speaking style filtered through his accent and speech impediment added up to an absolutey soporific effect. There was probably no full sentence that I caught entirely, and there were whole paragraphs that I missed entirely. Yet I understood enough to know that he was making hard, important arguments that I found persuasive. Rorty, on the other hand, was a performer par excellence. Even at that stage when he was turning away from post-modernism I found the argument pointlessly nihilistic; but he was just dazzling to watch. Habermas made me wish I'd just sat home and read one of his essays. Rorty did anything but.
The third quasi-debate setting was the only one in which he met his match. It wasn't even really a debate. It was Rorty's Dewey Lecture at the University of Chicago Law School. The Dewey Lecture is an annual event there, but the pragmatist Dewey is a particularly important figure for the pragmatist Rorty. And Chicago Law is home to another famous pragmatist of a different sort, Richard Posner. So Rorty's Dewey Lecture on "Dewey and Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress" was something pretty special. But if anyone in the world is not nonplussed by argumentative fancy footwork, it's Richard Posner, and Posner's very calm shrug of a question seemed to me to stop Rorty in his tracks.
The one time that I saw Rorty speak that I don't think of as having been a debate was a lecture at Chicago, giving the core of his "no Plato, no Kant, no Truth, and that's OK" position as it existed by then, and discussing its relationship to literature. If the basic position about moral knowledge still seemed to me entirely unsatisfying, I must say that I found the discussion of moral knoweldge and literature fascinating, deep, and even moving. It reminded me of what I had found best in Rorty's writings; he as capable of great insights beyond the headline projects of demolition.
I know he's often compared with Stanley Fish, but I have the sense that that's unfair to both of them, treating their 'there's no such thing as' positions and their wittiness as constitutive of their intellectual lives. In my view he was a one-of-a-kind figure, and he'll be missed.
See also John Holbo:
Yep, that's right. (John's usually right.) When I saw Rorty perform he definitely offered the latter sort of answers. The Dewey Lecture linked to above was filled with that kind of Q&A, as I recall.
Via Kieran, Richard Rorty has died.
I saw Rorty in action, I believe, four times, three in debate-ish settings. He was an extraordinary speaker, so I count myself lucky.
He and Michael Sandel formed a two-man APSA panel just as Democracy's Discontent was coming out, and Rorty was a dazzling commentator-- appreciative of the book and more generous to it than many commentators, but also jabbing at it with an incredibly effective rapier. I remember having the sense that Sandel was standing still, very earnestly, and Rorty was dancing around him, amusing himself to no end.
But that was nothing compared with the Rorty-Habermas debate at... Loyola University of Chicago, I think (might have been DePaul, but I think it was Loyola) some ten years later. It's famously true that the great theorist of communicative action is not the most effective communicator in person, particularly but not only in his nonnative English. He's a brilliant writer but simply not an effective public speaker. They were debating the obvious stuff: is there truth, including moral truth; can we know anything by reason; is Kantian enlightenment the way forward or an intellectual dead end. The official topic was in there somewhere, but it was basically just Rorty and Habermas doing their respective things about moral truth, moral knowledge, and the history of philosophy. In a packed, overheated room, Habermas' under-his-breath speaking style filtered through his accent and speech impediment added up to an absolutey soporific effect. There was probably no full sentence that I caught entirely, and there were whole paragraphs that I missed entirely. Yet I understood enough to know that he was making hard, important arguments that I found persuasive. Rorty, on the other hand, was a performer par excellence. Even at that stage when he was turning away from post-modernism I found the argument pointlessly nihilistic; but he was just dazzling to watch. Habermas made me wish I'd just sat home and read one of his essays. Rorty did anything but.
The third quasi-debate setting was the only one in which he met his match. It wasn't even really a debate. It was Rorty's Dewey Lecture at the University of Chicago Law School. The Dewey Lecture is an annual event there, but the pragmatist Dewey is a particularly important figure for the pragmatist Rorty. And Chicago Law is home to another famous pragmatist of a different sort, Richard Posner. So Rorty's Dewey Lecture on "Dewey and Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress" was something pretty special. But if anyone in the world is not nonplussed by argumentative fancy footwork, it's Richard Posner, and Posner's very calm shrug of a question seemed to me to stop Rorty in his tracks.
The one time that I saw Rorty speak that I don't think of as having been a debate was a lecture at Chicago, giving the core of his "no Plato, no Kant, no Truth, and that's OK" position as it existed by then, and discussing its relationship to literature. If the basic position about moral knowledge still seemed to me entirely unsatisfying, I must say that I found the discussion of moral knoweldge and literature fascinating, deep, and even moving. It reminded me of what I had found best in Rorty's writings; he as capable of great insights beyond the headline projects of demolition.
I know he's often compared with Stanley Fish, but I have the sense that that's unfair to both of them, treating their 'there's no such thing as' positions and their wittiness as constitutive of their intellectual lives. In my view he was a one-of-a-kind figure, and he'll be missed.
See also John Holbo:
I got to meet the Great Man once. He came through Singapore in 2003 (I think it was). He gave a talk that was stock Rorty stuff - novels better than philosophy - but then was quite lively and responsive, i.e. saying things I hadn’t heard him say before, in the Q&A. And great fun at lunch.
In my experience, there are two ways Great Men respond to strong critics, in Q & A. 1) By not listening. 2) By being willing to concede ‘yes, of course, your fundamental critique of my position seems to have considerable force’. Then, five minutes later, they are back to saying whatever it was they were saying before. Rorty was definitely the latter sort - which is, I think, better than the former sort.
Yep, that's right. (John's usually right.) When I saw Rorty perform he definitely offered the latter sort of answers. The Dewey Lecture linked to above was filled with that kind of Q&A, as I recall.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Ha!
