OMNILIBRIUM
Rational Discussion of Controversial Topics
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Science |
FrameBenignly
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| | Well, Bush I rolled back part of the law, but looking into it closer, yeah, I think you're ... read more |
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| | http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2014/02/28/the-biggest-government-health-care-spender-since-lbj-was-ronald-reagan/#2ac7aae44d3f
He was opposed to single-payer; there wasn't anything like obamacare's insurance mandate being considered ... read more |
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| | Historically the two parties have not been very consistent on their economic agendas or their foreign policies, but they have been pretty consistent on social issues for the past 50 years. On economic policy, the two parties have been most ... read more |
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| | Trump specifically states he wants to raise taxes on businesses who manufacture in other countries. I'd say that's a form of coercion. Obama has also drawn support from labor unions, and has been more protectionist than most other ... read more |
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| | I don't think the evidence you've presented tells us very much as to whether or not this is indeed the case, but I find the graph surprising. I would have expected that as people's incomes grew, the percentage of their income devoted to ... read more |
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| | Garrett Jones recently wrote a book arguing that IQ is the primary driver. I think war and oil reserves would be strong candidates as well. But I think the best answer is organized labor.
Through the Renaissance, Italy built up powerful trade ... read more |
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| | I believe you're referring to this. In the article, Adam Ozimek doesn't specifically mention race, probably because it's not PC, but he does argue that demographic adjustments only partially account for the ... read more |
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| | Frequently not. I don't think the intro textbook in my field contains a single study published in the last 30 years. Just think of how many math departments still don't teach Bayesian analysis at the undergraduate level. I recall one ... read more |
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| | Dollar-for-dollar, as discussed in the other article you posted, the overwhelming majority of technological progress comes from the private sector; not public research. There's a large literature to attest to this. Look at the journal ... read more |
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| | I'd recommend reading instead the article on which that one is based: The Case Against Public Science
I'm not sure. It seems like the crux of Kealey's argument is whether public spending crowds out private spending on science since I ... read more |
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| | That is the primary focus of political focus group research.
The most famous version of this I know of is the estate tax vs. death tax comparison. One wording is very popular; the other is not.
Scientifically, I would like to note that the ... read more |
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| | Without objective evidence of positive or negative bias being stronger one way or the other, you should expect these biases to cancel each other out except for increased sensitivity. That is to say you will need to read more sources to get a clear ... read more |
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| | German judges are also unelected. Here is a sample from elected judges: https://youtu.be/poL7l-Uk3I8
I would agree that parliaments are generally more effective than presidencies and congresses although the US appears to be a unique exception ... read more |
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| | Okay, it worked there for some reason. It wasn't working in my other ... read more |
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| | No, the links were in html format, so a Greg. This worked fine for new posts; just not for comments.
Looks like this ... read more |
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| | I'm not a lawyer so forgive me. How is it that you think the Supreme Court misread the meaning of the Civil Rights Act? Their interpretation of disparate impact seems perfectly reasonable. In contrast, against elected officials I would name ... read more |
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| | Just the opposite. I am arguing we should decide on the outcome and then let the experts decide on the process to reach the outcome. The problem is that the present democratic system involves micromanaging each and every single element of the ... read more |
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| | links in my comments aren't working
I just get a blank white space in place of my linked ... read more |
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| | Link didn't work: ... read more |
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| Do you basically want to copy China's system? Otherwise where do you think your suggestion differs from the Chinese model?
I think China has a much better system of government than the overwhelming majority of democracies as evidenced by ... read more |
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| Central banks may have well defined goals (full employment and low inflation), but the achievement of these goals mostly depends on factors outside of their control. When central banks fail to meet their targets, there is usually no consensus among ... read more |
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| | You seem to either be arguing the algorithm might be found to be poorly calibrated, in which case I would respond: then change the algorithm, or you're arguing we shouldn't use algorithms to which I give you ... read more |
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| | Under a technocracy, the incentives would be the same as an for an individual in any job; comparable to many existing bureaucrats. Certain bureaucratic agencies are poorly designed, but others seem to be well designed. By contrast, EVERY ... read more |
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| | The division of labor in his scenario is by cloning code as necessary, the same as my argument. He's correctly noting that changes in skills may not cause changes in values. If building paperclips is as fundamental to the AI as water is to a ... read more |
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| | An AI or em can utilize division of labor by duplicating itself and having the duplicate learn something else. If the AI is sufficiently advanced, these duplicates will quickly surpass humans at any task imaginable. The humans will hence become ... read more |
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| | If there is a slow takeoff, meaning AI intelligence increases at a slower pace than governments can legislate it, this might become a matter of public debate. However, if computing power is still doubling every 30 months when AI reaches general ... read more |
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| | Telling people not involved to stay out of it is a criticism of the online witch hunters ... read more |
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| | I strongly recommend against reasoning from a single incident. There will always be he said/she said disagreements with these sorts of incidents. You're not involved so don't worry about it. If you're interested in the issue more ... read more |
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| | If government employees can't be fired for making wrong statements, it would become even more difficult to trust information received by government officials. This would make handling a lot of paperwork much harder. What are we paying them for ... read more |
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| | If I gave you a test on standard climate problems; what's the composition of the atmosphere, what is the climate-carbon feedback of methane gas, what is the average ph balance of ocean water, etc. Do you think you'd be able to pass ... read more |
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| | "Academics who work at government institutions or private universities are also very vulnerable to pressure from their colleagues, university authorities and funding sources."
