EconTech

I haven’t seen any moral theory that doesn’t suffer from the problems Tyler describes. Thus, while I, for the most part, agree with his criticisms, the lesson I take away is not “I’m not a Rawlsian” but “Philosophy is not dead.” Aggregation is always an issue. I have other minor quibbles here and there, but [...]

I bring up social welfare functions relatively often. There is not a whole lot written about them these days; they have serious theoretical issues; they have more serious practical issues; and yet, in my mind, it is one of the most important topics in policy oriented economics. Many have accepted the proposition that the social [...]

Ok, they get PAM wrong and that is disappointing, to say the least. However, I have to agree with the substance of some of the criticism of Hanson, though NOT the claims of hyperbole (again, SA are ad hominem attacks really necessary. Let your arguments speak for themselves please).
First, some criticism against SA. The idea [...]

Apparently, I’m British. Well, not really. But my siding for zero-time preferences is apparently un-American, in terms of the modes of thought of American economists. One of the points I made earlier, that Robin’s point 2 about looking at the market for the rate is non-responsive to Eliezer’s objection that this is a bias, is [...]

Nothing real deep here, but something definitely to keep in mind. Eliezer has a thing with the dust speck versus torture and the numbers ‘game.’ I suspect, though, that the issue could be rather quickly resolved by mapping moral evaluations to various types of sets. I suspect most people, or at least those vehemently [...]

For anyone who has thought about climate change, or any other major, long term policy, remotely seriously, the choice of a discount rate becomes a critical value in your model rather quickly. The problem is, of course, that it is a value that can substantially alter the outcomes of an analysis, but the choice of [...]

Certainly there are people who fall into line with James’ description here, but plenty of people DO have issues with the way bombing campaigns are conducted. There is a literature on the issues he presents, though he seems to be ignorant of that literature. Debates on casus belli and jus in bello would be a [...]

I agree very deeply with Tyler’s remarks on the necessity of ethical training when doing policy economics. In fact, I wish that, just as there is a ‘Law and Economics’ school, that there would be a strong ‘Philosophy and Economics’ school. It is, of course, easy to get caught up in the epistemology of economics, [...]