This is a good one; I hadn't seen it before. Via Heidi Harley at Language Log:
This is a good one; I hadn't seen it before. Via Heidi Harley at Language Log:
Reader Émilie Pelletier writes in to say,
Your post on Language Log today reminds me of something I read in Morvan Lebesque's Comment peut-on être Breton? I don't remember the exact words, but he was mentioning the big support France was giving, in the 1970's, to French-speaking Quebecers so that they could speak their own language. When Bretons said to the French government that their own situation was very much like that of Quebecers, the French authorities' alleged response was: "But noone is preventing you from speaking French!"
Friday, June 01, 2007
Harvard Political Theory Conference for Grad Students
CALL FOR PAPERS
Harvard University
Graduate Student Conference in Political Theory
November 30--December 1, 2007
The Department of Government (FAS) at Harvard University will host a conference for graduate students in political theory and political philosophy from November 30-December 1, 2007. Papers on any theme or topic within political theory--from the history of political thought to contemporary normative and conceptual theory--will be considered. Roughly seven papers will be accepted.
Each presentation should last no longer than 45 minutes, so please limit your paper submission to 20 double-spaced pages. Please format it for blind review: the text should include your title but also be free of personal and institutional information; and a separate cover page should include your title, a brief abstract (100 words max.), and your name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation.
The keynote address will be given by Professor Joshua Cohen (Stanford); a Harvard faculty member will deliver opening remarks; and discussion panels comprised of Harvard faculty and graduate students will accompany each accepted paper. Time permitting, each presenter will have a chance to answer questions during a general discussion period after each panel discussion.
Food and housing will be provided by the Government Department and its graduate students. Unfortunately, Harvard will not be able to provide funds for transportation.
Submissions are due via e-mail (in PDF) on August 31, 2007. Acceptance notices will be sent on September 30, 2007. Papers will be refereed by juries composed of current graduate students in the Government Department at Harvard.
Questions, comments, and submissions] should be sent to:
.
For more information, please visit the conference Web site at:
http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~tontipl/theorycon07.html.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Harvard University
Graduate Student Conference in Political Theory
November 30--December 1, 2007
The Department of Government (FAS) at Harvard University will host a conference for graduate students in political theory and political philosophy from November 30-December 1, 2007. Papers on any theme or topic within political theory--from the history of political thought to contemporary normative and conceptual theory--will be considered. Roughly seven papers will be accepted.
Each presentation should last no longer than 45 minutes, so please limit your paper submission to 20 double-spaced pages. Please format it for blind review: the text should include your title but also be free of personal and institutional information; and a separate cover page should include your title, a brief abstract (100 words max.), and your name, e-mail address, and institutional affiliation.
The keynote address will be given by Professor Joshua Cohen (Stanford); a Harvard faculty member will deliver opening remarks; and discussion panels comprised of Harvard faculty and graduate students will accompany each accepted paper. Time permitting, each presenter will have a chance to answer questions during a general discussion period after each panel discussion.
Food and housing will be provided by the Government Department and its graduate students. Unfortunately, Harvard will not be able to provide funds for transportation.
Submissions are due via e-mail (in PDF) on August 31, 2007. Acceptance notices will be sent on September 30, 2007. Papers will be refereed by juries composed of current graduate students in the Government Department at Harvard.
Questions, comments, and submissions] should be sent to:
For more information, please visit the conference Web site at:
http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~tontipl/theorycon07.html.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
As of today...
The Red Sox have their greatest division lead they've ever had at this point in the season; and they're 13.5 games ahead of the last-place Yankees.
The loonie is at its highest value in thirty years.
Something's gonna go south any second now. I rather hope that I'm wrong about what it will be.
Update: Well, the budget passed, tax cuts intact; the government didn't fall, so there'll be no new election and no immediate risk of a Pequiste victory; and the loonie is even higher.
We're doomed! The other shoe is sure to drop at some point...
The Red Sox have their greatest division lead they've ever had at this point in the season; and they're 13.5 games ahead of the last-place Yankees.
The loonie is at its highest value in thirty years.
Something's gonna go south any second now. I rather hope that I'm wrong about what it will be.
Update: Well, the budget passed, tax cuts intact; the government didn't fall, so there'll be no new election and no immediate risk of a Pequiste victory; and the loonie is even higher.
We're doomed! The other shoe is sure to drop at some point...
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Good health news
Four cups of coffee a day associated with a 40% reduction in the incidence of gout; six cups associated with a 60% reduction. Hat tip: Gary Farber.
Previous items in this series:
"More and more studies have linked coffee consumption to a number of health benefits, including a reduced risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, gallstones, colon cancer and potentially heart disease."
"Researchers have found strong evidence that coffee reduces the risk of several serious ailments, including diabetes, heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver."
It seems increasingly likely that I'll live for centuries. But that probably depends on my not eating too much of the national food of my new home province, newly discovered by the New York Times.
Four cups of coffee a day associated with a 40% reduction in the incidence of gout; six cups associated with a 60% reduction. Hat tip: Gary Farber.
Previous items in this series:
"More and more studies have linked coffee consumption to a number of health benefits, including a reduced risk of diabetes, Parkinson's disease, gallstones, colon cancer and potentially heart disease."
"Researchers have found strong evidence that coffee reduces the risk of several serious ailments, including diabetes, heart disease and cirrhosis of the liver."
It seems increasingly likely that I'll live for centuries. But that probably depends on my not eating too much of the national food of my new home province, newly discovered by the New York Times.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
When I was thirty-five...
it happens to have been a very good year. Between last May and this May, lots of good news for deserving people. A selection:
Current and former graduate student division:
Yasmin Dawood defended her dissertation on "Judicializing Democracy: Power, Politics, and Constitutional Design," and was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics.
