Disqus - Latest Comments for Kenny Easwaran

Re: Red Blue Bed Rue You Do Not Do Black Shoe

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 21:49:24 -0000

Lindsay Beyerstein's argument is reminiscent of discussions that have come up in some of my philosophy classes surrounding the principle of charity. In most cases, we feel that it is best to reconstruct our opponents' arguments in ways that make the most rational sense and fit with the (well-known) facts. In fact, following Davidson, it seems that we might not even be understanding our opponents' language(s) if we don't reconstruct their arguments in this way. However, it also seems that there are certain cases in which people really do make irrational arguments that fly in the face of certain relatively well-known facts, and indulging in too much charity will obscure this point. I think Lindsay Beyerstein is suggesting that something like this might be the case here (as my colleagues occasionally do with some very poor arguments that come up in certain readings), but I (like you) would prefer to err further on the side of charity. Clearly there are going to be some cases where charity breaks down, but I'd rather hold out as long as possible.

Re: Opportunity Costs

Kenny Easwaran — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 17:45:15 -0000

I think you're right about the fact that buying the TV had an opportunity cost of (whatever it is he would do with) $2000, but once he's bought it, the opportunity cost of keeping it is $3000, rather than $1000 (what he could have gotten from selling it) (or whatever else it is he might have done with a TV). Keeping the TV doesn't undo the $2000 purchase.

I think the confusion is that people equivocate between opportunity cost as what the benefit of the second-best option would have been, versus the difference in benefit between the chosen option and the next best option. In addition, there are two clear choices for second-best option. The $1000 comes from differences, the $2000 from the choice of not having bought it, and the $3000 from the choice of buying it but not having sold it.

Re: What are Philosophers Good For?

Kenny Easwaran — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 11:59:15 -0000

It seems to me that philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of probability still have relevance to those fields and related fields, and have a chance to shed more light on theoretical (not just practical) capacities for knowledge. Though perhaps that's just my bias from working in those areas.

Re: It’s Not the Cities, Stupid

Kenny Easwaran — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:34:11 -0000

Actually, looking on the maps at CNN.com, there are four large counties of over 200,000 near Atlanta, and the two largest voted for Kerry, while the third and fourth voted for Bush. I imagine Atlanta is in one of the largest. Similarly, around Charlotte, the only county of over 200,000 voted for Kerry (though only by about 10%), while the four surrounding counties of about 60,000 voted for Bush. The county containing Phoenix voted for Bush, but only by about 10%, and it includes much of the surrounding area. Dallas county voted for Bush 50-49, while Tarrant county (Ft. Worth) voted for Bush 62-37, and was actually Bush's second largest vote margin, after Orange County, CA (which is one of the five largest counties in the nation). So it seems like Kerry did win even these cities, though by only a very tiny margin, and he lost the suburbs ("boomburbs") where all the growth is occurring.

Re: It’s Not the Cities, Stupid

Kenny Easwaran — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 19:53:09 -0000

Checking CNN.com and the census bureao, I note that the largest counties in California, Washington, Nevada, Missouri, Minnesota, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all voted for Kerry, while the largest counties in Texas, Utah, and Arizona voted for Bush. (These are just the first 21 largest counties I found at census.gov.) But it's true that all ten of the fastest-growing counties voted for Bush. However, those ten are all relatively small compared to nearby counties, so they don't exactly screw up the idea of the Urban Archipelago. I would say that they're stagnating because they're large (once you reach a certain density, it's tough to grow), and they're also liberal because they're large (when you're living very close to lots of people, you develop lots of tolerance for different culture, and exposure to poor people close by increases one's respect for the social safety net). At least, that's a naive view that would certainly explain the correlation between size, stagnation, and liberalness.

