If you read this post, then you will understand basic logic.

I want to talk about a strange math related topic.

The moment anyone starts seriously studying mathematics they immediately come across a few terms (all related to logic) that are very related. I specifically picked them because they are very applicable in even every day logic. They are:

1) Sufficiency and necessity.
2) logical implications (i.e. ⇒, ⇔, iff, etc.)

I'll start with the first.

Now, the first time someone studying mathematics comes across this is probably in mathematical optimization (necessary and sufficient conditions for maximization and minimization). Yet, it springs up constantly from there on. What does it mean?

Well, I'll start with an example.

Let's say that I want to prove that I'm a human being. Showing that I have blood is necessary, since human beings have blood, but not sufficient. Many different creatures have blood. Likewise, let's say that I want to prove I'm a male. Since my name is Brandon, that's sufficient, but not necessary in order to prove it. Certainly, there are many men who aren't named Brandon, but if you're named Brandon you're most certainly a male.

The distinction is very important. In these examples something that is necessary is exactly that, necessary, but that doesn't mean it completes the proof. Sufficiency, on the other hand, can prove it, but that doesn't mean it's necessary, since there may be examples where it's true that aren't related to it.

However, they can be taken together, and that's when it's the strongest. Let's say all males were named Brandon, and only males were named Brandon (no dogs, creatures, women, etc.). Well, showing that my name is Brandon is both necessary AND sufficient since it's sufficient to prove I'm a male, but at the same time for me to prove it it's necessary that my name is Brandon.

 This leads right to logical implication which is directly tied to this (and makes it much more intuitive). The first time you come across these would be in mathematical logic, which may be in early calculus, or as late as real analysis.

Here are the implication arrows. They are:

P⇒Q
Q⇒P
P⇔Q
 
Although the first two seem redundant, I'll use them with my previous examples. Let's say the statement P is "My name is Brandon" and Q is "I'm a male". The first says, essentially, "If my name is Brandon, then I'm a male." Which means the fact that my name is Brandon implies I'm a male. Let's switch the world around a bit, and say that all males are named Brandon, but so are some females. Then, the reverse statement would be true. "If I'm a male, then my name is Brandon", but then the previous statement would no longer be true since some females would be named Brandon. So now being named Brandon isn't enough to prove I'm male.

Notice how this works. With the first two implication arrows, you can take the previous statement and imply the latter, but you can't go back. My name is Brandon, therefore I'm a  male. However, if I'm a male that doesn't mean you can show my name is Brandon, since it's certainly not always true.

The last example follows necessity and sufficiency. I'll just restate my example of both necessity and sufficiency (the world where all men are named Brandon, and everyone named Brandon is a male), which is "If my name is Brandon, then I'm a male", and "If I'm a male, then my name is Brandon." In other words, I could take either fact and it would lead me to the other.

This is very simple, but incredibly powerful with logic. My name is Brandon⇒I'm a male. I'm a human being⇒I have blood. I'm from planet Earth⇔I'm from the third planet from the sun.

The first leads me to the second in all of those, but only in the last one can I go both directions.


Strange topic. Feels weird. I'll try something different next time.

I feel your pain, Appleby.

Taken (stolen?) from "Catch-22"

"Appleby was as good at shooting crap as he was at playing Ping-Pong, and he was as good at playing Ping-Pong as he was at everything else. Everything Appleby did, he did well. Appleby was a fair-haired boy from Iowa who believed in God, Motherhood, and the American Way of Life, without ever thinking about any of them, and everybody who knew him liked him.

'I hate that son of a bitch,' Yossarian growled."


I feel an urge to read that book again. Why does he bring up ping-pong? Who cares.

Update: I think it's a state law in Iowa now that you need to post this video every time you mention Iowa.

They run these advertisements all the time in the United States..

Here's some ideas to get the ball rolling in Britain. With slogans like "We hate ourselves-we'll probably hate you too", "Grey Britain", and "Go to Australia instead", how can they lose?