Leigh Jenco defended her dissertation on "Individuals, Institutions, and Political Change: The Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao," and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Political Theory Project at Brown University.
Emily Nacol was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Political Theory Project at Brown University.
Jennifer Rubenstein was appointed as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Virginia. Her article Distribution and Emergency was published in the Journal of Political Philosophy.
Galit Sarfaty was a Fellow of the Safran Center for Ethics at Harvard and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
As was already noted, at APSA best dissertation awards were given to Joon-Suk Kim and Deborah Boucoyannis.
One more to come here soon, I hope-- not finalized yet but in the works since before my birthday, so it'll count! [Update: It's official now. Victor Muniz-Fraticelli has been appointed Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science at McGill University.]
Former advisor division: Chandran Kukathas was appointed to a Chair in Political Theory at the London School of Economics.
Family member division:
As was formally announced today, Shelley Clark was made Canada Research Chair in Youth, Gender and Global Health at McGill University.
Mazel tov all around!
it happens to have been a very good year. Between last May and this May, lots of good news for deserving people. A selection:
Current and former graduate student division:
Yasmin Dawood defended her dissertation on "Judicializing Democracy: Power, Politics, and Constitutional Design," and was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto Centre for Ethics.
Leigh Jenco defended her dissertation on "Individuals, Institutions, and Political Change: The Political Theory of Zhang Shizhao," and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Political Theory Project at Brown University.
Emily Nacol was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Political Theory Project at Brown University.
Jennifer Rubenstein was appointed as Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Virginia. Her article Distribution and Emergency was published in the Journal of Political Philosophy.
Galit Sarfaty was a Fellow of the Safran Center for Ethics at Harvard and the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School.
As was already noted, at APSA best dissertation awards were given to Joon-Suk Kim and Deborah Boucoyannis.
One more to come here soon, I hope-- not finalized yet but in the works since before my birthday, so it'll count! [Update: It's official now. Victor Muniz-Fraticelli has been appointed Assistant Professor of Law and Political Science at McGill University.]
Former advisor division: Chandran Kukathas was appointed to a Chair in Political Theory at the London School of Economics.
Family member division:
As was formally announced today, Shelley Clark was made Canada Research Chair in Youth, Gender and Global Health at McGill University.
Mazel tov all around!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Piled Higher and Deeper...
has been on a roll lately.
The geography of grad school
Chinese food in grad school
Business cards in grad school
The moment of triumph of completing grad school
The inevitable conversation with a loving family member
And grad school summarized.
Once again, I'll pair PHD links with links to Professor Rojas' newest posts onrules for grad student life:
choosing the rest of your committee; money, and choosing your topic.
Enough blogging; back into the depressing depths of US Code Title 25.
has been on a roll lately.
The geography of grad school
Chinese food in grad school
Business cards in grad school
The moment of triumph of completing grad school
The inevitable conversation with a loving family member
And grad school summarized.
Once again, I'll pair PHD links with links to Professor Rojas' newest posts onrules for grad student life:
choosing the rest of your committee; money, and choosing your topic.
Enough blogging; back into the depressing depths of US Code Title 25.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Huh?
Democrats Seek No-Confidence Vote on Gonzales
A vote of no confidence has a technical meaning in parliamentary systems; it seems strange to me to borrow that term for a nonbinding "we're not happy with you" Sense of the Senate resolution. It makes perfectly good literal sense-- I don't have any confidence in Gonzales either-- but comes across as an attempt to borrow very serious language from other constitutional systems for an action that's meaningless in the U.S.
Has this ever been done before? Has either house of Congress ever passed something it called a "no-confidence" resolution?
Update: Asked and answered. Thanks to Professor Markell for the pointer.
Democrats Seek No-Confidence Vote on Gonzales
A vote of no confidence has a technical meaning in parliamentary systems; it seems strange to me to borrow that term for a nonbinding "we're not happy with you" Sense of the Senate resolution. It makes perfectly good literal sense-- I don't have any confidence in Gonzales either-- but comes across as an attempt to borrow very serious language from other constitutional systems for an action that's meaningless in the U.S.
Has this ever been done before? Has either house of Congress ever passed something it called a "no-confidence" resolution?
Update: Asked and answered. Thanks to Professor Markell for the pointer.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Recommended reading
1. Omar at orgtheory on "the germanic and french political culture traditions and the titles of classic social theory books."
2. Tyler Cowen on the late Alfred Chandler, and links and obituaries from there. Chandler's Visible Hand was, when I first read it as a junior in college, probably the most challenging and engaging work of social science I'd ever read; it did a great deal to convince me about the complexity of the empirical social world, and the dangers of trying to force that reality into analytical and conceptual categories derived from normative theory.
3. Back at orgtheory, Fabio on your dissertation family.
Mine, I think: Jacob Levy -> Amy Gutmann -> Judith Shklar -> Carl Friedrich [the founder of the ASPLP, as it happens] -> Alfred Weber. (I can't actually tell from wikipedia whetherwas Friedrich's undergraduate or graduate advisor, but in the absence of any further knowledge I'll put him on the tree.)
Michael Walzer was also on Gutmann's commitee (and might have been chair, I'm not certain); I think Walzer studied under Sam Beer.
If we extend through the rest of my dissertation committee, through Jeremy Waldron I reach Ronald Dworkin and Joseph Raz, and thence Lon Fuller and H.L.A. Hart; through George Kateb, Herbert Deane.
