Author: David Wright

Is it more surprising that you can fill the tank or that you can empty the tank?

The attentional myopia model of booze

Yep, it’s Barker again.

I’ve really backed off on the Op-Eds since immersing myself in the blogosphere. One of my few remaining ‘go-to’s has been David Brooks. Today he irritates me. A summary quote:

The United States is becoming a broken society.

The article is full of similarly broad “the kids these days!”- style whining about how society is changing, etc. Impossible to verify rigorously. This kind of loose thinking is at the foundation of political bias and, in my view, creates exactly the sorts of problems that he’s complaining about.

I’m even sympathetic to some of the conclusion, which basically boils down to devolving power to lower levels of government. But I get there a completely different way. Ugh.

Update: I am, unsurprisingly, much closer to Arnold Kling on this, whose commentary caricatures Brooks’ column less than mine. I’m not sure about this elite conspiracy thing, but that might be because he loved Halberstam’s the Best and the Brightest and I put it down out of boredom. It was written 40 years ago or something…

Update 2: Brooks fleshes out his pessimism

There is no other place in which I feel quite so powerless.

No, I don’t go to the ghetto. Obviously.

I love this guy’s stuff.

He conducts a Quixotic debate with Krugman, in which Krugman appears to react to his posts, but rarely responds directly.

I read just about everything Krugman writes but I’m less of a fan of his than I was 7 or 8 years ago. It’s a stylistic thing. He can just be SO nasty!

Sumner is King Sh** on the two most interesting questions of the day: how macroeconomics can fail and China. He’s at his best in the piece linked to above. It’s always long, though.

For appreciations, try this

Leprechaun’s Attempt To Retrieve Gold Ends Tragically

the awl rules

Sure, it’s chess, but seriously, it has always amazed me how people could focus on something while young.

But it’s clear that that’s how you climb to the highest levels of any activity. You’ve gotta love practicing.

A photograph of a Bird’s stomach (h/t Tyler Cowen)

I was disturbed.

Listening to the James Burke podcast.

My takeaway at the halfway point: the major social trend over the next generation is going to be dealing with the massive decentralization of knowledge and its struggle against the centralization of power.  That’s very Arnold Kling, but with a nod to Russ Roberts, Cowen, etc… And Hanson.