From the monthly archives:

March 2007

Safety Nets, Growth, and Liberation from Family

March 27, 2007

In his by-request post on safety nets, Tyler writes:
Most of all, the welfare state liberates the productive and the creative from their sometimes burdensome family ties. The welfare state is the Randian’s secret dream, and that is what clinches the case for a government safety net.
I don’t think I understand. How many productive and [...]

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Norms of Reason and the Prospects for Technologies and Policies of Debiasing

March 25, 2007

clipped from www.overcomingbias.com

I have so far found most discussions and debates about the correction of
cognitive “biases” very confusing, including most of the posts on this blog.
Why? Because I find the very idea of a cognitive bias confusing any time I
really start to think about it. A bias is a bias only relative to some standard.
The [...]

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New Bloggingheads TV

March 21, 2007

Behold the new Bloggingheads in which I defend Ezra’s honor, distinguish economic risk from economic anxiety, implore you to follow your dream, dilate on the virtues of gun ownership, and endorse Bill Richardson as my favorite 2008 Dem candidate. Naturally, Ezra says many things, too.

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Not That Kind of Libertarian: Puzzles of Children’s Rights

March 20, 2007

McMegan writes:
I’m sorry if my nom de blog fooled you, but I’m not that sort of libertarian. Children are a perennial problem for libertarians, but what it boils down to is this: children (and to my mind, the severely disabled), have positive rights. They have a right to be fed, educated, clothed, sheltered, and given [...]

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On Positive Freedom: Is Society Metaphysical or Man Made?

March 20, 2007

One of the best discussions I know of on the difference between positive and negative conceptions of freedom is David Kelley’s in A Life of One’s Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State. This was the final word for me on positive and negative freedom for some time. Looking again at Kelley’s argument, I find [...]

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Happiness Blog Revamped; Actual New Content

March 18, 2007

Just a note to Fly Bottle readers who do not also read my Happiness and Public Policy blog… In an attempt to promote my coming-in-April Cato happiness paper, I’m revamping the happiness blog, and have resolved to post there at least once a day from now through a month after the release of the paper [...]

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Feeling Scientifically

March 15, 2007

From the Feb. 12 New Yorker’s wonderful profile [pdf] of Paul and Patricia Churchland by Larissa MacFarquhar [pdf]:
One afternoon recently, Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my [...]

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IQ, Clusters, and Francisco Gil-White

March 1, 2007

Tyler Cowen shares his thoughts on the idea that it is important to try to preserve the average level of a society’s IQ, as though this is some kind of precious public good:
I don’t assign special status to The Conservation of IQ for two reasons.  The first is the Flynn effect, or the fact that measured IQs [...]

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