1. Omar at orgtheory on "the germanic and french political culture traditions and the titles of classic social theory books."
while joking around with a friend in grad school we noticed that a lot of German classical social theory work were always about something and something else (i.e. Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft), while the titles of a lot of the classic (Durkheimian) works were only about a single unitary process (i.e. Suicide). In retrospect, I now see that Jepperson’s typology provides the crude basis for a “reflection theory” sociology of knowledge account (as in that classic work in the French tradition Primitive Classification) as to this anecdotal observation: in the Germanic tradition, the cosmological order is conceptualized as a “clash” between two highly culturally elaborated and distinct structural orders (state and society); in the French tradition only a “single” collective order exists. This follows if we believe that totemic classifications are simply reflections of society, and if in science concepts are just totemic classifications.
Thus, the Chomskyian “deep structure” for the title of a work in the Germanic tradition will be:
Concept 1 and Concept 2
The corresponding French deep structure is simply:
Big single concept
2. Tyler Cowen on the late Alfred Chandler, and links and obituaries from there. Chandler's Visible Hand was, when I first read it as a junior in college, probably the most challenging and engaging work of social science I'd ever read; it did a great deal to convince me about the complexity of the empirical social world, and the dangers of trying to force that reality into analytical and conceptual categories derived from normative theory.
3. Back at orgtheory, Fabio on your dissertation family.
Mine, I think: Jacob Levy -> Amy Gutmann -> Judith Shklar -> Carl Friedrich [the founder of the ASPLP, as it happens] -> Alfred Weber. (I can't actually tell from wikipedia whetherwas Friedrich's undergraduate or graduate advisor, but in the absence of any further knowledge I'll put him on the tree.)
Michael Walzer was also on Gutmann's commitee (and might have been chair, I'm not certain); I think Walzer studied under Sam Beer.
If we extend through the rest of my dissertation committee, through Jeremy Waldron I reach Ronald Dworkin and Joseph Raz, and thence Lon Fuller and H.L.A. Hart; through George Kateb, Herbert Deane.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Discuss amongst yourselves
I submit that 1997-98 was the best year ever for genre/ geek TV.
Season 2 of Buffy, the traditional choice for best season of that show.
Season 5 of X-Files, the last great season of that show before it all went to hell.
Season 6 of Deep Space 9, which I think was the best single season of any Star Trek show, ever.
and Season 5 of Babylon 5, the denouement of one of the finest SF shows ever.
In the background, Hercules, Xena, Stargate SG-1 Voyager (ugh), and Highlander were on the air as well.
1996-97 had the same shows on the air except for Stargate, with strong seasons of X-Files, DS9, and B5, but only half a season of Buffy-- and Season 4 of Lois and Clark, which saddles the year with demerits.
If you just go by shows on the air, there's something special about 2000-1, when Buffy, Angel, Farscape, X-Files, and the good season of Dark Angel were all on the air, along with Voyager (ugh) and Xena in the background. But it was Season 8 of X-Files, which stank up the joint beyond redemption. The following year added Alias and Enterprise, but: Season 9 of X-Files, and Dark Angel went from good to... not good.
There are people who think that Battlestar Galactica is so much superior to any other SF show in history that we're currently living in the golden age. But BSG's time on the air has corresponded with, er, Smallville?
Update: Yes, I forgot about Veronica Mars and Lost, neither of which I've seen but both of which seem to count in favor of the BSG era.
No, I didn't forget about Charmed for any of the eras; I only tried to.
I submit that 1997-98 was the best year ever for genre/ geek TV.
Season 2 of Buffy, the traditional choice for best season of that show.
Season 5 of X-Files, the last great season of that show before it all went to hell.
Season 6 of Deep Space 9, which I think was the best single season of any Star Trek show, ever.
and Season 5 of Babylon 5, the denouement of one of the finest SF shows ever.
In the background, Hercules, Xena, Stargate SG-1 Voyager (ugh), and Highlander were on the air as well.
1996-97 had the same shows on the air except for Stargate, with strong seasons of X-Files, DS9, and B5, but only half a season of Buffy-- and Season 4 of Lois and Clark, which saddles the year with demerits.
If you just go by shows on the air, there's something special about 2000-1, when Buffy, Angel, Farscape, X-Files, and the good season of Dark Angel were all on the air, along with Voyager (ugh) and Xena in the background. But it was Season 8 of X-Files, which stank up the joint beyond redemption. The following year added Alias and Enterprise, but: Season 9 of X-Files, and Dark Angel went from good to... not good.
There are people who think that Battlestar Galactica is so much superior to any other SF show in history that we're currently living in the golden age. But BSG's time on the air has corresponded with, er, Smallville?
Update: Yes, I forgot about Veronica Mars and Lost, neither of which I've seen but both of which seem to count in favor of the BSG era.
No, I didn't forget about Charmed for any of the eras; I only tried to.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Quote of the day: "History is the tool of skeptics."
“History cannot be expected to solve the core analytical puzzles of political or economic theory. But it has its hour when the long-expected solutions of social and political science fail to materialize. History is the tool of skeptics. It helps us to ask better questions. More precisely, it can help us avoid repeating some questions again and again, running in circles unproductively."
Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 156.
“History cannot be expected to solve the core analytical puzzles of political or economic theory. But it has its hour when the long-expected solutions of social and political science fail to materialize. History is the tool of skeptics. It helps us to ask better questions. More precisely, it can help us avoid repeating some questions again and again, running in circles unproductively."
Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 156.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Tenure in law schools...
is a blogopheric topic du jour. See, e.g., Brian Tamanaha-- who, by the way, has become a very fine model of scholar-blogging as far as I'm concerned, not least because he's worked out ways to blog about his current areas of research in ways that make me want to read the research. Self-promotion can be a fine thing... which is related to the point I want to make.
