How Long Do You Hold ‘Em? Who Knows When To Fold ‘Em? Some Monday Links

/ chr1

Tyler Cowen talks with Annie Duke.

As a game that teaches numbers, strategy, discipline and patience, poker ain’t bad, and may be partially analagous to the laws:

‘Another thing that’s really important that poker players think about is, “If I put this policy in that looks like it’s awesome, how can someone come in and find the cracks in it so that it can turn into something bad?” I feel like the top 500 players would definitely be thinking in that way more.

Assuming that they wanted to use their powers for good as opposed to evil, which we’ll assume, I feel, in general, policies would be better, less easy to be advantaged, thinking more long-term, definitely more willing to take risks that were worthwhile.’

Judges and lawyers, in their adversarial discipline, are often thinking like this.  We all do, in some areas of our lives, think like this, be they personal or professional areas, for briefer or longer periods.  It seems we all benefit from unleashing human potential in others like this.

A reservation: I wonder about those who wish to rationalize everything as a norm, however, rather than as an exception.   Where people tend to pile up for lack of luck, talent, ambition, understanding and ability, is often where the future lies, and where new rules emerge.  I’m not exactly persuaded by the idea of ‘markets in everything’, though it strikes me as much less dangerous than the ‘personal is political.’ (a potentially false analogy).

This seems to me more in line with human nature, and might help avoid some of the pitfalls of the reason/anti-reason debate.  Rationalist thinking often invites anti-rationalists, and there are plenty of postmoderns, ‘-Ismologists’ and lost souls joining political movements and causes, creating whole epistemologies out of whole cloth.

—

Where it gets ugly: As one example of irrationality and groupthink, if you observe what happened to a very bright, very committed Left-of-Center evolutionary biology professor, teaching people how to think with a profound and useful method of arriving at truth, alongside a very committed, ideologically driven ‘media studies‘ professor with a bad epistemology and administrative support in the same university, the results weren’t good.

This is indicative of bad design, and I’d argue insufficient understanding of human nature.

In fact, the same dynamic is arguably now playing out in Seattle at large:  Mayor Jenny Durkan=Dean George Bridges.

There are very bright people working at the boundaries of new truth and new knowledge, who I’d argue often fail to appreciate arguments for how hard it is to maintain legitimate authority, and conserve the wisdom [and truth] in that which already works.

This is a much deeper matter of debate.

Norm Macdonald on Kenny Rogers’ song lyrics is a much funnier:

Leave a Reply