Influential books

A while ago, several of the blogs I follow saw it's contributors offer up what books had been most influential in their lives and thinking. I thought I'd give an attempt to do the same, in case anybody here feels their reading list isn't long enough.

To qualify for the list, a book has to be more than informative and interesting. I've read many books that can fit this label. The books below, however, fundamentally changed my thinking and view of the world.

1. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell.

This book is particularly valuable because Sowell dedicates it to the study of axioms. This is an often neglected line of inquiry. Many books, ideas, and lines of argument don't clearly lay out the fundamental axioms which must make the basis of the argument. This is a shame, because it's often the starting points which make the most interesting discussion. Further, the more aware one is of the premise of their argument, the better equipped we are to modify our conclusions in a way consistent with that premise. Sowell identifies two broad traditions in the history of political philosophy, opposite in their basic starting points about the nature of humanity, justice, equality, knowledge, and so forth. He shows how these basic starting points lead to different ideas on how to deal with social, political, or economic issues.

As he says, "One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education. Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. It happens to often to be a coincidence and is to uncontrolled to be a plot. A closer look at the arguments on both sides often shows that they are reasoning from fundamentally different premises. These different premises - often implicit - are what provide the consistency behind the repeated opposition of individuals and group on numerous, unrelated issues. They have different visions of how the world works."

Elsewhere, he writes, "A creature from another galaxy who sought information about human beings from reading William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793 would hardly recognize man, as he appears there, as the same being who was described in The Federalist Papers just five years earlier. The contrast would only be slightly less if he compared man as he appeared in Thomas Paine and in Edmund Burke, or today in John Kenneth Galbraith and in Friedrich A. Hayek."

2. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer

Eric Hoffer's monumental book on the nature of mass movements nearly defies the laws of physics in how much wisdom it can fit into so few pages. If you haven't yet read this book, you're doing it wrong.

Hoffer posits that people join mass movements as a sort of escapism; to free themselves from an unsatisfying individual life. They become crusaders, fighting for a cause, full of a sense of importance they were never able to realize on their own. One particular gem that begs to be quoted: "Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, 'to be free from freedom.' It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?"

Hoffer also makes an important distinction in what sort of a collective undertaking qualifies as a mass movement in his analysis. "There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation."

My experience in the military makes section 47 particularly powerful. I'll leave it to you to read it.

3. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

My father once commented on my, ahem, legendary social skills. "Whether such things arise from nature or nurture," he informed me, "you were pretty much screwed from the start."

Steven Pinker's book deals with the nature/nurture debate, and before I read it I didn't fully understand the depth and importance of the issue. Pinker argues forcefully that human nature is a very real thing, and lays out the magnitude of the implications as far as politics, economics, war, crime, and a host of other important issues. The reality of human nature also means any any attempt to respond to these issues which is in conflict with human nature will be a wasteful failure. He also lays bare just how much of public discourse assumes that human beings are in fact a blank slate at birth, and how damaging the arguments which follow from this premise are.

To make things even better, Pinker even finds ways to illustrate his points with strips from Dilbert and Calvin and Hobbes. If that right there doesn't convince you this book is worth reading, I don't know what would.

4. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan.

Anyone who writes a book attacking the fundamental theory of democracy is a brave man indeed. Bryan Caplan is more than up to the task in this magnificent book, which casts the political process in a new, if somewhat depressing, light.

Caplan notes that many people hold irrational beliefs when it provides them with a psychological benefit. This makes irrationality something of a consumption good. And, like with all consumption goods, it's subject to the laws of supply and demand. Demand curves slope downward. The higher the cost of irrationality, the less people will indulge. This leads to one of Caplan's starting points. "A critical premise of this book is that irrationality, like ignorance, is selective. We habitually tune out unwanted information on subjects we don't care about. In the same vein, I claim we turn off our rational faculties on subjects where we don't care about the truth. Economists have long argued that public ignorance is a predictable response to the fact that one vote doesn't matter. Why study the issues if you can't change the outcome? I generalize this insight: Why control your knee-jerk emotional and ideological reactions if you can't change the outcome?"

This leads him to a very bold claim: "In my view, democracy fails because it does what the voters want. In economic jargon, democracy has a built in externality...Since most of the cost of voter irrationality is external--paid for by other people, why not indulge?" Or, as he states later in the book, "Since delusional political beliefs are free, the voter consumes until he reaches his 'satiation point,' believing whatever makes him feel best."