Thank God these aren't actual, prospective, advertisements. Just jokes. The idea isn't a joke, though.

I make Kleptomania look good.

One person gets this joke.

Alright, stealing one more from Beth, but it'll be quick.

 Unlike her usual self, she's brought up two stealworthy posts in a row. This time, She's brought up charity as a topic, and mentions some facts regarding popular charities. She brings up a great point:

 "With so many charities out there, if you're thinking of making a donation, it's important to know how to choose the right one."

I couldn't agree more with this. This is nearly the most important factor of picking charities, and most blatantly ignore it. In the United States it's very popular to text in a donation that bills your phone company. There's literally no information on how it'll be spent, where exactly, or how efficient it is. This is exactly what she's talking about.

However, I do disagree with one point she brings up later:

"For a charity to be considered as one that spends it's money well, two thirds, or 66.6% of donations should go directly towards programmes supporting the charities aims."

It's a very good indicator, but to bring up an analogy where it might not always work would be  educational spending. Many sources claim increases in educational spending as something desirable in and of themselves, but as professor Heckman would put it, spending is an input, not an output. So, I agree absolutely that we need to spend time and choose, but now it has become considerably more complex on how we choose.

If two charities, A and B, make $100,000 each, but A spends 10% on administration costs, and firm B spends 30%, then, superficially, it appears that firm A has more "bang for the buck". After all, 90,000 goes to the stated cause for A, but only 70,000 for B.

However, let's say B is more efficient than A. Let's say that, out of the money that goes, 1/4th of A's is spent efficiently, but firm B spends 3/4ths of it's money efficiently. Some examples would be that A spends more money on things that aren't used, or perhaps it spends it on projects that are relatively less helpful than B.

Well, now multiplying the money they have to the percentage of it that's used effectively, we get A has $22,500 going to the charity, and firm B has $52,500. The roles have reversed.

How do we know which charities are efficient? Well, I've heard of some estimates that mix Beth's definition with other efficiency measures, like this. If you want more rigorous studies I've heard of a whole slew of research coming from John List over at Chicago. Since I haven't gone over that, I'll cover one paper of his that I have, which is this. One part of the Abstract runs:

"We design a door-to-door fund-raiser
in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a
flyer on their doorknobs. Thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find
that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 9% to 25%
and, if the flyer allows checking a Do Not Disturb box, reduces giving by 28%
to 42%. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10.
These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of door-to-
door giving."

So, apparently part of the reason we give is social pressure. Could be pressured into doing worse things, I suppose.

Now I'll stop stealing for a while and be original.

Approaching light speed.

Over a hundred views? 3 different countries? 2 of which aren't my own? I'm worldwide mother fuckers.


Time to celebrate:

Enjoy the storm.

Beth being interesting? You be the judge.

A few posts back I mentioned “why people do things”. Now, the analysis was incredibly vague and inconclusive (which should be expected from me), but I’d like to go a little deeper with an example.

Over at Indecision, Beth lays out a great summary over the history of the English language. So I think this is a good opportunity to explain how exactly the structure of society has tangible effects on how people make choices, as well as how those decisions feed back into society.

I won’t cover everything that she brought up, nor speak about the more specific historical facts, but I will note some interesting things.

 Firstly:

“The first, Old English is defined as the period between 450 and 1100 AD.  The languages of the invading Germanic tribes were similar, and slowly blurred together as time passed, forming Old English…Middle English is defined as 1100-1500. The main difference between this and the former was the invasion of the Normans, who brought with them a type of French…Modern English is classes as quite a broad period, spanning from 1500 to present. Within this, there have been many dramatic shifts. The biggest alterations from Middle English were the invention of the printing press, which standardised the English language…Today, there still remains about 10,000 french words in the English language, as well as many German, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Scandinavian. A little known and interesting fact is that upon their journey across the Atlantic, many English words were "frozen" and terms we consider to be Americanisms such as "trash" and "fall" were actually first used in Britain.”

