Arrogance of the intellect.

If I ever start using my education and training as a foundation for arrogance, you MUST set me straight. This week I have come to the conclusion that, while not all of the economics professors here at GMU suffer from arrogance, far too many of them do. Included in the afflicted are all three professors that I have classes with this semester. Now, this arrogance takes several forms, but all have the same root - forming judgments and beliefs based on seriously flawed and/or incomplete information. Now don't get me wrong, all three men are brilliant, and I respect all of them, but all three have allowed their intellect to impair their ability, in some areas, to absorb information that doesn't fit with a preconceived idea of how things should be.
One professor emphatically does not believe evolution, and is able to rattle off many logical and factual problems with the theory, but neither does he believe in design by the Creator. Why? Because his back hurts, and other physical aliments observed around him, make him think that humans were not perfectly designed. His intellect cannot accept the notion of a Creator, therefore, no Creator exists. So what does he believe? Hmmm, good question. Not in evolution, and not in God (in any sense).
The next prof. allows his intellect to make snap judgments about political issues. Sometimes he seems to be on target, but more often his assumptions are simply incorrect. Though I think he realizes that he doesn't have all vital information, he feels that he has enough to act and believe as if he had all pertinent information. He doesn't.
The third professor blatantly assumes that the rules he plays by are the only proper, the only rational, rules by which to think and form opinions. If you can argue and win from within his rules he may accept your point, but heaven help you if you try to argue that one of his assumptions about rationality, morals, motives, or another such human aspect, is flawed. His fervent belief in his perfect conception of rationality is, ultimately, irrational.

Three forms of arrogance: "This doesn't fit into my preconceived opinion of how things should be, so it must not be true." "I don't need to know all the relevant information, I know enough to make a judgment." "My approach is the only rational and proper approach to use." All three are dangerous both in academic and personal life, yet all three are oh so easy to slip into - especially for the educated mind.

Why should I believe as I do?

Tonight I had the pleasure of attending a debate between two of my favorite professors here at GMU about the rationality of religion. It was unfortunate that one debated the rationality of religious action and the other the rationality of religious belief, but the debate was fantastic nonetheless. I believe that the debate will be made available as a podcast (digital recording) for dispersal, and when it is I will link to it. Why should you listen to it? Because it provides excellent examples of a fantastic speaker (Dr. Larry Iannacone), the types of anti-religious arguments you hear all the time in academia (Dr. Bryan Caplan), and some good, non-experiential based, arguments for why religion is a rational action (again, Dr. I). Why non-experiential? Well, simply because if you base your entire argument for religion on experienced phenomenon you leave yourself open to counter-arguments such as "well, that's your experience and that's fine for you, but I've never experienced that", or, "are you sure you didn't just see/feel/experience what you really really wanted and expected to - kind of a mind-over-matter sort of thing."

All right, that's enough for now. I have many more thoughts on this though, so if you're interested, ask me.

God bless,

Read this

Wednesday I read a paper that made me laugh, smile, chortle, and think that perhaps it's time that economists stop pretending they can analyze religion without accounting for the supernatural. That leaves me with a significant question however - how can I provide additional depth to the work being done on the Economics of Religion by drawing God and the supernatural into the picture? Here's the paper - it's not long and really isn't as sacrilegious as it seems at first. And here's a good website for some background on what economists have just started doing with religion in the last couple years. Warning about that second website - it is substantially more complex and "economic".

Another one of these kooky 60 degree and sunny November days here in Virginia.... Yesterday I drove nearly all the way to the southern edge of the state while making a run for my part-time job. At least I didn't have to drive all the way to our branch office in Raleigh NC.

Was I born in the right decade?

Once again I have come across one of "my" economic ideas in a paper that was written in the 60s. I guess the challange for me now is to both learn to identify which ideas of mine that haven't been written about yet have merit (instead of just assuming they are so simple as to be worthless) and to explore new applications of these old ideas of "mine".

I have a question for you. Why is democracy the best? Do you have any economic, administrative, or effectivness reasons why democracy is the best form of government? I think that question can be solved rather easily, but more difficult is the question of which of the many voting methods is best.

Third random point. Yesterday, working in the AAV shop, I was marveling at the network of small and medium sized businesses that exist to produce the technical setups for tradeshows, conferences, concerts, etc.... Not only are there the companies that actually bring the equipment, set it up, and run the show (and even then they hire lots of freelance help for specific jobs), but there are also many companies that rent additional equipment, do shipping, even tasks as mundane as building cases in whish to transport and store expensive equipment.