Re: It’s Not the Cities, Stupid

Kenny Easwaran — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:02:35 -0000

Looking at states as a whole, there are only two states that grew by less than 3.4%, both of which grew by under 1%, and those are WV and ND, both of which voted for Bush. But I suppose it's true that out of the top 20 in population growth, only numbers 10, 11, 13, and 18 voted for Kerry. However, 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 12, 16, and 19 were all considered swing states, and may potentially start voting Democratic as soon as 2008. It's hard to tell if having small population causes both the high population growth and Republican voting, or if the high population growth causes Republican voting. It seems plausible that after a few more years of high population growth, they're likely to vote Democrat, so I'm not entirely sure what this means for the urban archipelago hypothesis.

Re: The Functions of Fictions

Kenny Easwaran — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 20:07:07 -0000

It's not clear to me which direction the causation is supposed to work. Are we supposed to be genetically inclined to like fiction because it helps us read other people, or (more plausibly, I think) are we supposed to be genetically inclined to read other people, which includes fictional people. I think the latter is far more likely, and it also has the charitable benefit of being more consonant with Pinker's views about arts other than literature. We like paintings with green landscapes and a few people, because those are the sorts of territories we like to expand into. We fool ourselves with fictional representations of what we like in other arts; we can do so with fiction as well.

Re: It’s Not the Cities, Stupid

Kenny Easwaran — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 00:42:02 -0000

I would imagine that population growth would be a lagging indicator of economic growth, because areas with a booming economy tend to attract people (witness Silicon Valley in the '90s, or at least housing prices there) and those that lose jobs tend to lose people (witness Ohio and Michigan).

But then again, the fact that booming populations occur mainly in southern and western areas, perhaps there are climatic factors at work rather than economic ones.

Re: Bad Theories that Track Robust Regularities

Kenny Easwaran — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 21:45:24 -0000

For a long time I was INTP, but in recent tests I've come out ENTP, which I suppose makes sense with my personality changes in college. I believe the first time I took it I was actually INTJ, but now I think the P may even be stronger than my N and T.

Re: The Freedom to Sleep Under Bridges

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 15:57:48 -0000

I think MY's line was meant as a poke at himself...

Is there any more you can do to characterize what you mean by a "modest, well-designed safety net"? It's always seemed to me that such a thing would be the best means of making sure no one is in a truly awful state without making taxes too burdensome. If it's modest enough, then very few people will trade work at some pay for no work and the safety net, but hopefully it can still make a relatively large difference in the lives of those unfortunate enough to be out of work for some reason or another. But I suppose one might argue that the existence of even the minor amount of taxation necessary for something like this would depress productivity at higher levels of the income scale.

Re: What is Big Government?

Kenny Easwaran — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 23:00:25 -0000

Oddly enough, I think my intuition says that the government in this example is big - perhaps even bigger than the current US government. It has power to tax at arbitrary rates, and fully 50% of its effective spending is transaction costs.

Re: Mary Warnock and the Culture of Life

Kenny Easwaran — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 23:07:05 -0000

I find it interesting to see this discussion come up here. I've wondered whether libertarians tend towards the deontological or the consequentialist view of ethics. Generally, I've suspected libertarianism as a whole (granted, that's not the position of any individual) of leaning extremeley far in a deontological direction, with all its talk of "rights" to freedom and liberty and all. But then libertarians come back with all sorts of arguments that are supposed to show that free markets are the most effective way to distribute goods and services, suggesting that they hold to these economic views for consequentialist reasons. Not having read the article you link to, I'd guess that this post puts you relatively far on the consequentialist side (as I consider myself). But libertarianism as a political program seems hard to me to justify on such grounds - rather, it seems more likely that certain sectors would be extremely regulated, others would be totally free, and others would be in between, instead of the absolutes that libertarianism seems to be framed in terms of.

Re: Social Security Crisis on Infinite Earths

Kenny Easwaran — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 21:05:17 -0000

I noticed also how strongly MY had been coming off on the "no SS crisis" meme. But at the same time, he makes a good point, that other areas of the budget don't have to worry about several decades in the future, so why should SS?