Now the multitudes of different causes and effects here show exactly what I’m talking about. Notice that the geographical position largely affected the form of the language. If, for instance, England were located in the Pacific it would more than likely NOT have an alphabet that was a direct descendent of the Latin alphabet, but perhaps one similar to, say, the Chinese writing system. Furthermore, it would probably have a phonetic system similar to that of East Asian countries, and the influences of, say, the German, French, Scandinavian, etc., languages would be much less pronounced (if it would exist at all).

Notice other aspects of it. English moving in different directions once being separated by UK English and US English is another, as well as the effect of a printing press and the standardization of languages.

I could go deeper (especially with the printing press), but I’d like to move onto more contemporary effects of differing languages.

Today, if Germans wanted to travel to England, they wouldn’t have to create raiding parties and travel days and weeks by boat.

They fly.

Notice the importance of this. Globalization is affecting the choice of languages and whether or not people of differing languages meet. Now it’s much more common to get in touch with someone who speaks a different language. In fact, with the advent of the computer all you need is a public library.

However, barriers still exist, which is why the average European knows multiple different languages, and the United States is largely mono-linguistic. So geographical concerns still make a difference. If your own country is surrounded by neighboring countries with different languages, you have a tendency to speak more.

Which leads me to a few very interesting points. Here’s a paper from Edward Lazear, and an excerpt:

“Trade between individuals is facilitated when all traders share a common

culture and language. A common culture allows individuals to

trade with one another without intermediaries. In the case of language,

this is most clear. If two agents speak the same language, they

can negotiate a contract without the use of a translator. A common

culture allows the traders to have common expectations and customs,

which enhances trust.”

Which, empirically he verifies and finds that:

“The theory is tested and confirmed

by examining U.S. census data, which reveal that the likelihood

that an immigrant will learn English is inversely related to the proportion

of the local population that speaks his or her native language.”

Which is what you’d expect. For people who live in those areas, it’s much less tempting (and less vital) to learn a new language if people there can understand you and communicate with you.

Fuckin' interesting stuff.

But moving on. One point that’s similar to Lazear’s conclusion that I wanted to mention was actually very related to a seemingly unrelated topic. Why do we have money? Well, the reasons as to why it was started and why it continues are rather different, but most monetary economists agree that one major cause behind both is known as the “Double Coincidence of Wants”. In other words, in a barter system I’d have to have what you want, and you’d have to have what I want. Which is a double coincidence. Money eliminates one. Now, if I have money, you just have to have what I want, since people generally accept money in return.

What does this have to do with language? Well, consider the referees in FIFA. There can be very strange match ups, and the probability that they have referees that speak both Romanian and Japanese is tiny, not to mention the fact it may only be needed for one game. Solution? All referees speak English. Now they all share a common language in which they can communicate, but at the same time they can specialize in, say, Japanese. The referees that can speak both Japanese and English can be in used in every Japanese game, instead of the one where they speak both Romanian and Japanese, or Swahili and Japanese, or whatever. 

This isn’t the only example. Wonder how flying planes works in a multilingual world? If one plane flies from, say, England to Germany they don’t have to speak both English and German. Now, thanks to international laws, English is the common language. Which is incredibly helpful. If a plane malfunctions and needs to land sooner than it’s actual destination, it doesn’t have to worry about flying erratically into an airport where the people in the control tower can’t speak their language.

All interesting stuff, and if I find time I’ll post more about it later. Perhaps about the benefits and costs of a mono-linguistic society? Who knows. As for now food.


Update: I just wanted to stress the importance of how these different geographical positions, different turns in history, the double coincidence of wants, etc., are all structural aspects that affect languages, and also how languages feed into those structures. Also, I'd like to go into what Beth calls the "monopoly" at some point, but not now.

