Nick Pinkston

Debating Belief

I was talking to some friends the other day about my unbelief. I told them my deconversion story, and one of them mentioned that she'd rather believe in god and be wrong than to not believe and be wrong. This is a very old argument and is usually called “Pascal's Wager”. The idea being that you're better off believing because there's no downside, whereas atheists would go to hell if they were wrong.

There's an issue with this idea though. How do you know your god is the right one? A normal atheist retort to this is to ask something like, “what's the difference between me believing in Yahweh and believing in Zeus?” They'll usually respond by either defending Yahweh (or whatever God of choice) as the true god which is very hard to do without any proof, or they'll respond with a universalist / pantheist argument that all gods could be (or are) derivative of the same god or force.

I think this argument makes more sense than trying to prove your god is right using only your sacred documents, however there are some serious flaws. If they're fundamentalist and give this response they're definitely violating their dogma, however if they interpret their holy book more liberally it's more reasonable. This is slippery slope though. Once you claim the book can be interpreted differently over time you have to see how far this can actually go. To go from the idea that Jesus is the son of the one true god to Jesus is the son of one of the many derivatives of god is to move quite far from the original intent – not to mention arguments that the trinity actually makes Christianity polytheist.

Usually, as an atheist, you stop here and argue that since there's no proof for god and the books are highly flawed that god probably doesn't exist. However, for some reason I took the fallacious argument of “no evidence for absence” to the next level – insisting that if all gods lead to the same place, maybe there's a rationalist god, call Him “Flying Spaghetti Monster”, that actually doesn't want to be known, worshiped, etc. The only way to honor Him is to try to act as rationally as possible. There is no evidence for absence, right? I know that I always get a good feeling when acting rationally – I'm sure this must be His saucy Spirit guiding my way. If you look around, you can see the beauty of His fruits of rational living: curing the sick, uplifting the poor, etc. The holy sacraments of noodles and tomatoes are clearly good for you – look how healthy Italians are!

Of course, this is ridiculous, but in fact it's really the Christian argument without the history – and I should add without any contradictory history either. I really don't see the difference, but I'd love to hear why I'm wrong!

Homing in on Self-actualization

Whenever I deconverted from Christianity, I was left with a big hole in my life. I thought the whole time that my purpose was to fulfill the word of God. Without this divine duty – how does one find their purpose? I did a lot of soul searching, and I came up with this (perhaps cheesy) framework to do so. The idea is the concept of a multi-circle Venn diagram of the facets of your life. I'll go through my path on how I made my purpose to explain how it works.

Physics

The outer & all-encompassing ring is physics itself. We shouldn't be trying to self-actualize through time travel, becoming god, etc. This is the same for everyone – if not for you, please disregard this model...

Morals & Philosophy

The next inner ring is that of your morals & philosophy. This is a tough subject and obviously much more subjective than the first. I think we all have to this layer well fleshed-out before truly self-actualizing. This exercise is a supreme example of the “Know thyself” principle. The key to doing this is opening your mind completely. You must not be afraid of challenging any of your beliefs. In fact, you must put each of them to the test. Find people with very different points, debate them, learn from them, etc. Your view will and should evolve and develop with time – everyone's does.

In my worldview, I went from Christian neo-conservative to atheist libertarian – more info on the path I took in this post. I moved from fundamentalist and moral absolutist to someone who believes that all things exists in the gray areas and all things have a degree of relativity. This is due to all sides having some good points.

What You're Born Into

The previous two rings were constraints; the last two are more to find our range of real choices. Now that we know our worldview, we must find out the best way of living within it. One of the major contributors to the choice is what condition we're born into. A peasant in Afghanistan has a very different consideration set than a middle class American like myself.

In my case, I wasn't born into poverty or great wealth. I couldn't have been a young champion at yachting because we never could have afforded that. We also mustn't let this constrain us too much. Just because you're from the ghetto doesn't mean you have to stay that way. One of the best things you can do here is look for comps – comparable people. Look at what people like you have done – I'm guessing if you're reading this you have plenty of opportunity. Also, we have to look at our resources.

In my case, I was born into a middle class family who had enough money to provide me with books, computers, internet, a car, an allowance, etc. I'm sure many others aren't this lucky, and I owe them a massive debt of gratitude for where I am today. That said, there are also limitations. My parents aren't rich enough to invest a lot in my startup. I didn't have access to entrepreneurs and successful people my whole life.

What You're Born With

This is about talents and interests, while derivative on your upbringing, they're often quite different. Each of us has to do some soul searching to find out what we love and what we're good at.

For me, I've always been one to love technology, science, politics, philosophy, etc. I grew up with a “lab” in my garage or basement my whole life. I love knowing why things work, I love trying to improve things, and I love creative control of my projects.

