My choice for best essay of 2011

There are shades of disagreement with Andy Crouch's brilliant tribute to Steve Jobs, the Secular Prophet  in the Wall Street Journal, but it is, in my humble opinion, the best essay I have read in 2011.

Information sharing interferes with 'wisdom of crowds': study

Information sharing interferes with 'wisdom of crowds': study

(PhysOrg.com) -- A statistical phenomenon, called the Wisdom of Crowds, happens when a group of individuals make guesses and the average of the guesses reveal accurate average answers. However, researchers have discovered that when the individuals are made aware of other participant’s guesses, there is a clear disruption to the accuracy of the guesses.

"Loss is nothing but change."

On with the routine: starting the day with Marcus Aurelius:

Loss is nothing but change. In this Universal Nature rejoices and by her all things come to pass well. From eternity they came to pass in like fashion and will be to everlasting in other similar shapes. When then do they say 'all things ever came to pass badly and that all will ever be bad'? So no power it seems was ever found in so many gods to remedy this, but the world is condemned to be straitened in uninterrupted evils? - Book IX, Number 36. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius.

Thought for the day

An arrow's path and the mind's path are different. Nevertheless, both when it is on its guard and when it revolves round a subject of inquiry, the path of mind is none the less direct and upon its object.

Book VIII, Number 60. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius.

The moral sentiments updated. Adam Smith was right about a lot of things

The blog site known as Knowledge Problem tackles Mark Hauser's thesis that biology not religion is responsible for our morality.

What I found particularly striking is the consistency of his analysis with arguments made over 200 years ago, by David Hume and Adam Smith. Both Hume and Smith argued that our morality is grounded in our human nature in the form of our “sentiments”, and that in many ways these sentiments transcend the specifics of religion or culture.

A little wisdom from the Angry Economist

Collectivism sucks.
Really it does. Fear the smart set; they think they never make mistakes.

Quote for the day

"Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt."

["All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem."
—Cicero, De Fin., iii. 6.]

Why I'd like to study with Mario Rizzo someday

Having recently read Friedrich A. Hayek brilliant essay, "The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization" I would prize a class with NYU's Mario Rizzo. The syllabus for his class on Classical Liberalism is expansive. I trust it would be free of the Marxian cant that dominated my college days.

Reflection on the afterlife

Browsing through Cicero's Selected Works offers a moment to reflect on the soul that always moves.

It is by these means, my dear Scipio,-for you said that you and
Laelius were wont to express surprise on this point, -that my old age sits lightly on me, and is not only not oppressive but even delightful. But if I am wrong in thinking the human soul immortal, I am glad to be wrong; nor will I allow the mistake which gives me so much pleasure to be wrested from me as long as I live. But if when dead, as some insignificant philosophers think, I am to be without sensation, I am not afraid of dead philosophers deriding my errors. Again, if we are not to be immortal, it is nevertheless what a man must wish-to have his life end at its proper time. For nature puts a limit to living as to everything else. Now, old age is as it were the playing out of the drama, the full fatigue of which we should shun, especially when we also feel that we have had more than enough of it.

This is all I had to say on old age. I pray that you may arrive at it, that you may put my words to a practical test.

Authors at Google, my recommendation

A delightful lecture from John Searle on a weighty topic: free will.

Here's a recommended interview from REASON magazine in 2000.

The convert

It really shouldn't be so hard to disavow post-modern liberalism in favor of classical liberalism (or mild libertarianism).First Mamet, next Vermont!

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.