Stylized facts and over aggregation.

Back to science.


Recently, I've been coming across similar things in the more informal side of economic discussion (and, unfortunately, the formal). One is "stylized facts", and the other is, as I call it, over aggregation (many different ways of putting this one, but I like to use this).

Wiki defines "stylized facts" thusly:
 

"A stylized fact is often a broad generalization that summarizes some complicated statistical calculations, which although essentially true may have inaccuracies in the detail."

Well, you'd think that facts that are "stylized" are, by definition, not facts. Even if generally true, that does not make them "true", per se. However, it's surprising how often you see this in even formal and rigorous economic studies. Even if it's only used for convenience it can be detrimental. Even if it plays a minor role in your summary of a body of literature, it doesn't mean it won't have adverse effects.

This is all very related to another problem which, thankfully, is much more closely related to the informal side, but, alas, still found in even the most prestigious (pretentious?) journals.

Now, statistics is used to find causality and correlation in complex systems such as an economy. Good studies take into account everything about how their models and controls work. For instance, does increasing police officers decrease crime? The first wave of research suffered from an "endogeneity" problem. It just so happens that places that have more police officers are also more crime ridden. Can't get far with that. It'll tell you nonsense. So you have to go to more rigorous statistical methods to correct for this bias. That's what they did. They found that increasing police officers has an inverse relationship with crime.

That's how science is done. Want to see how it's not done?

I'm taking this from a review named "Real World Economics Review". They seem to be overcompensating with the name, right? Well, it's from a movement named "Post Autistic Economics", which, apparently, is aimed at people who use mathematical and statistical methods they don't know how to use.

Anyways, I didn't take it seriously. It was formed against the Neo-Classical side of economics which I don't think anyone fully subscribes to anyways, although they might find a great deal to agree with. Among other reasons it didn't seem serious. I think it could be easily countered with a movement of "Post-prepubescent-angst-economics", but I'll let you judge. 

I took this from the first article I grabbed, which was provocatively named "Neo-classical economics:A trail of economic destruction since the 1970s." Supposedly, this is "good" science from the next paradigm in economics:

This is the GDP of both Korea and Somalia. Well, it's obvious that they diverged. What could be the multitude of causes? And where's the sound empirical work in support? This is what the author had to say:

"Figure 1 illustrates the explosive growth of South Korea, starting only in the very late 1960s, as that nation diversified its economy away from agriculture and raw materials and into manufacturing industry. Through very heavy-handed industrial policy, Korea broke away from its ‘comparative advantage’ in agriculture. By comparison, Somalia – being richer that Korea until the mid-1960s – did not, and instead continued to specialize according to its comparative advantage in being poor."

This is awful science, and I will explain what I mean. When you step back and ignore nearly all the different causes and actions within an economy, you can get nearly anything to support what you claim. In this piece of nonsense, this is supposedly condemning evidence against "comparative advantage", which, anyone with at least a little bit of honesty would notice says nearly nothing about it (and more about nearly EVERYTHING). 

What are the effects of minimum wages on employment? Don't run around looking at aggregate data of different countries and their respective minimum wages. That's a small fraction of the economy that's absorbed by your over-aggregated data. You're basically absorbing every unrelated thing into a gigantic mess of data, and then focusing on two things going on in that mess. You need to do better.

To be fair, from what I've seen outside of this, most of the stuff in their reviews falls short of most peer-reviewed journals, which is by no means an insult. Some of this is completely helpful stuff. Such as his comment about increasing returns to scale which, if he had looked into the evidence, would notice economists do, in fact, study it. 

But outside of that it's essentially all of the teenage angst regarding the financial crisis and and an overbearing urge to revolt against the powers that be, but really aren't. This is glorified sociology, that reminds me of the half-assed historical studies of Marxists that were nothing more than glorified sociology. Not science. Politics. 

I have a feeling I'll be talking about them again, or at least another segment on bad statistics.

