CapitalistImperialistPig

One argument that Prof Harari likes to make is that while capitalism has produced enormous growth, it also requires economic growth, growth that can only be powered by technological advance.  Is that true?  Is steady state capitalism impossible?  What if it were? The basic logic goes like this: borrowing and lending are at the heart of capitalism, but borrowing and lending at interest only make sense when there is an expectation that the investment will lead to net profit.  In a zero sum economy, the average net profit is zero.  Thus, on average, investing becomes a losing strategy or at best, a pure gamble. By contrast, in a growing economy, investment buys a piece of the larger future pie.  Of course most growth inevitably hits limits imposed by resources.  Can our ingenuity continue finding more forever?  I have my doubts.

Arun has been interested in a study which apparently shows that literacy and numeracy are more hereditable than, g (AKA IQ).  Should that be surprising?  Afterall, literacy and numeracy are learned skills. The answer, I think, is no.  Consider an analog, skill at basketball.  Nobody becomes a really good basketball player without long and intense practice, but after an equal amount of practice different players will have hugely different levels of accomplishment.  Some reasons are obvious - strength, height, jumping ability, agility, and running speed, for example.  Others may be more subtle, like hand size, peripheral vision, muscle precision and so on.  All these are highly variable in the wild population, and strongly dependent on genetics.  Only persons with big constellations of these talents are likely to be able to play at the top level. Having a parent with such a constellation, or two parents with big parts of the constellation will g...

Disney may be the evil empire, but it could pick talent.  Britney and Justin from way back when.

Professor Yuval N. Harari's Coursera history course is exactly the kind of MOOC that Historian Jonathan Rees likes to hold up to scorn. Just lectures, mostly from a guy sitting in an armchair. No required outside reading. No writing assignments. No in class discussion. And the tests are easy multiple choice. Well, I still like it a lot. Well prepared lectures have a lot to offer. Sure, I could read the words faster, but the human voice has a compelling quality of its own. Listening to some guy talking is not going to work for all courses. I don't think you can learn much physics that way, especially if you don't do any problem sets. Some professors, maybe most, give boring or badly structured lectures, don't present the material at the appropriate level, or just happen to be annoying to listen to. But I really like this little Israeli guy, with his funky accent and original (to me) take on the big picture of global history.

Harari's answer to a student question: to free us from the grip of the past. To help us understand how we got to where we are now and give us more choices about the future.

Not just for people any more. Some people are hunting hogs with drones - in Louisiana. Colorado's Parks and Wildlife Commission is expected to begin the process of approving a ban "prohibiting the use of drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) as an aid in scouting, hunting and taking of wildlife" in a meeting Thursday. The ban was initially suggested to the commission by the coordinator of a local hunting group who was alarmed after stumbling upon YouTube videos posted by a group called "Louisiana Hog Control" who use a drone dubbed the "Dehogaflier" to kill wild pigs.

Jonathan Rees is a Prof at the University of Colorado at Pueblo who got his 15 minutes when somebody like Matt Yglesias quoted one of his anti-MOOC screeds. I commented there until I, and seemingly all but the true believers, were expelled. Now his comment section consists solely of variations on "Yea, Verily." Anyway, I keep reading as a matter of anthropological interest. If his brand of denialism seems strangely familiar, it's because all the denialists are really singing just one tune: "I know what I want to believe so don't try to confuse me with facts." Honest skeptics are very different. They really do want to hear facts that might contradict their hypotheses, even if those hypotheses are deeply held. Cultural conservatism is not only a fact, it probably is adaptive at some level. A culture that admits innovation is certain to be transformed, sometimes rapidly, so every stable culture has conservative elements built in.