Syllogism 1:
1) We must have academic freedom at universities.
2) Academic freedom can only be adequately protected by tenure.
3) Therefore, we must have tenure. QED.
"We must have tenure" then gets entered in as the major premise of lots of other institutional questions. I understand the worries about tenure and the tenure system (boy howdy!) but incline very strongly toward keeping it more or less intact; I'm basically signed up for syllogism 1.
Syllogism 2:
1) We must have tenure.
2) People who can't be fired, can't be motivated to perform their jobs by the threat of firing.
[skipping a few obvious steps:]
3) If tenured academics are to be motivated to do their jobs, it must be by means of future reward, not performance-based punishment.
The standard thing to think at this stage is: money. With suitably large and performance-based raises, most people could be motivated not to shirk, even if they couldn't be fired.
Now we have to segment the pool.
Law professors, business professors, many economists, some number of medical faculty, and various others have earning possibilities as part-time consultants or practitioners that dwarf those annual raises. So it will be tough to motivate them to do research or teaching with money; they have better monetary options to be had by shirking their university work and taking on additional side work.
Most other memebers of a university faculty are more-than-usually difficult to motivate financially... by force of selection. Someone who gave up 5-10 years of prime earning time in order to stay in school for the chance to later take a job that pays less than the job he or she might have gotten years before is someone who doesn't respond "how high?" when a dollar bill says "jump." For a smart kid coming out of a good undergraduate institution, going on to graduate school and then a professorial job in the liberal arts just can't have as high an expected financial value as other things the kid could do. That gap becomes more and more visible throughout grad school, as the kid's old college friends start buying houses for their families while he or she is splitting a student apartment with two roommates. On top of that, the friends have long hours and stressful jobs but don't seem to be getting their souls crushed like so many dissertation-writers do. Those who stick with the process all that time are very stubborn, and very resistant to financial and material rewards. (Comparatively speaking-- resistant, not immune.)
So, one way or the other, paychecks aren't likely to be very effective tools for eliciting desired behavior from professors. They'll do something-- but they won't do very much.
What then?
The answer is: amour propre. Pride. Ego. Or, to dress it up, the desire to have intellectual accomplishments and make academic contributions. Since universities want active researchers, not just competent teachers, the immediate rewards of student interaction won't be enough; universities need to tenure faculty who get gratification from successful research and publication itself.
In order to balance out the impossibility of firing and the partial uselessness of money, it seems to me that universities with tenure have to select for employees who are unusually suffused with amour propre-- people who will be highly motivated to be promoted from associate to full professor, who will be highly motivated by the possibility of a named chair, who want prizes and awards and to be though of as making or transforming fields of inquiry and the recognition and acclaim of their peers. (Law schools, as far as I can tell, have reduced the number of standard professorial ranks from three to two; people are promoted to full when they receive tenure. A step in the wrong direction, on this model.) We don't think of ourselves as acting for these reasons, of course. But the rules and structures are, I think, tacitly based on that model of our behavior.
Questions left to the reader:
1) Tenure procedures are, in part, designed to weed out those whose productivity is temporary and opportunistic, those who will be promoted to tenure and then coast and shirk for the rest of their lives. That means that they should be, in part, designed to select for amour propre, not just for observed productivity. How can one differentiate between the two on the basis of observed behavior in the first seven years?
2) What are the predicted social-psychological consequences of designing an unusually rigorous sorting mechanism for selecting among very smart people on the basis of their pridefulness; then locking those who pass the process into a metaphorical room together for 40 years? Given that esteem is to a substantial extent zero-sum; that those who seek it rarely think that they have as much as they are due; and that there's a limited amount of it to go around in one's external discipline; what happens when those people turn their status-seeking inward, toward the university or the department? Do the predictions you derived seem to successfully describe the observed group dynamics?
I'm being playful here, not bitter-- I am, after all, a fully signed-up participant in this process, and recognize myself in the model. But we often tell the amour propre story as if it successfully solves the tenure-and-incentives problem without creating any new ones. "The kind of person who takes pride in intellectual accomplishments isn't going to cease to do so." True enough, and that really is why we see so little shirking.
But solving the shirking problem doesn't solve all problems. The solution requires both selecting for that pride at tenure time, and then living with the consequences of small groups of exceptionally prideful people being locked into lifelong status competitions (and being expected to engage in acts of collegial self-governance all the while.) We end up nuts enough to generate a whole genre of literature devoted to the idiosynacrasies of too many large egos in small rooms-- and even a funny subgenre about the murders that result. Our well-documented group psychopathologies are closely related to the characteristics that are needed for our tenure model of employment to be justifiable...
is a blogopheric topic du jour. See, e.g., Brian Tamanaha-- who, by the way, has become a very fine model of scholar-blogging as far as I'm concerned, not least because he's worked out ways to blog about his current areas of research in ways that make me want to read the research. Self-promotion can be a fine thing... which is related to the point I want to make.
Syllogism 1:
1) We must have academic freedom at universities.
2) Academic freedom can only be adequately protected by tenure.
3) Therefore, we must have tenure. QED.
"We must have tenure" then gets entered in as the major premise of lots of other institutional questions. I understand the worries about tenure and the tenure system (boy howdy!) but incline very strongly toward keeping it more or less intact; I'm basically signed up for syllogism 1.
Syllogism 2:
1) We must have tenure.
2) People who can't be fired, can't be motivated to perform their jobs by the threat of firing.
[skipping a few obvious steps:]
3) If tenured academics are to be motivated to do their jobs, it must be by means of future reward, not performance-based punishment.