To sum up, stylized facts are exactly that, stylized. Looking at gigantic economies and using very aggregated data to prove, well, anything you want, isn't science.

Now sleep.

You want more news posts blatantly stolen from Marginal Revolution?

Well, if you insist. A few years back I used to have a subscription to "The Economist". I read it religiously. However, issue after issue it became progressively more...boring. I mean, as interesting as the elections are in Thailand (they're not), I really have other things to be keeping up with. This actually created a sentiment of general apathy towards international news. Most were the same policies, or same events happening over and over again, and they weren't interesting.


However!

These articles are actually incredible. Occasionally new things happen! Supposedly, the UK is taking up a very unconventional policy that caught my interest. Here's an exerpt:

"Ministers are considering launching a negative advertising campaign in Bulgaria and Romania to persuade potential immigrants to stay away from the UK."

I'm glad to hear that when the UK has a government expenditure as high as 49% of GDP (higher than the US),  and a debt to GDP ratio of 86.8% (under the US by a little more than 10%), they still have money to go about scaring immigrants away. Perhaps better than the US, since we spend it in more inhumane (and probably less clever) ways. Oh well. Something new. If you're scared that it'll be too cumbersome on your very generous welfare system, and that "jobs are scarce and low-paid", then perhaps you should address those directly? I'm also talking to you, rest of the world. God knows we need it here.

Next article!

That first one was just a warm up. This is off of Marginal as well, and, frankly, it's pretty insane. I remember a while ago hearing that Israel was taking organs from dead Palestinians in order to use them for their own gain. Then I heard it was a few doctors who, indiscriminately, took organs from Israelis and Palestinians alike in order to help those who needed it. Considering that Israel is also largely filled with Arabs, and, basically, non-Jewish races and ethnicities, it's reasonable to say that it wasn't going solely to the Jewish people. 

 So, I held back judgement. To be honest, it could go either way. A lot of propaganda across the spectrum. Could very well be either/or, or perhaps even some mixture of the two. The only thing we can say for sure is that it had the Israelis calling the Swedes "anti-Semitic", which surprised me that they didn't already consider them anti-Semitic. Or was that Norway? The UK? Gets thrown around a lot, I guess.

Anyways, if this has any validity to it, then it'll probably lead to a huge storm. Here's an excerpt (that I courageously and valiantly post at the risk of being called anti-Semitic):

"Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent."

What a bunch of anti-Semitic pricks, right? The world is too funny sometimes, and not in a "haha" sort of way, more of a...Nevermind, it's not funny.

I need some sleep. Too real for me today. I'm feeling that apathetic feeling coming on again. I'm out. Next topics will be much less pessimistic and dark, I promise.

P.S. I didn't get that picture until after I wrote this. How convenient was that? The only two banners in it, and it couldn't be more related.


Update: Here. A little bad and a little good, I suppose. We really can't keep spending for this stuff, but at least we'll stop chasing people who are here. I guess not all bad? Still all bad? Well, sorry for bringing it up.

Charter cities, alternative tax systems, and Conservatives pretending to be Libertarians.

A quick one. Over on Marginal Revolution I picked up this little gem. The title runs "Developer pitches $1B commonwealth for Belle Isle."

That's pretty interesting. Supposedly Belle Isle, off the coast of Detroit and between the United States and Canada, could be potentially up for grabs as a "charter city". If you don't know what that is, it's essentially a plot of land where most "state, provincial, regional or national laws" don't apply. An example would be Hong Kong where, despite popular belief, it's not technically controlled by China just yet. In fact, it holds a considerable amount of autonomy as a "Special Administrative Region", and will do so until China takes complete control in 2047 to mess up a good thing. As of now, though, it can make some of it's own rules. Hence the fact it still drives on the left side of the road (leftover from British colonial rule, which ended in 1997), and China drives on the right. Giving awkward transitions like this:

Yes, they are switching sides in probably the weirdest way possible.

