Aug 10
And the links came to enlighten us all
1. Tyler Cowen tells a good story at his 2009 TEDx Midatlantic talk. (HT: Patri) His point that thinking in terms of a narrative often makes things too simple, and many existing narratives are misleading.On non-fiction: "Nonfiction is in a sense the new fiction. The book may happen to say true things, but again everything is taking the same form as these stories"
On a useful heuristic: "As a good rule of thumb just imagine that every time you are tell yourself a good versus evil story, you are basically lowering your IQ by 10 points or more."
On books about cognitive biases: "None of these books identify what to me is the single central most important way we screw up. And that is, we tell ourselves too many stories or we are too easily seduced by stories. And why don't these books tell us that? It is because the books themselves are all about stories."
Listen to the whole thing, as they say.
2. Bryan Caplan discusses the rising return to hours put into college education. This research is a big part of why I don't believe the premise from other science research that things are changing mainly because it is harder to reach the frontier of science. Science is changing because on the margin education is no longer about education and research is no longer about research.
3. Scott Sumner has already reacted to the Fed meeting later today. If the market doesn't go up, he doesn't like it. Of course, I'm left to wonder whether he would be that upset if the market stays relatively neutral, since it appears that some form of quantitative easing or reinvestment in mortgage bonds, or cut in the interest paid on excess reserves has already been priced into the market.
4. Greg Mankiw points out some unfortunate estimates on the future performance of Medicare. The health care sector is one of the least efficient parts of society, yet it doesn't seem like the United States is on any path close to slowing down the amount of resources wasted there.