The standard thing to think at this stage is: money. With suitably large and performance-based raises, most people could be motivated not to shirk, even if they couldn't be fired.
Now we have to segment the pool.
Law professors, business professors, many economists, some number of medical faculty, and various others have earning possibilities as part-time consultants or practitioners that dwarf those annual raises. So it will be tough to motivate them to do research or teaching with money; they have better monetary options to be had by shirking their university work and taking on additional side work.
Most other memebers of a university faculty are more-than-usually difficult to motivate financially... by force of selection. Someone who gave up 5-10 years of prime earning time in order to stay in school for the chance to later take a job that pays less than the job he or she might have gotten years before is someone who doesn't respond "how high?" when a dollar bill says "jump." For a smart kid coming out of a good undergraduate institution, going on to graduate school and then a professorial job in the liberal arts just can't have as high an expected financial value as other things the kid could do. That gap becomes more and more visible throughout grad school, as the kid's old college friends start buying houses for their families while he or she is splitting a student apartment with two roommates. On top of that, the friends have long hours and stressful jobs but don't seem to be getting their souls crushed like so many dissertation-writers do. Those who stick with the process all that time are very stubborn, and very resistant to financial and material rewards. (Comparatively speaking-- resistant, not immune.)
So, one way or the other, paychecks aren't likely to be very effective tools for eliciting desired behavior from professors. They'll do something-- but they won't do very much.
What then?
The answer is: amour propre. Pride. Ego. Or, to dress it up, the desire to have intellectual accomplishments and make academic contributions. Since universities want active researchers, not just competent teachers, the immediate rewards of student interaction won't be enough; universities need to tenure faculty who get gratification from successful research and publication itself.
In order to balance out the impossibility of firing and the partial uselessness of money, it seems to me that universities with tenure have to select for employees who are unusually suffused with amour propre-- people who will be highly motivated to be promoted from associate to full professor, who will be highly motivated by the possibility of a named chair, who want prizes and awards and to be though of as making or transforming fields of inquiry and the recognition and acclaim of their peers. (Law schools, as far as I can tell, have reduced the number of standard professorial ranks from three to two; people are promoted to full when they receive tenure. A step in the wrong direction, on this model.) We don't think of ourselves as acting for these reasons, of course. But the rules and structures are, I think, tacitly based on that model of our behavior.
Questions left to the reader:
1) Tenure procedures are, in part, designed to weed out those whose productivity is temporary and opportunistic, those who will be promoted to tenure and then coast and shirk for the rest of their lives. That means that they should be, in part, designed to select for amour propre, not just for observed productivity. How can one differentiate between the two on the basis of observed behavior in the first seven years?
2) What are the predicted social-psychological consequences of designing an unusually rigorous sorting mechanism for selecting among very smart people on the basis of their pridefulness; then locking those who pass the process into a metaphorical room together for 40 years? Given that esteem is to a substantial extent zero-sum; that those who seek it rarely think that they have as much as they are due; and that there's a limited amount of it to go around in one's external discipline; what happens when those people turn their status-seeking inward, toward the university or the department? Do the predictions you derived seem to successfully describe the observed group dynamics?
I'm being playful here, not bitter-- I am, after all, a fully signed-up participant in this process, and recognize myself in the model. But we often tell the amour propre story as if it successfully solves the tenure-and-incentives problem without creating any new ones. "The kind of person who takes pride in intellectual accomplishments isn't going to cease to do so." True enough, and that really is why we see so little shirking.
But solving the shirking problem doesn't solve all problems. The solution requires both selecting for that pride at tenure time, and then living with the consequences of small groups of exceptionally prideful people being locked into lifelong status competitions (and being expected to engage in acts of collegial self-governance all the while.) We end up nuts enough to generate a whole genre of literature devoted to the idiosynacrasies of too many large egos in small rooms-- and even a funny subgenre about the murders that result. Our well-documented group psychopathologies are closely related to the characteristics that are needed for our tenure model of employment to be justifiable...
Monday, April 30, 2007
Now in print
(and in my pile of newly-purchased books--)
Iris Marion Young, Global Challenges: War, Self Determination, And Responsibility for Justice.
This isn't the responsibility book Iris was working on; it's a collection of articles published since 2000, including most of her work from that time that was on themes other than feminism or democratic theory. But these pieces appeared in quite disaparate places despite their thematic connections, so I'm very glad to see them all tied together and accessible.
The first three chapters provide the steps she was taking toward a theory of federalism. It was a theory with which I didn't ultimately agree; but I'm hoping to write up a reconstruction and extrapolation of it, along with an engagement with it, at some point, as there are important points to be found in it. In the meantime, I'm glad people will have the chance to read them together.
(and in my pile of newly-purchased books--)
Iris Marion Young, Global Challenges: War, Self Determination, And Responsibility for Justice.
This isn't the responsibility book Iris was working on; it's a collection of articles published since 2000, including most of her work from that time that was on themes other than feminism or democratic theory. But these pieces appeared in quite disaparate places despite their thematic connections, so I'm very glad to see them all tied together and accessible.
The first three chapters provide the steps she was taking toward a theory of federalism. It was a theory with which I didn't ultimately agree; but I'm hoping to write up a reconstruction and extrapolation of it, along with an engagement with it, at some point, as there are important points to be found in it. In the meantime, I'm glad people will have the chance to read them together.
AAAS
Via Brian Leiter, this year's AAAS inductees. I looked at last year's list, well, last year, and discussed the state of political theory in the AAAS.
