Bryan Caplan's Blog, page 12

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club, Part 3

The Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club continues.  Today, we go over Part 3: Metaphysics.  Huemer’s in blockquotes, I’m not.  Once again, I’m focusing on my disagreements to keep the discussion lively.

1. The Argument from Design.

Back in the 19th century, I guess a lot of people had mechanical pocket watches, and if you looked inside, you could see a complicated, very precise mechanism working. Even if you’d never seen a watch before, you would immediately know that this thing had to have...

Open Borders on PBS

My interview on Open Borders aired last night on the PBS NewsHour.  Check it out!

The post Open Borders on PBS appeared first on Econlib.

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club Replies, Part 2

All of the last set of comments were directed at Huemer, but I’ll add a few comments of my own.

Anon:

1.To my mind, part of the problem with questions like “Is there a God?” is not that they are meaningless or that they have no answer. Rather, it’s that they are unanswerable.

Are questions like, “Does Bigfoot exist?” answerable?  How about, “Did aliens build the pyramids?”  Or how about, “Do ghosts exist?”  My answer to all of these is, “Almost certainly not.”  Am I wrong?

Hellestal:

In order to...

Alien Bet

Robin Hanson and I disagree about alien visitation.  While he doubts that aliens are visiting Earth right now, I’m virtually sure that they aren’t.  As a result, we’ve made a bet.  The terms:

1. Robin pre-pays me $10.

2. If I become convinced that aliens have visited the Earth during our lifetimes, I pay Robin $10,000*1.05^(year-2021) in nominal dollars.

3. If either of us dies before (2), my heirs keep the money and the bet ends.

Or as Robin puts it:

I proposed this bet in reaction to this twe...

The Apologies of Repeal

Whenever government repeals a bad policy, my first reaction is amazement.

Then gratitude.

Swiftly followed by indignation, because no matter how bad the repealed policy was, the government almost never apologizes.

Homely example: The FAA used to ban the use of any electronic device during takeoff and landing.  When the rule finally went away, I was amazed, because I expected to endure this petty tyranny for all the flights of my life.  Next, I felt grateful for this small expansion of my freedom...

Knowledge, Reality, and Value: Huemer’s Response, Part 2

Here’s Mike Huemer’s second set of responses to me and you.

About Bryan’s Comments

Thanks again to Bryan, and the readers who commented on his post, for their thoughts about Part 2. This is all cool and interesting. I’ll just comment on a few questions and points of disagreement.

1. Real World Hypothesis (RWH) vs. Brain-in-a-Vat Hypothesis (BIVH)

“Why, though, couldn’t we race the Real World theory against the Simulation-of-the-Real-World theory?”

Good question. We can think of it like this: we...

Learning Disability Accommodation and Signaling

Reader Joe Munson sent me this thoughtful message.  Reprinted with his permission.

Dear Bryan,

It occurred to me the other day that many high schools and even colleges will basically waive certain subjects for you if you have even moderate learning disabilities (or can get a psychologist to say you do). Foreign languages, gym, even math can basically be waived (I know, because math and foreign languages were waived for me).

This is strange, if these subjects were so crucial, you would think sch...

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club, Part 2

The Book Club on Mike Huemer’s Knowledge, Reality, and Value continues.  Today, I cover Part 2 of the book.  To repeat, though I’m a huge fan of the book, I’m focusing almost entirely on disagreements.

1. One of Huemer’s preferred responses to the classic Brain-in-a-Vat (BIV) scenario is that – especially compared to the Real World story – its a weakly-supported theory.

The Real World theory predicts (perhaps not with certainty, but with reasonably high probability) that you should be having a c...

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club Replies, Part 1

Here are my reactions to Part 1 of the book club for Mike Huemer’s new book:

Kevin DC:

Thoughts/comments directed primarily towards Bryan:

Compared to other academic disciplines, philosophers really do spend a lot of time rehashing 2000-year-old debates.

I suspect this is at least in part due to the fact that of all the disciplines in the academy, philosophy is the one with the longest history. Chemists don’t rehash 2,000 year old debates because 2,000 years ago, chemistry wasn’t a thing. Histor...

Knowledge, Reality, and Value Book Club Schedule Update

Capla-Con, my annual festival of nerdity, is in Austin this year, June 12-13, and I’m humbled by how many friends are making the trek.  By the power of Steve Kuhn, we’ll be gathering at Dreamland, noon-midnight both days.  All EconLog readers welcome!

As a result, I’m tweaking the Book Club schedule for Huemer’s Knowledge, Reality, and Value.  New plan:

June 7 – My reply to readers on Part 1

June 8 – My commentary on Part 2

Later that Week – Huemer replies on Part 2

June 16 – My reply to readers...