Um, what is the most important thing you learn from the work of
Jason Brennan? Most important work?
I learned for them from the work of Jason Brennan.
The actually Priya probably the thing.
The other thing is work that I've learned the most from, is
his why not capitalism, which is reply to Jerry Cohen's classic
work. Why not socialism?
And what's really neat? That Jason does in the book.
Is he just says, all right, look, we can imagine a society
of totally cartoonishly. Nice, sweet pea.
People who still want to have capitalism and we can imagine
what that would be like and he relies very heavily upon the
Mickey Mouse clubhouse TV show for kids Reese's like there's
clearly Capital Society. All the characters own stores
and run businesses, but they're all really nice.
They're all really nice. And he says, in this is what's
wrong with Jerry Cohen spoke, as he talks about a society where
everyone is super nice in their socialist.
And Jason says, look, really all the mileage is coming from the
niceness and not from the difference of And it's not true
that nice people would necessarily want.
Socialism, just in the same way that a really nice person might
not want to co-author a paper with another person.
They might want to write singly so they can express themselves
in a undiluted fashion. So, to, in a capitalist Society
really nice person might want to run their own business.
They can do it their way, Express their individuality, and
selling. That's, that's a really nice way
of explaining it, right. So, anyway, so, you know, that
those so he takes what he was. Sofia presents the Jerry Cohen
argument. And he really pervasive in this
very persuasive way of saying, what do you want to be part of a
campaign group where everyone was buying and selling things
for everyone else? And people were acting all
greedy and Jason says, well, you probably wouldn't would want to
be in a nicer can't but it's the niceness that matters, but we
could also have an Eye Society based upon free market
principles. And in fact, he says that one
will work better Ina course, it's not very nice to make
someone follow the rules of your group when they want to do their
own thing. What is the most important thing
you learned from the work of Michael humor now?
So for Michael humor, I will actually go out really far and
say, there's a whole literature on whether you can teach a human
being, how to think, right? Which is overall quite -.
But I would say if there were any hope that there were
thinker, that could teach people how to think that thinker would
be my humor because he doesn't just have positions on specific
issues because a general algorithm for how to think about
anything and the algorithm. Is an algorithm is this.
First of all, start with some premises that will be plausible
to almost anyone. All right, and that means almost
anyone, right? It's not just sure I me my five
friends. All agree on this.
Now, start with some premises would be very broadly
acceptable. When you don't need to First,
have a whole worldview before you can see the appeal of the
premise, right? So that's Step One is, and then
step two is try to construct an argument.
That were you reason very carefully from broadly accepted
premises to an obvious conclusion.
So, that is the general method that he uses and then I was also
seeing a secondary method that the ability of the applies is to
say for a. Yeah.
Any time you think you've got a very broadly acceptable?
Premise think really hard about counter-examples that one and
see whether there's any lessons you can learn and one lesson
that you love that he or that he gets out of this is Any
principle where you are, especially on any any ethical
political principle or you just say this, something is always
true regardless of anything else, principles almost always
wrong. I think of this as all one
sentence moral and political theories are wrong.
Right. And again, it comes down to
someone, you know, so there's a Libertarian one.
Well, you should never initiate Force against anyone else.
Well, how about, if you could steal a dime, to save the Earth?
How about that? You still shouldn't steal the
dime. Right?
Right, but it could also be everything should be equal.
All right, well, should be equal.
What if half of humankind will die of starvation?
If we equalize everything? Should we still do that, then,
right? So that kind of thing, right?
So anyway, if you go and read Mike's work all of Does follow
these general principles of thinking which I have found to
be tremendously helpful and it's something that also you can
apply out-of-sample. So it's one thing to say some
general principles. Then he gives you some examples
and then you just repeat these examples, but I will say that
you can apply this your Marion method to new questions and they
often have right and I have used this to get rid of many of my
ridiculous and dogmatic use because often there was some
philosophical principle, but I held and then I just thought,
well would this make Make sense to someone with the same.
We like doing. Who does this make sense to you?
Well, this premise makes sense to five people.
Why do I even believe it? Is?
It actually all that obvious and only they know.
I mean, I believe it because I got really excited when I was
young about this and I've been barking it out at other people
ever since. Okay.
Well, so let's stop doing that. And let's see.
Is there any principally? What principles would seem
obvious to almost anyone who was not in the grip of some other
ideology? And suddenly, I've applied this
to many other issues. And I think I've just gotten a
lot of mileage out of it. So soon for personal growth and
for understanding the world. So, for example, I don't think I
like until we actually reviewed my book, the case against
education. I don't think my humor really
wrote anything notable on education.
But if you read the book, you'll see that it's very humor
influenced because so much of the book is about trying to find
premises about the education system that will make sense to
almost anyone things like And if you could either get the Clio,
learn the material in a class, but not but not getting an F in
the class, or you get an A, but not learn the material, which
would actually more helpful for your career.
This is something else. I might didn't teach me to ask
that, but this is the kind of question that you start asking.
Once you take my humors thought seriously, and it does lead very
naturally do. Yeah.
Well most people would rather have the grade without the
learning, the learning about the grade and that along with many
other, similar questions are really the inspiration for the
book. And yeah, there's a lot of other
books also as a lot of research in it, but a great part of it is
just be you trying to start with premises that will be plausible
to someone who wasn't dogmatically convinced.
Every class you're taking is pouring skill into you.
What is the most important thing you learned from The Works of
Michael humor? Oh God, there's so many things.
You know, I'm not answering quickly just because I like
humor stuff so much that it's hard to pick.
