A Grave Mistake...

I realized something when reading a comment of stickman's in an earlier post...

... I haven't been following his blog! I thought I put it on my blogroll as soon as he started, and then I just figured he didn't keep up with it. Turns out I never got it on my blogroll and he's been writing fairly regularly!

Anyway - I only note this because it's really, really quality stuff. I've been trying to read through them tonight. Here's a sampling of some good ones:

- The newest post is on facts vs. beliefs, our willingness to change our minds when confronted with contrary evidence, and some stupid knee-jerk defenses that people engage in. His take away point: "Facts are important, but you have to play - and be sensitive - to peoples' emotions and values if you really want to win hearts and minds." I would agree with this, but I would caution against play the turns into dangerous indulgence.

- A great post on physics envy, an accusation which I think is too easily flung at economics. Economists have to constantly be on guard even for physics admiration (which I have), lest it be interpreted as physics envy. What's so strange about the physics envy accusations is that they seem to reject doing anything that physicists have ever done... it's as if math is "claimed by physics". I personally think economics is more like biology than any other natural science (it is biology - we are studying the social behavior of highly evolved primates), but when the task is to optimize, you can use optimization theorems no matter who else is using them. When the tool is appropriate to the task at hand, there's nothing that should prevent you from using the tool that makes the most sense... really makes me want to get around to reading Knight. And I'll be damned if it doesn't make me think of Keynes too.

- Here, he shares a great article advocating the pursuit of both carbon taxes and a robust R&D policy... no argument here. As a side note, I had no idea they made He-Man into a movie - I just knew it as a cartoon.

- Here he uses Schelling's classic segregation model to show the importance of math in economics. If you haven't read Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior you really should.

- Here he talks about the prospect of morality without God, citing an article by Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal. Stickman bolds precisely the line that stood out for me: "Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior." This all reminds me of Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue which, like Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior, you really should read if you haven't.

- Here stickman notes that people haven't been reading through his math examples! I did! But he raises a serious concern here - people simply aren't interested. He apologizes for his calculus, but I don't really see why he should. It should have been a fairly accessible post. Nevertheless, it might simply not be the medium for it. There has to be a happy medium, though. One person who I think does a very good job at introducing models without overwhelming readers is actually Paul Krugman. They are quite simply models (although even those can confound some people [I'm refering to commenter RP Long in this thread, not Arnold Kling]) - sometimes they are more complex - but they provide a structure to Krugman's arguments that you simply don't get in any other economics blogs out there. This is probably the level that should be done in blogs - which means that most of us could get a little more formal in the presentation of our ideas. That's a steep order - Krugman has a lot of experience in this sort of thing.

- Here is his Nobel Prize post.

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