The Target: What Remains

This part of it is the hardest. Many people will go through the exercise without being able to answer the questions adequately. I think if this doesn't work you, you need to solidify those areas above to have a better understanding of who you are. Challenge yourself, your views, your life to this point. It's okay to undergo massive change because the payoff of self-actualization is worth the struggle, and actually we should all love the struggle. Below is my case and my logic. I'm sure for each of us it's different, but maybe it could help.

I thought at first I wanted to be a scientist or engineer, but I was dead wrong. I love technology, but I hate details, these kinds of people love the little details – they have to. Engineering, at least as a profession, was out.

So where to go? I looked at comparables and read a lot biographies to see what others had done. I was inspired again by Edison who was not really an engineer but a hacker-entrepreneur. I thought about politics too. I'd love to fight the good fight. I interned at several campaigns and found out what that was about – hint: not the good fight. I wanted to see if the corporate world was good for me. I took an internship at a tech-transfer office – that barely lasted a couple months. I hated being controlled by people who had no vision and looked at me as little more than labor / number cruncher.

At this time, I eliminated most fields: all the arts (no talent); hard science (no attention span); history, sociology, psychology, etc. (lack of impact), and so on. What I found was that I needed to find what job allowed me to solve big problems, work with technology, and remain independent. The choice of career was clear: entrepreneur.

The issue here is entrepreneur to what end? Using the moral and philosophy I defined for myself, I wanted to dedicate my life to giving people the capabilities to self-actualize themselves. I wanted to remove as much coercion as possible. These two will allow us to make a lot of mistakes and eventually find what we love. I know that's how I found what I love at least.

My purpose: To work to better allow humanity to self-actualize (meta isn't it?) by using technology to enhance our capabilities and activism to remove coercion. This is my stated purpose, and it's why I founded my company and a non-profit. Ghandi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” I try to live by that every day.

Execution

I'm still in this phase, but it's the best (and final) one to be in. You're testing your hypothesis. I feel like my hypothesis is testing quite well right now, and whether this company succeeds or goes down in flames - I know I'll keep on trying because the ride is half (most of) the fun. If your choice proves wrong, correct and try again. The journey of life allows us to try many things, make mistakes, and keep running. Don't waste your life doing what you're not passionate about. Especially if you're young, you have nothing to lose. It's probably now or never.

The Realism of "Techno-Libertarians"

I saw a post yesterday on HackerNews called "Why People are Sheep" - the thesis was that libertarianism, objectivism, etc. only worked for techno-libertarians (of which there are many in tech startup culture) because there was a shortage in supply of good computer talent in the dot-com era, and that they basically got lucky.

He seemed pretty thoughtful, though a little naive, so I had to leave him a comment. This turned into a little exchange between us that I thought I'd post. I love to get some feedback & comments!

My Response:

Yes, it's true that luck has a large part in success - perhaps more is required than skills, however the foundation of your argument rests on an "explosive growth with a limited supply of qualified people". Please forgive me if I'm mistaking your argument, but it seems like you're implying that people can only achieve great success by exploiting a bubble (a la tech startups circa bubble-era). I think you'd recognize that plenty of people make money in ancient businesses like: real estate, transportation, etc.

In those industries, unlike the tech bubble, there is not broad explosive growth - there are many small opportunities that require time, skill & luck in order to profit from them. Anyone who wants to work hard & has a good attitude can put themselves in a position to do this assuming life hasn't dealt them a very bad hand (psychological disorders, etc.).

If you'd like to argue the points of whether people should be purely self-interested, this is a matter for philosophy which can never be solved, however if you'd like to argue against hard work being disproportionately responsible for success you've got all the data against you.

Thoughts?

Squashed's Response:

In the tech industry, you'll find a lot more people who have done very well without traditional credentials. You have highschool dropout CEOs, for example. This is a fine thing--but it isn't going to happen in finance or law or more traditional business. Building a company from nothing takes much longer. Compare Google and, say, General Mills or General Electric. Google's a relative infant. Of course, in the world of the Internet, it's a respected elder.

Is hardwork disproportionately responsible for success? Proportionate to what? Connections? Intelligence? Good fortune? Creativity? Sure, hard work is more likely to lead to success than laziness. But a lot of other things play into it too. It also depends what you mean by success. If I win the lottery, am I successful? If I inherit money, am I successful? Suggesting that hard work alone is responsible for success is convenient--because everybody has roughly the same opportunity to work hard. But not everybody is as equipped to bring about their dreams as others.

Me:

Of course - success can be measured differently, but we were referring to the monetary variety based on your focus on comparing dot-com success with other types, such as here: "computers would probably be a better launchpad for a career than fixing cars or theater or multitrack recording". The real issue here is what amount of wealth or income makes you successful.