Looking at the paper (fairly quickly, I admit), it's not clear that future increases in (say) defense spending are accounted for as completely as corresponding increases in SS and medicare. The latter two programs are projected to have per capita expenditures increase at 1% per year, while the others aren't clearly projected to grow at any rate. It's not clear to me that the data support this increase in SS and medicare spending but not defense and educations spending.

While clearly the current pattern isn't sustainable indefinitely, I would argue that cutting off projections at about ten years is probably at least somewhat reasonable, because it's hard to predict political situations ten years hence. At the moment, the Bush tax cuts are probably costing far more than current SS outlays, so short-term work on cutting the FI would focus on the forms and amounts these tax cuts have taken rather than future expenditures on SS. Of course, at some point, social security will become the current pressing concern, but it's far from clear to me that even totally suspending social security would add as much money to federal accounts in the near term as repealing Bush's tax cuts (for instance).

Re: Rorty Phones It In

Kenny Easwaran — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 03:39:54 -0000

Very interesting post Will, but I've got a few disputes with it (these ones about the philosophical aspects, not social security).

When Rorty says post-Galilean science has no metaphysical implications, he's probably closer to the truth than you think (though I don't think he's actually there). Niels Bohr and his whole set of followers definitely seemed to agree with this, and that's what gave us the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, on which there are no particles or waves, and just waveforms that collapse when observed. I personally think it's because Bohr hung out with the positivists too much (or perhaps the influence went the other way), but it's certainly been a trend in modern physics. Of course, there's still the many-worlds interpretation, which is empirically equivalent and very metaphysically oriented, and thus perhaps more appealing for Quineans (perhaps like myself?) who want science to be committed to the entities it quantifies over. I think both strands are present in contemporary physics.

And as for people eating each other in North Korea because of Marx's mistakes, I think that's a fairly ridiculous idea (though I know you were just exagerrating to make a point). It's probably fair to blame high European unemployment rates on problems of socialism (though there are plenty of people willing to debate this point). Maybe it's fair to blame the failings of the USSR on Marxism, though I think that it's far more accurate to blame them on the misapplications arising when Lenin tried to apply it to a non-industrialized society, compounded by Stalin's dictatorship. But as far as I can tell, North Korea hasn't really been Communist basically ever, and has instead been a cruel and despotic tyranny. Many people like to believe that's what communism is, but it clearly isn't, when actually attempted.

And I think "ought implies can" is potentially controversial, though not in any serious way. (Of course, to a consequentialist, it's trivially true.)

But otherwise, everything was spot on, like Rorty with the sock-puppets (I remember his lecture to one of my freshman classes where he argued that Nietzsche was a pragmatist). And of course sociobiological experiments are useful, even if they can't answer ultimate philosophical questions - they at least help us frame our discussion and ask the right questions, and give some constraints on the answers for some of them. And why exactly he thinks a theory of human nature should be normative is beyond me (though that seems to be the lesson vulgar social darwinism seems to be based on, taking Rorty's modus tollens as a modus ponens).

Re: Do You Deserve Your Income?

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 18:49:35 -0000

If S agreed to pay me x for completing my end of a contract, and I complete my end of the contract, then I deserve x from S. THIS IS OBVIOUS and if an argument implies the contrary, then we have a ready reductio of the argument.

I think this is far from obvious. If I were a nuclear physicist and agreed to build several nuclear weapons for Osama bin Laden and sign a contract by which he promises to give me one city out of the several he would blackmail out of Iraq with those weapons, and then I build him the weapons, I think it would be wrong to say that I deserve that city. It might be right to say that he has a contractual obligation to give me the city, and perhaps even to use the coercion he promised in order to get the city for me, but that doesn't seem to give me any moral desert. Unless I understand "deserve" in a much different way than you.

Of course, this isn't the sort of situation Andersen is talking about, but I think it shows that the point you make isn't a reductio.

