Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 11

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club Replies, Part 4

Here are my reactions to your latest round of comments.

KevinDC:

The more I’ve discussed moral philosophy with people, the more I suspect lots of people are just intuitionists in denial. Scott Alexander, who calls himself a utilitarian, was admirably upfront about this when he wrote:

It seems to boil down to something like this: I am only willing to accept utilitarianism when it matches my moral intuitions, or when I can hack it to conform to my moral intuitions. It usually does a good job of ...

Libertarian Social Desirability Bias

I often rail against Social Desirability Bias, our all-too-human tendency to lie when the truth sounds bad.  Critics occasionally treat my railing as thinly-veiled ideology: I dismiss non-libertarian rhetoric as “mere Social Desirability Bias,” while treating libertarian rhetoric as objective truth.

To clear the air, then, let me bluntly state that most libertarian rhetoric is also drenched in Social Desirability Bias.  Consider a few standard examples:

1. “The effect of government regulation ca...

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club, Part 4

Part 4 (“Ethics”) of Knowledge, Reality, and Value contains four chapters that seem extremely reasonable to me, and one that continues to strike me as deeply wrong.  As a result, I’m going to split the discussion into two parts.  This week: the extremely reasonable Chapters 13-16.  Next week: The deeply wrong Chapter 17.

As usual, I will focus almost entirely on my disagreements with Huemer’s careful, enlightening, and inspiring book.

Chapter 13: Metaethics

When defending moral realism, Huemer ...

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club Replies, Part 3

Here are my replies to your comments on Part 3 of the Huemer Book Club.

KevinDC:

[I]n the reading I’ve done on the free will debate, I’ve never heard anyone argue that the predictability of behavior is evidence against free will. (Possibly due to the fact that most of the arguments I’ve read have come from philosophers and neuroscientists rather than social scientists?) I usually hear a nearly opposite sentiment – even those who argue strongly against free will also argue that this does not imp...

“Follow the Science” Might Not Mean What You Think It Means

Here’s a guest post by ASU’s Richard Hahn, reprinted with his permission.  I suspect he’d be happy to respond to comments!

The problem with punchy slogans is that they are subject to (mis)interpretation. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has become common for folks to urge policy-makers to “follow the science”. But what exactly does this mean? There is a version of this slogan that I strongly support, but I worry that many of the people invoking it mean something different, and that this...

NPR Panel on Capitalism

I was just on an NPR panel on Capitalism, squaring off against socialists Kristen Ghodsee and Vivek Chibber.  Enjoy the full show!

The post NPR Panel on Capitalism appeared first on Econlib.

Knowledge, Reality, and Value: Huemer’s Response, Part 3

Bryan’s Comments

“BC” indicates Bryan’s comments; “MH” is me (from the book).

1. Argument from Design

MH:     Even if you’d never seen a watch before, you would immediately know that this thing had to have been designed by someone. It’s too intricately ordered to have just happened.

BC:      The reason why we infer a watch-maker from a watch is not that the watch is “intricately ordered,” but that we have independent reason to believe that watches are not naturally occurring.

The “even if you’d ...

My Profound Understanding of Human Nature

During my recent interview with Andrew Sullivan, he repeatedly accused me of being totally oblivious to the realities of human nature.  In his view, I hew to an absurdly economistic view of what people are really like.  In reality, people care about culture, identity, and community at least as much as they care about material consumption.  Indeed, this is how practically everyone describes themselves, right?

False humility aside, I maintain that my understanding of human nature is far deeper tha...

Backlash vs. Resistance: The Case of Wokism

During the last two years, I’ve personally met quite a few people who loathe the woke movement.  They complain about it incessantly and see its wicked influence everywhere.  If the woke are for it, they’re reflexively against it.

If the woke movement did not exist, all of these people would obviously be doing something else.  They’d probably still be obsessive and negative, but they wouldn’t be daydreaming about wiping woke ideology off the surface of the Earth.  Should we therefore say that suc...

Self-Help vs. Power-Hunger

I was recently on an NPR panel on “Capitalism” with a pair of self-identified socialists – Kristen Ghodsee and Vivek Chibber.  The hosts asked us a wide range of questions, including several of the form: “What would you say to a person with problem X?”  For example, they played a statement from someone who really disliked her job as a COVID nurse.  What should she do?

Literalist that I am, I tried to offer helpful, relevant advice.  I started with the First Law of Wing-Walking: Keep your current...