I think I think what I like the most about humor rather than the
substantive content is the methodological style.
So humor is very much. Some philosophers do something
like this first. Let me give you a crappy
argument for some big theory that you probably won't believe
and then let me just explore the implications of that theory.
So an example, that would be John Rawls, John, Rawls has a
great political philosopher. But fundamentally, what he does
in a theory of justice is give you an incomplete.
Somewhat ad, hoc, not particularly compelling,
argument for a couple principles of Justice, which happened to
correspond with what the average Democrat in 1968 to 1972 would
have believed anyways, and then he kind of explores what that
theory would mean. Humor is very much more of the
he's like, he's really Peter Singer where he's like, you the
reader believe this, you believe this.
And you believe this here are three common.
Since moral views and empirical use that, you probably already
have. Now.
I'm going to show you that these lead to some surprising
conclusion that you didn't realize, which means that you
either have to accept this conclusion or you have to give
up one of these things you already believe.
Right? And that's I think a powerful
way to do philosophy rather than my crazy Theory, implies some
crazy results. You're like the thing you the
reader already think imply, something, you weren't you
weren't, you weren't aware of. So I very much try to emulate
humor in my work where I try to lie upon common sense.
All ideas and like I argue for not common sense conclusions,
but I try to show that they follow from Common Sense, moral
ideas. And the reason that we don't
endorse them is because of our own, ethical confusion.
And if I have an empirical claims and I back them up with
the evidence to support them. Yeah, you did a terrific job and
against democracy with your jury.
Analogy. Can't recommend this book
enough. What is the most important thing
you learned from Bryan Caplan? The rational irrationality?
Thesis, that's the most important thing.
So, the rationale irrationality thesis is the claim that the
reason that people like, remember Ashley ignorance from
previously in the discussion. People don't know things because
the cost of knowing it is higher than the value of knowing it
rationally. Rationality is an addition to
that. It says processing information
in a careful way, takes time and effort and is difficult,
indulging, bias, indulging, false beliefs can sometimes have
a positive benefit and it's To do sometimes.
So, rashly, the thesis here is that people will be rational in
there. Like an epistemic sense.
They will think scientifically in carefully about an issue.
If the benefits exceed the costs in otherwise, otherwise, they
won't. And so what if you take,
seriously, neoclassical economics these ideas, it says
that the typical voter is not is going to allow themselves to
indulge bias allow themselves to indulge their worst thought
processes. There's no not going to think
carefully about something. Because their vote doesn't
matter very much the cost to them of being rational exceed
the benefits of being rational. So it's instrumentally valuable
to be epistemic lie irrational. So, I learned that from him.
I read a draft of his 2007 book, myth of the rational voter
before was published and he's nice enough to share that with
me. And that there really be.
I knew a lot of the facts about like the stuff about ignorance
and so on before, but I think I learned from him, just how bad
it is and it's not simply affect an information problem, but that
voters have such a Face, it incentive problem that explains
why they behave badly like why they reason badly and act like
jerks. So Bryan Caplan, what is the
most important thing? You learn from him or you
thought his most best contributions?
Yeah, man. So, you know, there are two
answers. So the answer to the first
question is Bryan Caplan, introduced me to her Narco
capitalism. And so I don't know if you know
this story, right? We were at UC Berkeley.
So Brian, and I went to college at UC Berkeley at the same time
on. So that's where I met him.
And then he introduced me to an cap and that's Became America's
I've already libertarian, right? And then he told me about this
and I and my first reaction was anarchism is crazy.
But you know, and then he was able to explain it and liking
made me read Murray rothbard indeed Friedman his biggest
contribution to just like, you know, other than an cap, um,
which you know, he did invent is of course a theory of rational
irrational T. Right.
So the book, The Myth of the rational voter, right?
That's like the the big statement of that also a bunch
of papers, but And, you know, I use that theory frequently, like
I invoked it in this discussion. And Jason Brennan.
Another one of my favorite philosophers.
What something you learn from him or thought was his best
intellectual contribution. Yeah, I mean Jason and I
basically have the same views like it's like, you know, on on
government and democracy and whatever and anarchism, although
it's not obvious in, I don't think it's come out in his
published philosophical, writings that he's an anarchist.
I think people when people read him, they think that he's an To
stick rat by that is, you know, a person who believes in the
rule of the well-informed or something.
And I understand why people would think that because, like,
so he has some good articles about this about how, you know,
you have a right to not be ruled by people who are totally
incompetent and and ignorant and stupid and whatever and are not
paying attention to so on and so, you know, the suggestion
seems to be, okay, so we should just, we should be ruled by the
smart wise benevolent people or whatever, but I happen to know
that is actual use anarchism. But anyway, so I mean, I think
that is criticisms of democracy or probably his biggest
contribution, right? And just, you know, pointing
out. I mean, like it's well known how
democracy is screwed up and he's well known among people who look
into that sort of thing, not among the general public, who
have totally incorrect use about democracy, but, you know, like,
besides explaining the problems with incentives, right?
I think, just like explaining how it's totally immoral, right?
The system that we have is immoral because like, you know,
You're you're under the power just like, you know, without
even being a Libertarian, right? You can see that there's
something wrong with you being under the, under the power of
these people who don't know what the hell they're doing, and
don't care. Right?
Like all of these voters, don't care.
They're not, they're not doing research.
They don't know what the issues are right there.
Just like taking some tweets that they heard whenever and and
voting on the basis of who's good-looking or stuff like that.
Yeah.