I don't perceive this as being a bias unique to professors. ... read more |
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| | "The problem is that almost all experts have such sources of bias."
Almost all people have such sources of bias. Except in extreme cases, the expert's bias is not clearly worse than the average individual's. The funding sources exception ... read more |
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| | The question isn't how likely are the experts to be right. It's are experts more likely to be right than your wild guess. Even if their probability of being correct is quite low; it still should be treated as more accurate than your own ... read more |
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| | The negative externality is the buggy whip manufacturers all lost their jobs which they probably weren't too happy ... read more |
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| | Semi-perfect competition is not zero competition. And by revenue, McDonald's is still the largest fast food ... read more |
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| | Perfect competition only exists on a drawing board. It's useful because it closely enough mirrors the real world that it often produces the same effects as semi-perfect competition, but it often fails when looking at labor issues. I think ... read more |
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| | Can we at least agree zoning laws are a terrible way to regulate air pollution?
Noise is readily solved by better insulation which has a lot of other benefits as well, and fewer zoning laws reduce the cost of housing thereby freeing up income ... read more |
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| | Should car manufacturers have paid the buggy whip manufacturers for putting them out of business ... read more |
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| | Except in the example you don't own the chairs you're destroying or at least keeping off the market. It's more like you're planning to sell the chair and then forcing all the other chair sellers out so everybody has to bid for your ... read more |
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| | No, housing suppliers such as local homeowners should not be able to restrict new housing supply such as a tall building to keep prices artificially high. New housing in your area is part of the risk you take on when buying a home. They're ... read more |
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| | If anything, option B is much more attractive because option A wont have a high enough margin. A marginal improvement only has marginal value to the consumer. They would right from the start have to price option A competitively with generics or ... read more |
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| | The next two links after the mathematiCal model contain supporting empirical evidence of my claim.
By before the CU, are you referring to McCain-Feingold? What happened beginning in 2010 feels like it takes things to an entirely different than ... read more |
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| | I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Are you saying you actually believe most political donations don't originate from wealthy individuals? Or are you saying the top people in gigantic lobbying groups like the NRA and the ACLU ... read more |
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| | Citizens United was a 2009 court case which stated: "Political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates ... read more |
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| | Technically, regulations aren't the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy enforces regulations, but they don't control them. This can make a huge difference. The bureaucracy can often have a great deal of leeway in how they apply regulations. The ... read more |
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| | yes, I am asking about the results from other studies and from standard theories that explain the disparity often found between empirical results and common sense. By subgroups, I assume you're referring to skilled vs unskilled labor. The ... read more |
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| | It is asking about a concept; a concept from a well known theory among health policy analysts. Theory and empiricism are both important. Having a lot of data is useless if you don't have a way to interpret that data. The question does not ... read more |
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| | Or we could just change what people are voting on. Futarchy is one such ... read more |
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| | Actually, in a way I did. It's what I think a specialist in those areas would consider basic information. But that's just because of the huge gap between specialists and an average person. I didn't include any legal questions because I ... read more |
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| | The first time I visited the site, I didn't even notice the replies ... read more |
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| | Yeah, I just had to split my comment in two and edit it down a little to get around the 1500 character limit. Particularly because of the very imprecise nature of the first few questions, it's hard to write a good, concise answer that's only ... read more |
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| | Some questions as examples of the complexity of politics:
Macroeconomics
What does MV=PQ stand for? Please explain.
Health Care
Laws banning insurance from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions such as the ACA are generally said ... read more |
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| | Trying to understand the entirety of the government is an impossible task for the average person. Even people who do this for a living often struggle with it. Even if the average person slightly increases their degree of knowledge, compared to an ... read more |
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