Anyways, back to Belle Isle. Now, the people pushing the idea admit that "The idea won't go anywhere", but even then it's fascinating. Running social experiments by changing economic and political institutions sounds fun, albeit a bit dangerous. Although it'll be very iffy if any sort of good conclusions or credible results will follow, it'll be interesting nonetheless. Hell, I guess this is about as good as controlled experiments can run in economics, which is saying something, because this is pathetic.

Moving on. What most interests me is that it'll be dedicated as a "free-market utopia." Which sounds interesting. I find myself more on that side of the political spectrum, but not for the petty philosophical bickering for more "freedom", but rather from more consequentialistic, practical, and empirical reasons.

Now, how will this utopia be run?

"Under the plan, it would become an economic and social laboratory where government is limited in scope and taxation is far different than the current U.S. system.There is no personal or corporate income tax. Much of the tax base would be provided by a different property tax — one based on the value of the land and not the value of the property."

Well, I'm following, although some of those are vague. As John Cochrane would put it, it's not about "limiting" government, or making it smaller, per se, but making it efficient. It's not less regulation, or more regulation, it's smart regulation and dumb regulation. That, and it kind of annoys me that they only mention the tax system. Yes, it's horribly discriminatory, distortionary, and generally unhelpful and complex. Also, it's great that they bring up another plausible solution, namely the land value tax. A land value tax, although not the only or best solution for the rest of the world I believe, would have very limited distortionary effects on an island, especially since it already has miniscule distortionary effects anyways. But there's so many ills with policy, why not mention any of those? Who're you catering to? The fact that they mentioned taxes first and foremost seems to imply that...

"It would take $300,000 to become a "Belle Islander," though 20 percent of citizenships would be open for striving immigrants, starving artists and up-and-coming entrepreneurs who don't meet the financial requirement."

Yep, this is just a high income resort. The whole "free market utopia" thing doesn't sound like a very fitting title when you keep people out, and charge ridiculous prices in order to get in.

However, I will give them some credit. I understand their restraints. This will be one island outside of a very impoverished and crime ridden city. Opening the flood gates of immigration to a place that would have no taxes and no barriers to entry would probably be unhelpful, and ruin it for everyone. If they have limited land, and may need some income to pay for certain infrastructure, then perhaps it's necessary that the first attempt at a governmental alternative be limited enough to survive. Perhaps it's best that they at least offer for some people who, although constrained in income, would provide benefits to the Isle. However, It does nearly kill all chances of a reliable control (as if it was even reasonable beforehand) by making it, as one put it, "'a drain of talent and resources' at the expense of Detroit." 

Still, even understanding all of their restraints, I can't get the taste of pseudo-Libertarianism and Conservatism off my tongue. It almost seems like the next thing they'll say is...

"Among the citizenship requirements are a command of the English language".

God damn it. 

Cobb-Douglas pt. 1? AKA: Introduction to brain pain.

Pretty colors.

Alright, since I'm contemplating making a Youtube account to create tutoring videos, I might as well test the waters here. Since I haven't mentioned math in about two posts, guess what time it is? Don't worry, I'll keep it simple.

I want to cover the simple Cobb-Douglas production function. I'll lay it out, and then go about explaining it. Generally, it's written as:

Which is relatively tame once you know the purpose and definitions of the terms. L is labor, K is capital, A is known as "Total factor productivity", Y is total production, and the exponents I'll explain in detail later.

As for now, notice the structure. Total production, Y, is dependent on how much labor and capital, L and K, you put into it. Formally, it's the dependent variable in Y=f(L,K). Now, notice that when the exponents are greater than zero (A must also be positive!), then adding more labor or capital into production increases the amount produced. Obviously, that makes sense. As for the coefficient, A, that's basically a measurement of how productive and technologically advanced the production process is. Here's what Wiki says about it:

"If all inputs are accounted for, then total factor productivity (TFP) can be taken as a measure of an economy’s long-term technological change or technological dynamism."