This year, no theorists in the poli sci list. (Akhil Amar is on the Law list and Robert Pippin, Philosophy.) So it remains true that Michael Walzer has not been inducted. It also remains true that Harvey Mansfield, Richard Flathman, Peter Euben, Michael Zuckert, William Connolly, and Philip Pettit have not been inducted-- all at least arguably serious omissions, with, as I said last year, the omission of Walzer rising to the level of "an embarrassment for the selection process," notwithstanding the highly meritorious group of theorists who have been inducted over the years.
Given how life usually works, I'm surprised to find how good (which is to say "accurate," not necessarily "numerous") the representation of women political theorists among AAAS inductees is. The living women who obviously should be on the list (Elshtain, Nussbaum, Gutmann, Rosenblum, Mansbridge, Pateman, Pitkin, Benhabib), are. I certainly don't see a Walzer-sized hole in the list among women in the field, though of course there may be someone I'm not thinking of.
But in short: no new news here.
Via Brian Leiter, this year's AAAS inductees. I looked at last year's list, well, last year, and discussed the state of political theory in the AAAS.
This year, no theorists in the poli sci list. (Akhil Amar is on the Law list and Robert Pippin, Philosophy.) So it remains true that Michael Walzer has not been inducted. It also remains true that Harvey Mansfield, Richard Flathman, Peter Euben, Michael Zuckert, William Connolly, and Philip Pettit have not been inducted-- all at least arguably serious omissions, with, as I said last year, the omission of Walzer rising to the level of "an embarrassment for the selection process," notwithstanding the highly meritorious group of theorists who have been inducted over the years.
Given how life usually works, I'm surprised to find how good (which is to say "accurate," not necessarily "numerous") the representation of women political theorists among AAAS inductees is. The living women who obviously should be on the list (Elshtain, Nussbaum, Gutmann, Rosenblum, Mansbridge, Pateman, Pitkin, Benhabib), are. I certainly don't see a Walzer-sized hole in the list among women in the field, though of course there may be someone I'm not thinking of.
But in short: no new news here.
A culture of scrutiny
Timothy Burke has an excellent and nuanced post up on what I've always thought of as the The Prisoner source of resistance to big institutions in general and thestate in particular. "I am not a number! I am a free man!" " I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered." Well, yes you will, in any modern society or polity or economy and in any functioning large bureaucratic institution, though there are more an less polite ways of doing all those things and ways that do more or less to convey the sense of being treated merely as a number. I don't think I'd like people who wholly lacked the Prisoner's reactions, but those reactions aren't especially meaningful rules for action.
The moonshine bootlegger, the Loompanics-reading crazy who keeps his life savings in gold under his bed, and the creator of e-mail encryption systems who can still get agitated at the words "Clipper Chip"-- these are libertarianish culture heroes of a very different flavor from John Galt. They're hard to describe in a register that gives them a coherent underlying theory which can be brought into dialogue with theories about why it would be useful for the state to do X. The National ID crad debate always seems to me to have this tone-- the reistance to such a card doesn't make a ton of sense, and there are various efficiencies that could be gained from having one. But I always sympathize with the opponents, and look askance at the reformist tinkerers who seem unable to hear what the opponents are saying.
(None of the above is quite what Burke's on about, and of course I don't mean to attribute my views to him; just some thoughts provoked by his post.)
Timothy Burke has an excellent and nuanced post up on what I've always thought of as the The Prisoner source of resistance to big institutions in general and thestate in particular. "I am not a number! I am a free man!" " I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered." Well, yes you will, in any modern society or polity or economy and in any functioning large bureaucratic institution, though there are more an less polite ways of doing all those things and ways that do more or less to convey the sense of being treated merely as a number. I don't think I'd like people who wholly lacked the Prisoner's reactions, but those reactions aren't especially meaningful rules for action.
The moonshine bootlegger, the Loompanics-reading crazy who keeps his life savings in gold under his bed, and the creator of e-mail encryption systems who can still get agitated at the words "Clipper Chip"-- these are libertarianish culture heroes of a very different flavor from John Galt. They're hard to describe in a register that gives them a coherent underlying theory which can be brought into dialogue with theories about why it would be useful for the state to do X. The National ID crad debate always seems to me to have this tone-- the reistance to such a card doesn't make a ton of sense, and there are various efficiencies that could be gained from having one. But I always sympathize with the opponents, and look askance at the reformist tinkerers who seem unable to hear what the opponents are saying.
(None of the above is quite what Burke's on about, and of course I don't mean to attribute my views to him; just some thoughts provoked by his post.)
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Quotes of the night
"And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change." Lucien
"I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a king who drowns his books and breaks his stuff and leaves his kingdom. About a magician who becomes a man. About a man who turns his back to magic. Because...I will never leave my island. I am.... in my fashion... an island. I am not a man. And I do not change." Dream
"And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change." Lucien
"I wanted a tale of graceful ends. I wanted a play about a king who drowns his books and breaks his stuff and leaves his kingdom. About a magician who becomes a man. About a man who turns his back to magic. Because...I will never leave my island. I am.... in my fashion... an island. I am not a man. And I do not change." Dream
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Math is hard.
New York Times online headline, as of 10:33 am:
"Sales of Previously Owned Homes Plunge to 1989 Level"
The actual underlying fact to which the headline-writer is referring:
"The National Association of Realtors said yesterday that sales of existing homes, which account for the vast majority of all home sales, fell 8.4 percent in March. That was the steepest monthly decline since January 1989." [emphasis added]
"Steepest monthly decline since 1989" and a decline "to 1989 levels" are concepts so unrelated that, even after years of quantitative howlers, I'm genuinely surprised at the mistake.
