Cure-alls and Remedies
Well, he’s not. But that’s the title of his new blog . (Apparently he is challenging me for the title of “Most Contrite Fallibilist.” He’s even taken the nom de plume of “Wrongzo.” Bastard .) For his first substantive post, ” What should we mock about when we mock about guns? ” he parodies my…
I love policy discussions, but the demands for policy discussion on gun control after the shootings in Newtown today are terribly wrong-headed. The problem is that demanding a policy discussion is not the same thing as having a policy discussion. At this point, we’re just talking about talking about gun control. It’s all “mention” and…
Keith Humphreys shares this interview with Vanda Felbab-Brown . There are no dull moments, but here’s one I think should give us lefties pause: what will replace the underground marijuana economy? Felbab-Brown explains: Most of the time governments tend to fight illicit economies and not think about what will replace them. Policies are often premised…
Some recent posts by Dan Kahan on the subject of “cultural cognition” deserve attention: (Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to…
[caption id=”attachment_3023″ align=”aligncenter” width=”300″] Old Ohio Penitentiary by J. Harris Day[/caption] This semester I taught a course on crime and punishment, and in part out of competition with my colleague Seth Vannatta , I set out to give a final presentation on the dimensions of the course. This is the presentation I wrote. Introduction…
[caption id=”attachment_3029″ align=”aligncenter” width=”300″] by Seany2000[/caption] Via Metafilter’s kliuless (who definitely has a kliu): The Conservative War on Prisons: “Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?” Raise The Crime Rate: “Statistics are…
Here’s a bet I’d like to make: a good introduction to philosophy course will do more to increase students’ critical thinking abilities than a good course in logic or critical thinking. Here’s what I think I’d need to get this bet off the ground: First, we’d need a stable student body and a randomly selected…
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a broad consensus among reformers in the United States regarding the perniciousness of economic monopolies and winner-take-all politics. After that period of rampant growth and cronyism known as the Gilded Age, groups who had been disproportionately disadvantaged by political patronage and voter fraud began to organize…
At the Monkey Cage : “Once again, politics proved to be more complicated than a simple bidding market in which the side that spends more money gets the prize: Money did not seem to matter in the sense that it determined the outcomes. But candidates certainly behaved as if it mattered, which gave – and…
Last year, I suggested that liberal objections to Citizens United were partly justified by predictions about its effects that I didn’t see as probable . As the election draws to a close, we can begin to say whether the consensus view or my own views were accurate. Here goes: as a percentage of GDP, this is…