Tom Brady's favorite opera? Deflator Mouse.
His favorite movie? Lords of Flatbush.
His wife's favorite shoes? Flats.
Where does he live? In a flat.
His favorite kind of weather? Low pressure.
What does he do after a game? Depressurizes.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Wealth: The False Premises
Complaints about "wealth inequality" are common and even popular, but are they based on facts? I think there are some false premises in current public discussion of wealth.
First false premise: The very wealthy take wealth away from others. This assumption goes uncontested in all the news outlets I've seen, yet it's completely false except in cases of theft or despotism. Take any very wealthy person (who is not one of the exceptions) and examine how they accumulated their wealth, and you'll see that they earned it, were very lucky, inherited a portion of it, or some combination of these. Wealth is not a finite quantity. If Bill Gates did not exist, for example, the wealth he created would simply not exist. He didn't take it away from anyone.
Second false premise: The wealth "gap." Wealth is a spectrum, with people at every income level from the lowest to the highest. There is no gap in the spectrum. Comparing two extreme or random points of any data spectrum is a relatively meaningless exercise. For example, the highest recorded temperature on earth is about 70 degrees F higher than the annual average temperature in Duluth, Iowa. So what? What matters is the spectrum and its shape.
Third false premise: Use of the phrase "wealth inequality." Attempts at wealth "equality" have always been associated with despotism and oppression. There has never been any such thing as "wealth equality," nor is it achievable where anything that can be called "wealth" exists because individuals' capabilities, opportunities, and desires are unequal. The phrase is, in the real world, meaningless.
First false premise: The very wealthy take wealth away from others. This assumption goes uncontested in all the news outlets I've seen, yet it's completely false except in cases of theft or despotism. Take any very wealthy person (who is not one of the exceptions) and examine how they accumulated their wealth, and you'll see that they earned it, were very lucky, inherited a portion of it, or some combination of these. Wealth is not a finite quantity. If Bill Gates did not exist, for example, the wealth he created would simply not exist. He didn't take it away from anyone.
Second false premise: The wealth "gap." Wealth is a spectrum, with people at every income level from the lowest to the highest. There is no gap in the spectrum. Comparing two extreme or random points of any data spectrum is a relatively meaningless exercise. For example, the highest recorded temperature on earth is about 70 degrees F higher than the annual average temperature in Duluth, Iowa. So what? What matters is the spectrum and its shape.
Third false premise: Use of the phrase "wealth inequality." Attempts at wealth "equality" have always been associated with despotism and oppression. There has never been any such thing as "wealth equality," nor is it achievable where anything that can be called "wealth" exists because individuals' capabilities, opportunities, and desires are unequal. The phrase is, in the real world, meaningless.
Thursday, January 8, 2015
Ignorance and Experience
There are fundamental problems regarding important discussions about climate, energy, federal fiscal policy, foreign policy, terrorism, and many other subjects, that I think few recognize but we all need to understand to be more effective and responsible participants in the discussions. I'll try to explain my take on them.
The first is, "the ignorant cannot know what they do not know." A correlary might be, "knowledge reveals boundaries," or "only those who have studied a topic extensively know how much they don't know." This is a problem because the ignorant talk and think and form opinions without realizing how wrong they might be. We see this every day in public discourse from Facebook posts to blogs to opinion pieces to talk radio shows to politicians' speeches.
The second is that our personal experiences often override other facts in our minds. There are many examples including politics, economics, and social issues, but good ones to quantify are natural Earth systems (climate, river floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions). One human lifetime is too short relative to natural cycles to give a meaningful sampling. If we have a hot or wet or cold or dry decade, many conclude that the climate is changing. If several big earthquakes occur close together, many conclude that we're having more earthquakes. If big floods occur in a short period of time, many conclude that floods are increasing. The fact is that all of these things happen in much more complex cycles and patterns (often random) than any of us will experience in our lifetimes. None of us has lived in an ice age, for example, and yet our ancestors did. Our perceptions, then, are only of a small part of the whole story, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
How can we personally deal with these issues? First, to carefully evaluate how much you really know about a subject before forming a solid opinion, ask useful questions like these: How many hours have you spent studying it? (It takes thousands of hours to become an expert). What were your sources of information, experts or opinion-makers? (Stick with experts). Can I put this information into the bigger context of the total possibilities? (If not, you probably don't understand it well).
This is not to say that we cannot form valid opinions without becoming experts. We can, but it is vital to recognize the limits of our understanding and the bias that our personal experience puts into our minds. That just may change our conclusions.
Summary 1) Recognize the limits of your knowledge. 2) Study. 3) Get information from subject-matter experts only. 4) Recognize the bias of personal experience.
The first is, "the ignorant cannot know what they do not know." A correlary might be, "knowledge reveals boundaries," or "only those who have studied a topic extensively know how much they don't know." This is a problem because the ignorant talk and think and form opinions without realizing how wrong they might be. We see this every day in public discourse from Facebook posts to blogs to opinion pieces to talk radio shows to politicians' speeches.
The second is that our personal experiences often override other facts in our minds. There are many examples including politics, economics, and social issues, but good ones to quantify are natural Earth systems (climate, river floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions). One human lifetime is too short relative to natural cycles to give a meaningful sampling. If we have a hot or wet or cold or dry decade, many conclude that the climate is changing. If several big earthquakes occur close together, many conclude that we're having more earthquakes. If big floods occur in a short period of time, many conclude that floods are increasing. The fact is that all of these things happen in much more complex cycles and patterns (often random) than any of us will experience in our lifetimes. None of us has lived in an ice age, for example, and yet our ancestors did. Our perceptions, then, are only of a small part of the whole story, like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
How can we personally deal with these issues? First, to carefully evaluate how much you really know about a subject before forming a solid opinion, ask useful questions like these: How many hours have you spent studying it? (It takes thousands of hours to become an expert). What were your sources of information, experts or opinion-makers? (Stick with experts). Can I put this information into the bigger context of the total possibilities? (If not, you probably don't understand it well).
This is not to say that we cannot form valid opinions without becoming experts. We can, but it is vital to recognize the limits of our understanding and the bias that our personal experience puts into our minds. That just may change our conclusions.
Summary 1) Recognize the limits of your knowledge. 2) Study. 3) Get information from subject-matter experts only. 4) Recognize the bias of personal experience.
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