If TFP doesn't make sense, don't worry, I'll go over it later in probably a different post. 

Now, here's something that, at first, will seem complex but is incredibly simple once you get used to it. In economics there are the concepts of "increasing returns to scale", "constant returns to scale", and "decreasing returns to scale". Think of them like this. Let's say you own a business, and you want to increase production. Let's say you double all inputs of production. What happens? If you more than double output, then you're in the "increasing" section. Adding one unit of input, gives you more than one unit of output. Let's say doubling the inputs gives you double the outputs. Well, then you have "constant" returns to scale. Adding one input gave you exactly one output. What about the final scenario, namely, you doubled the inputs but got less than double the output? Well, using the process of elimination (or your brain stem) would tell you that would be the "decreasing" returns to scale. Well, let's try it with our function. Let's say we increased all inputs by t. That would be the same as Y=f(tL,tK). Let's try that:

In other words, increasing each input by t, increased the output by t^(α+β). You can see this because increasing all the inputs by t is equivalent to multiplying the total production by t^(α+β). What does this tell us? Well, if α+β>1, then you have INCREASING returns to scale. To see this, it means that increasing inputs by t, gives MORE than t output. If α+β=1, well, then we have constant returns, because t^(α+β)=t^1=t. In other words, increasing by t caused production to increase by t. What about the final scenario, α+β<1? Well, as you'd guess, that's decreasing returns to scale, because increasing by t causes production to increase less than the increase in inputs.

That's about half the battle. Only one other thing that I want to cover, and that's marginal productivity. Marginal productivity is about what you'd expect. How much does increasing an individual input (while holding the other constant) by a small, marginal, amount increase total production? Notice how they're different. This involves increasing individual inputs. Here we can make good use of the partial derivative, and it gives:

Where MPK is the "marginal productivity of capital", and MPL is the "marginal productivity of labor". In other words, giving a small increase of either, those equations give the small increase in output.

Probably too mathematical for this crowd. Still, a good place to start, but I'll probably pick up more of this stuff later. Back to non-rigorous plebeian stuff for a little bit.

You just had to ask.

I have a rather ambitious goal for this post. So ambitious, in fact, that I might as well consider this the first part in some sort of series, or at least an ongoing theme.

A friend of mine, Beth, asked me to describe “why people do things”.

That’s so vague that it just might work. I’m going to answer a vague question with a hopelessly complex but inconclusive collection of nonsense. The idea, however, can be summed up in one sentence. If you want to understand why people are a certain way, then you need to throw yourself completely into their circumstances. That means everything. The visible, the invisible, all of it. I’m going to take a sort of Rawlsian approach in the sense that I’ll start with the general aspects of what makes people and work my way to the specifics. The reason that I hope to do this is so that I can slowly introduce different variables and circumstances in order to show what distinguishes people and why.

Let’s start with the most general. Let’s have a formless, intangible life form. Superficially it may seem that we can’t discern any interesting information out of it. However, that’s exactly the opposite of the case. We know it’s alive, so it’s very plausible to say it will die. It’s also reasonable to say that it will have to sustain itself, and future generations, etc. Every one of these points tells us a considerable amount. How is a society formed in which the people live 10 days? What about ten trillion years? What about a species that has a birth rate in the hundreds of thousands? All of these, as ridiculous as they may be, will change how this species interacts, and how their society will be formed.

Let’s make it a little more specific. Now we have a generic, absolutely bland, and insipid cutout of a human being. We know nothing about this person. So far, the only thing we can concretely say is that it IS a person. Like our last example, we can gain a considerable bit of information. We know, for instance, that it’ll have human tendencies, and won’t, say, lay eggs.

However! Don’t take that lightly!

