Comments on: If Warheads Were Dessert, Arms Races Would be Delicious

By: Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 06:35:46 +0000

Wow, Will, your writing quality is really very good these days. But you may too quickly assume we don’t have enough creativity.

By: Maybe We Should Tax These People, But I’m Not Sure How Much « Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:23:12 +0000

[...] deprivation and status anxiety leading to higher investment activity and growth that Will Wilkinson wrote [...]

By: Relative Deprivation and Growth « Matt Zeitlin: Impetuous Young Whippersnapper

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:16:53 +0000

[...] PS – Will Wilkinson, as I expected, has written about the wisdom (and foolishness) of using relative deprivation in evaluating welfare. Also, he defends positional arms races in the context of entrepreneurship here. [...]

By: mk

mk — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:34:11 +0000

What makes you think that creativity is undersupplied? I’m curious. I mean I know there’s a curmudgeonly “just look around you– everyone is an unimaginative drone!” argument, but that’s not terribly convincing by itself.

It depends on what creativity means. If it means “deviation from existing paths of investigation in search of something better,” then to believe it is undersupplied you have to believe that enough of the newly “creative” people would actually stumble on something useful and productive. That’s the downside of creativity — it diverts from “just doing the work.” If there are enough ideas to explore already, the latter might be the most productive thing for someone to do at the margin.

By: AC

AC — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:10:41 +0000

To the extent you’re right about creative innovation depending on status-seeking, ay, it makes me sad! The most creative people I’ve been around have been people who ~really don’t care~ about status — who don’t affect the serene, egoless confidence of creative self-sufficiency as yet another way of standing out, but whose spiritual journeys have ~actually~ matured them beyond the incessant need to judge oneself against others. Insofar as such people explore new territory, it’s to explore new territory, because it’s interesting, because the world is interesting, or to develop their craft — not to “do what others aren’t doing”.