In markets, irrationality is minimized because you will pay for it. For individual voters, Caplan contends, irrationality is virtually costless to indulge, and pays off with comforting beliefs. Therefore it is rational for people to hold silly or wrongheaded views if they find comfort in those beliefs. He calls this rational irrationality. Democracy lacks the incentives which cause the downward slope in a demand curve.

The book is filled with fascinating theory and data. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

5. Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke.

Robin Hanson once pointed out that "Since our minds are smaller than the world, the world tends to be more complicated than our mental models of it." This observation may sound so pedestrian that it's not even worth taking the time to emphasize. But there is a large difference between recognizing a fact and understanding the implications of that fact. After all, Issac Newton wasn't the first one to see an apple fall, he was just the first one to understand the implications of the apple falling.

Similarly, Edmund Burke understood the implications of this seemingly mundane observation. He emphasized it passionately in his assessment, and condemnation, of the French Revolution. Burke was one of Britain's staunchest supporters of the American Revolution. But while many of his contemporaries celebrated the French Revolution, Burke saw something unsettling at the core of it. It was a movement based on sweeping and abstract ideas upon which the whole of society would be rebuilt. This enthusiasm for the abstract clouded an understanding for the dense, unknowable complexity any society holds at its core.

Burke's prose is better than my summary of it. "But I cannot stand forward, and give praise or blame to any thing which relates to human actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object as it stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances (which some gentleman pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect...Abstractly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her government (for she then had a government) without enquiry what the nature of that government was, and how it was administered?...Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate an highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights?"

One of F. A. Hayek's greatest intellectual influences was Edmund Burke. Once you have read Burke's Reflections, you can see the blueprint of his mind at work in the background of Hayek's writings. This is particularly true for the first volume of Hayek's Law, Legislation, and Liberty, and the second chapter of The Constitution of Liberty. Hayek made the point that at economy is vastly more complex than anyone could understand, and any attempt to "plan" a "controlled" economy is doomed to fail. Similarly, Burke understood that civilization, history, tradition, and the like, contain far more information and experience than any mind can contain. Attempting to rebuild civilization from scratch is doomed to fail. This is the crucial distinction Burke saw in the American and French Revolutions. The American Revolution was fought because the colonists were attempting to reclaim their rights as Englishman. The French Revolution was trying to erase the whole of society and start over.

The strength of any theory is it's predictive power. The list of Burke’s accurate predictions really is astounding: constitutional incompetence and instability; the despotic power of the Paris street; financial incompetence and runaway inflation; famine; trouble with the peasants squeezed by new landowners; trouble with peasants loyal to their priests; trouble with the traditional provinces chopped up by an absurdly abstract system of representation; the threat to property in general by the confiscation of the property of the Church; and, of course, instability in the army and the rise of a military dictator, which came in the form of Napoleon. Historians have debated for some time why the French Revolution failed and descended into the Reign of Terror. Yet all of this was foreseeable to Burke ex ante. This gives great credit to his views. But, whether or not you agree with Burke, you impoverish yourself if you ignore him.

Movie Review - I Heart Huckabees

I watched the movie "I Heart Huckabees" a few weeks ago and I wanted to write a little bit about it. If you haven't seen it, here's what I think.

As a movie....it was horrible. as a existential philosophical treatise, pretty ok, but kinda still retarded. constant non-consciousness is impossible because of the inevitability of human drama? cmon. isnt that self evident? thats essentially saying you cant live like a vegetable because you're human. duh

the interconnectedness thing growing from the manure of human trouble? put down the writings of guatuma buddha and stop adding to his already flawed philosophy. everything is nothing and nothing is everything. this violates the laws of equivocation and non-contradiction. two words that symbolize two separate and exclusive ideas cannot mean the same thing. "everything" cannot be "nothing." All the stuff in the universe cannot be none of the stuff in the universe

i also didn't like the whole "how do i know if im being myself?" line, that one dies the the death of human simplicity. for example, someone asked me how they could know if they exist? my response: "then who may i ask is begging the question?"

a lot of existentialism is serious examination of humanity, but the issues i find with it are two-fold: it doesn't adequately provide a solution to the problem of human suffering and it ends up asking philosophical questions that seem deep but really are nonsensical or self-evident.

altho i admit there was one funny part. i loved the elevator scuffle scene at the end of the movie. the rest of it was meaningless and retarded.

here is my overall rating of the movie: better than "terrible", but not as good as "awful". it pretty much just "sucks" haha

if they wanted to make a movie that hits hard on the philosophy of existentialism, they should've done it more like "no country for old men" or "there will be blood". But I do think it's worth watching simply for the sake of being able to say to others and yourself that you've seen it.