Very much like our beginning life model, these minor distinctions dramatically change potential social and economic institutions, and could be the difference between a war mongering mole people, and humanoid teenage mutant ninja turtles. Everything makes a dramatic difference.

Now, let’s take off the veil of ignorance. This is very important! What we’ll do next will separate INDIVIDUALS from each other. Beforehand we were speaking generally, and therefore everything caused major changes in EVERYONE. Now, let’s introduce things such as gender, race, age, height, mental and physical aspects, etc. (I’ll leave out things like creed and the like till later.) Well, now we have physical and mental differences between people. What next? As anyone can tell, all of these make very considerable differences. We now have people who are 6’ 5”, Asian, female, and 42, as well as people who are 4 foot, constantly sick crybabies who complain all the time (you know who you are).

I won’t go into very great depth as to what these differences do. I imagine at this point it’s fairly obvious. I’ll just move onto the next stage, and note that this is the one that’s considered most often in all areas of the social science.

We have humans that have perceivable (and certainly some imperceptible!) differences between each other. What now? Well, now we throw them on different parts of the world and time periods and see how it goes. Some will be left in tropical areas, some in nearly barren wastelands, some in ancient periods, and some in more contemporary settings. What this does is give them environments and circumstances in which these differences in time, body, mind, landscape, etc., all make a difference.

Things have just become considerably more complex.

Now, people in certain areas will have to form their societies given these circumstances. They now have to take into consideration their physical and environmental constraints. Not only that, but they also have to take into consideration each other. 

This is where the brunt of the conversation comes in regarding economics. In fact, this is entirely what economics is, given the generic definitions I mentioned before. Why do people in South America grow bananas, and why do people in the United States grow corn? It’s much more reasonable to do so, and more can be produced. Why do people show consistent and systematic bias in their decisions? Why do certain countries grow, while others don’t? Why does the tragedy of the commons exist? Why do we have people doing the things they do at all? It’s the constraints and restrictions surrounding them. Some may be religious, because they were raised in a religious household, and therefore change their decisions according to that. They could belong to a society in which democracy is highly limited and therefore autocratic rule and lack of economic growth is pervasive. You could have a friend in which you gave money to, but didn’t put any restrictions on. How will they react? How could contracts between two people work at all? Why does that prick hit on you? Why’d your friend lie to you? There are so many structural reasons that affect our reasoning that it makes life considerably complex, but at the same time enriches it dramatically!

So, why do people act certain ways and do things? They’re a result of everything that makes them, them. The mental aspects, the cultural and social, the structural, the environmental, and on and on.

That’s the majority of it. Now, if you just want to know why people are so hard? It’s because people are pricks.

For the sake of variety.

Two in one day. Must be some sort of world record.

Anyways, I'll shift off of economics, and anything regarding society or politics in general. 

I'm not getting many blog views now, obviously, but for anyone who looks back and see's this I'll explain what I hope to do with this blog. In the usual and unoriginal framework, I'll just post about popular topics regarding any of the categories I've mentioned in previous posts. I might look at an academic paper, translate it into layman's terms, and talk about it. I might bring up contemporary happenings, etc.

On the other hand, I might make informal posts like this. I could post music, what's going on in my life, and whatever I feel should be shared or mentioned. I could really post about anything, but after time I think what's most interesting to me will get posted more often than not, and you'll get an idea of what this blog is about.

BUT

One thing I plan on doing is creating a Youtube account similar in scope to the "Khan Academy", or essentially any sort of online tutoring or educational videos. It might be related to much more esoteric fields than basic math and science, but for those select few who want to understand it it'll help. Who knows? Maybe I'll make much more basic videos for everybody starting out. Afterall, even if there is an overabundance of beginner videos, perhaps there will be hints or intuition that you can't get elsewhere. The least it could do would be waste someone's time, and if that's what you're afraid of, read the subtitle for this blog.

About it. Enjoy the rest of the weekend!


Take this with you. Good way to kick off a good night.