If we define that as the top .1%, then yes you'll find a lot of technology guys, however, most people wouldn't frame success as working class vs. Bill Gates. It's much closer to whether you own the shop or work at it. I've run several profitable small businesses, and I know that hard work can lead to this variety of success with a little luck. Obviously, tech startups have higher risk and reward. I'm working on one of those now, and we've been pretty successful and luck has played a larger part, however if I didn't work my ass off I wouldn't be down this path at all.

Rejecting free markets / libertarianism based on inequalities produced is a valid argument, but we're discussing whether it brings more success to those who practice it. The truth is that hard work brings more to everyone in aggregate than subsidizing poor performers - there's higher variance in wealth though.

The question of whether to use distributive policies then rests on your views of government coercion and the ability to increase switching costs. I'm opposed, as a small "L" libertarian, to government force used other than providing an equal set of laws (human rights, contracts, etc.) and the curing of externality effects (interstate highways are good government intervention because of market failure).

This leads us to whether you define a base level of sustenance to be a right & also whether your system can produce better outcomes. The first question is for philosophy, however the latter one should look towards the massive aggregate gains (of course there are downsides) in quality of life in developing companies due to capitalism.

Squashed:

I understand that we're talking about money--but do you have to earn it (or do something that could reasonably be called "earn")? But this is beside the issue. I agree. Hard work correlates with financial success. The hard-working are not always successful--but it's a good plan.

Subsidizing poor performers does not create wealth--it's simply a distributional thing. I should mention that I'm not adverse to capitalism. I am not, however, a libertarian. I think we need to use capitalism as a tool--but beware of its limitations. Suppose, for example, we increased the social safety net for people who started businesses. The cost of failure would be reduced. Perhaps we would get more entrepreneurs?

Capitalism in other countries is a very complex issue--I would love to talk about it when I'm not stuck using IE6.

Me:

Okay, we're getting some where. I have to say that you're a very thoughtful debater, and I appreciate this quality as it's quite rare to find whether you're online or IRL.

Capitalism is definitely a tool and must not be seen as some form of gospel. The market has failures - those who don't admit this are probably either naive or fundamentalists. This includes some libertarians who believe that the government can do nothing right and that markets never fail. Such a simplistic worldview is obviously incorrect.

I think bankruptcy and the ability to form corporations are great government allowances that function the same as safety nets. This issue with having more elaborate safety nets is the concept of moral hazard. Most of these "safety nets" are really either incentives to perform some type of government endorsed action (to promote environmentally sound practices) which is usually just a veiled attempt to support certain interest groups (ethanol & corn farmers).

I'm not sure what safety nets you'd want for entrepreneurs beyond the aforementioned allowances. If you offered them some sort of unemployment or welfare you'd at best encourage sub-par people to try businesses and at worst allow people to game the system. In the end, it encourages improper allocation of capital. How would you structure these incentives?

The Validity of Respect

Edit: Dec 22, 2012

I think most of this post still stands, but I wanted to tweak the messaging a bit: I still think that respect is earned, but I'll say that what most people meaning by saying "give me respect" is to give them dignity. You could call dignity the minimum level of respect for all, or you could say that respect is wholly different thing - which is my position. I take the latter road because respect leads to things emulation of some skill or trait, whereas dignity is closer to human rights that everyone share equally for just being born. You shouldn't let anyone, no matter who they are, lose their dignity, because to me that's part of the very essense of civilization: to wish a stranger well for no reason other than our shared humanity.

Original Post

I remember when I was younger my dad explained to me that even if I didn't agree with the President's views I still had to respect him. I didn't really understand the logic behind this, but I figured there must be a good reason. I've since come to the realization that the concept of respecting authority is wholly incorrect and in fact people who preach this don't really practice it.

It's funny when conservatives want you to respect everything American: the flag, the constitution, and the office of Presidency. The latter is particularly funny because of the things they currently say about Obama. You can say any horrible thing about the guy, but they still claim to respect them. You can't respect someone that you call an idiot. I'm sorry, you're only giving lip service to the position because of some notion that it's patriotic to do so.

What I believe about respect is that it's always earned - never given. It's also not some blanket statement concept; it's compartmentalized. You can respect a doctor for his abilities to heal, but you don't have to respect his lack of ability to change the oil in his car. The same goes for your family. You should respect your parents for the dedication they put into raising you, etc., however you don't have to respect them for anything else they haven't earned.

It reminds me of Richard Dawkins' letter to his 10 year old daughter that zeros in on the root of what we know. There are three ways, he explains, that we're led to believe something is true: authority, tradition, and evidence – that latter is the only valid one. The same is true about respect. Only evidence for respect, having earned it, should be accepted as a valid reason. Authority and tradition are both tools the establishment use to stay in power.

The truth of the matter is that we should start out not respecting anybody, but only after having seen their actions, motivations, and ideals should we start to evaluate whether they're to be respected.