New York Times online headline, as of 10:33 am:
"Sales of Previously Owned Homes Plunge to 1989 Level"
The actual underlying fact to which the headline-writer is referring:
"The National Association of Realtors said yesterday that sales of existing homes, which account for the vast majority of all home sales, fell 8.4 percent in March. That was the steepest monthly decline since January 1989." [emphasis added]
"Steepest monthly decline since 1989" and a decline "to 1989 levels" are concepts so unrelated that, even after years of quantitative howlers, I'm genuinely surprised at the mistake.
Somebody's got to pick the ten-dollar bill up off the sidewalk
Via Brad DeLong, this five-year old piece from Justin Fox that contains the following:
It seems to me that this is true much more broadly than in financial markets. It's long since been recognized that entrepreneurship is, from the individual perspective, something like ahybrid between buying a lottery ticket and doing exceptionally generous charity work-- because few successful innovators are able to capture any large share of the social value of their innovation, so they bear the downside risk of the bankruptcy that is the fate of such a huge number of entrepreneurs without the full upside potential. The ones who seem to win the lottery by really generating a huge and important new idea rapidly see their profits for that idea whittled away by imitators. (Is this in Schumpeter? Or was this not fully put togther until Knight? I forget.) But we need the steady flow of cockeyed optimists to successfully identify potential innovations; and it's only the flow of them that suppresses the profits of each.
Opening a restaurant is the classic case-- the expected return of this behavior is large and negative, and if one day someone in your family comes home and announces a plan to do it, you should hold their head under running water until they sober up. The expected value of their income would be higher if they went and bagged groceries. But a) this is true because competition in the restaurant business is so intense, which is to say because there are so many other foolish people as well, and b) it's very good for the rest of us that there are these foolish people. Good for me, anyways; my restaurant-rich neighborhood always has places closing, but also always has new places opening...
Has anyone performed the standard behavioral economics experiments on defined subsets of persons such as entrepreneurs or day traders? Do the standard results (e.g. loss aversion) hold?
Via Brad DeLong, this five-year old piece from Justin Fox that contains the following:
The dirty little secret of the behavioralists is that, for all their work on investor irrationality and market anomalies, they still believe that markets work pretty well and that trying to outguess the collective wisdom of millions of investors is usually futile.... But efficient-markets theory has a dirty little secret, too, which is that for the market to remain efficient, there have to be lots of rational investors who believe enough in the market's inefficiency to spend their careers trying to beat it....
It seems to me that this is true much more broadly than in financial markets. It's long since been recognized that entrepreneurship is, from the individual perspective, something like ahybrid between buying a lottery ticket and doing exceptionally generous charity work-- because few successful innovators are able to capture any large share of the social value of their innovation, so they bear the downside risk of the bankruptcy that is the fate of such a huge number of entrepreneurs without the full upside potential. The ones who seem to win the lottery by really generating a huge and important new idea rapidly see their profits for that idea whittled away by imitators. (Is this in Schumpeter? Or was this not fully put togther until Knight? I forget.) But we need the steady flow of cockeyed optimists to successfully identify potential innovations; and it's only the flow of them that suppresses the profits of each.
Opening a restaurant is the classic case-- the expected return of this behavior is large and negative, and if one day someone in your family comes home and announces a plan to do it, you should hold their head under running water until they sober up. The expected value of their income would be higher if they went and bagged groceries. But a) this is true because competition in the restaurant business is so intense, which is to say because there are so many other foolish people as well, and b) it's very good for the rest of us that there are these foolish people. Good for me, anyways; my restaurant-rich neighborhood always has places closing, but also always has new places opening...
Has anyone performed the standard behavioral economics experiments on defined subsets of persons such as entrepreneurs or day traders? Do the standard results (e.g. loss aversion) hold?
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Infection
Via Hit & Run, a Wash Times review of Landsburg's More Sex is Safer Sex:
Via my household expert in the mathematics of STDs, I've learned the following: Inefctivity per sexual encounter matters tremendously. (I have no idea whether Landsburg notes this; the review doesn't.) HIV is much, much less infective than herpes. Herpes spreads incredibly quickly by heterosexual intercourse; HIV doesn't. On average it takes a lot more than a one-night-stand to heterosexually contract HIV. If 2.25 partners per year is really the right equilibrium figure for HIV, then the figure for herpes would be a lot less-- maybe two orders of magnitude less.
I'll try to lay hands on the book itself and follow up. But at the very least, no monogamous readers should read this and decide to go have a one-night stand on the theory that they're slowing the spread of herpes...
Via Hit & Run, a Wash Times review of Landsburg's More Sex is Safer Sex:
The "More Sex" thesis: If prudes occasionally slept with strangers, it would slow the spread of STDs.
Here's how it works. One such prude walks into a bar, and he's uninfected. If he takes home an uninfected woman, great -- he distracted her from a potential disease carrier. If he gets herpes, that's also great, because he's sexually conservative and won't pass the infection along very often. Better him than someone with less self control.
Either way, society benefits when the chaste open up slightly. "Slightly" is key, because too much "openness" spreads more disease than it diverts. After studying AIDS in England, Harvard's Michael Kremer put the cutoff at 2.25 partners per year.
Via my household expert in the mathematics of STDs, I've learned the following: Inefctivity per sexual encounter matters tremendously. (I have no idea whether Landsburg notes this; the review doesn't.) HIV is much, much less infective than herpes. Herpes spreads incredibly quickly by heterosexual intercourse; HIV doesn't. On average it takes a lot more than a one-night-stand to heterosexually contract HIV. If 2.25 partners per year is really the right equilibrium figure for HIV, then the figure for herpes would be a lot less-- maybe two orders of magnitude less.
I'll try to lay hands on the book itself and follow up. But at the very least, no monogamous readers should read this and decide to go have a one-night stand on the theory that they're slowing the spread of herpes...
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