And of course, as I recall, she also doesn't make "the fundamental redistributivist error" - the point of her post is merely to show that saying "I deserve my income" isn't a valid argument against taxation. She hasn't yet gone on to make any positive arguments in favor of the justifications of taxation. She's just (so far) writing a series of posts about arguments that don't actually turn out to have force preventing it. If she's established that I don't deserve my income, I think she will still concede that she hasn't yet established that anyone has the right to take that income away.

Re: What Do You Deserve?

Kenny Easwaran — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 21:47:16 -0000

This sounds to me actually quite reminiscent of a Humean argument about the is/ought divide. Making judgements about one based on the facts of the other is making a sort of category mistake.

However, unless I'm mistaken, this argument seems to suggest that any morally relevant use of the word "deserve" is unjustified, whether we're talking about deserving money or anything else. Except maybe for talk of "placement on list A".

Re: Happy Rand Day!

Kenny Easwaran — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:16:17 -0000

Ayn Rand may well have been one of the factors that got me interested in philosophy, though I think I had some of that interest already (and it was really philosophy of science with Peter Godfrey-Smith that actually hooked me). There's definitely a lot to appreciate in her ideas, but the over-simplicity of a lot of it seems to be what leads to Randroidism. I'm glad that after reading all her novels and a couple essays I started reading the Romantic Manifesto - and then realized that her aesthetic philosophy really made little to no sense, so I started questioning the rest of her program.

Re: Firty Nifty

Kenny Easwaran — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 01:53:39 -0000

I was shocked to read that that was Matt's first visit to a red state - I figured a Harvard undergrad, journalist type would have traveled more. And then I realized that although I've been to 33 states, out of the 17 I haven't been to, only Hawaii is unambiguously non-red, and New Mexico and Iowa are ambiguous at best. And when I've been to red states, it's been to generally non-red parts - eg, Moab, UT; Terre Haute, IN; Orlando, FL; Myrtle Beach, SC. And I'll continue that trend with my first trip to Texas in May, when I go to a conference in Austin.

The best explanation I can come up with is that city folk like to go to cities (I'd like to say that cities are the sorts of things that draw people in general, but I'll restrict my claim to just blue-staters) and that blue states (and blue parts of red states) have most of the cities. But I guess that doesn't explain my presence in Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire.

Re: You Should Buy Explaining Postmodernism

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 21:12:10 -0000

Wait a minute - I thought that some of these big names in theory and postmodernism were some of the few actually rightist academics. Like Heidegger, and Zizek (unless I'm reading him totally wrong). There's definitely a lot of extreme leftism in the field, but it also seems to include some rightist undertones at times.

Re: Self-Ruled or Rule-Ruled?

Kenny Easwaran — Tue, 10 May 2005 00:08:38 -0000

I believe it was Bob McGrew (my co-blogger at Cardinal Collective) who I was discussing this system with once, who pointed out that in fact this is one of the few voting schemes that will manage to satisfy the desiderata of Arrow's Theorem. This is because in the non-randomized case, the only system that does this is dictatorship (letting one individual make the choice), and in the randomized case, the only ones that do are linear combinations of those that do, and this is the symmetric linear combination of all of the dictatorships.

Re: Happiness? Equality? What?

Kenny Easwaran — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 12:27:14 -0000

one's perception of one's place in the income distribution matters to happiness, such that people lower in the distribution are less happy in virtue of being lower in the distribution (or thinking they are). But, aside from total egalitarianism, which isn't likely to make anyone happy, there is nothing to be done about this.

Is it clear that being in the bottom quintile makes someone equally unhappy, no matter what the gap between quintiles? It's probably the case that any amount of income inequality leads to some unhappiness, but (not having seen the relevant studies) it doesn't seem plausible to me that being in the bottom quintile would always feel just as bad. It's much more plausible that people get used to their absolute status, but that the sizes of relative status gaps in relation to their absolute status make a difference.

And besides, even if being in the bottom quintile always feels just as bad, by having a narrower gap, it seems that there would be more mobility between quintiles. I don't know if the benefit to people as they're moving up would be enough to make up for the pain as they're moving down, but that calls for more study.