Liberty and Ownership

In the United States, we often equate having “made it” by: owning a house, car, etc. To me, having “made it” means being able to do what I want. This concept doesn't always mesh neatly with owning things though. If we're to define liberty, as I have in the past, as both freedom from coercion and the ability to carry out your will, we can see that holding property can both increase freedom and decrease it.

For instance, if I own a house this means I don't have the freedom to move as much as someone in an apartment, and even less than someone who is on a month-to-month lease or with a right-to-sublet. However, on the other hand, the latter doesn't have the freedom from the landlord's coercion, privacy issues, inflation, etc.

I'm finding more and more that owning things can be a liability. What are the hits to freedom that come from ownership? One of the first I see are switching costs that prevent a whole host of activities without a significant lost of sunk costs. If you buy a house, it would be great if the market and selling procedure was like buying a pack of gum – or heck even a car. Instead, this isn't possible – there's too much friction to be able to move easily – not to mention furniture and other moving issues.

Another problem with ownership is maintenance issues. For cars on lease, the maintenance is partially the responsibility of the company that sold it to you – not so if you own it. This is where insurance comes in. It's economically like renting a body shop, mechanic, etc.

The issue with everyone thinking that owning things is great is that everyone financing every large purchase now from the usually house and car down to TVs and computers. The result: increased prices of the assets themselves. There's a reason the median cost of a new car is about $28k – it's the financing. The problem with this is that there aren't any “starter homes” like there once were. You might as well build them big if lenders will give anyone a loan for $250k - the same goes for cars.

In the US, we even subsidize home ownership with the ability to write off the interest and receive various tax credits – like it's utopia if everyone owned their living space. In fact, I'm leaning toward the economic switching cost utility of renting as a much more efficient way of doing it.

In the end, I just want a level playing field with no subsidies for buyers or renters and let the chips fall where they may. For me, I can see the benefits of renting much clearer now.

What do you guys think?

Defining Equality

Everyone talks about equal rights, very few would disagree that they want them in some form, but the issue is what equality actually means. As I see it, there are three types of equality: being, means, and ends.

Equality of Being

This concept comes down to equal rights under the law – meaning that the law applies the same to everyone. It's a very simple concept and is the one which the original liberals based all their philosophy on. They believed in “natural laws” which they considered to be either god-given or somehow provable by observation. I don't agree with this notion because all methods empirically prove that this has failed and in fact point toward all rights and morals being defined relatively by some form of social contract – known as positive law. This form is alive and well in the spirit of our laws today – but not all of them.

Most people think they believe in this form of law above all else, however in practice this is rarely the case.

Equality of Means

This form usually comes about as a reaction to inequalities created by having equal laws. That is, by nature, certain individuals generate more wealth than others and those who generate less are envious of their advantages. Many of them blame legacy issues for this, such as generational wealth accumulation by the rich or white privilege. In order to try to give everyone a good starting point, the proponents of this system support adjusting the laws so that the people with lower standards of living are given the tools to succeed. A good example of this would be affirmative action programs.

Equality of Ends

Finding that further equality of means still leads to inequalities of ends, this group set out to directly take money from the rich and give it to the poor. The good example would be a distributive a tax system where the rich pay more to subsidize the poor with welfare or tax rebates.

Comparison

As you've probably noticed, the first system seems very intuitive and in small groups most people would still agree, however the latter two come in when certain people feel like they're getting a raw deal.

The middle type was tried in the United States, and I've seen data (links welcome) that indicate that affirmative action programs did help those they targeted. However, they also screwed those they didn't target. Many would say that since they didn't consider only merits that the must have subtracted value, and I tend to believe this at first take. I do remember Malcolm Gladwell talking about how black law students performed equally well on the job even against their fellow white classmates (who got better grade before and during). This would mean that little is subtracted. There is also some added benefits of perhaps curing social ills which may be holding back part of society.

I could see these programs having positive net benefits, however I disagree with the type of coercion required to mandate them. It seems like they set a bad precedent in long term lawmaking – which is a net loss in my opinion.

The last type, “ends”, is by far the worst. Instead of letting individuals make the decisions it allocates from the top down – which experiences massive dis-economies of scale, improper asset allocation, disincentive for effort, etc. I see no redeeming feature of this form of equality other than from the perspective of dead beats. This overall decreases the value of wealth in society for everyone.

Thoughts?

Flavors of Elitism

I've been accused of many things including being: pedantic, outspoken, and an asshole, but one that interests me the most is probably being accused of “elitism”. After exploring the concept for a while, I conclude that elitism can come in all flavors of politics and philosophies but it expresses itself differently in each form. If I'm to be an elitist (which I'm not sure that I am), I'd at least like to know which type I fit the best and if this is the “best” type or not.

Before we can talk further, let's define the term. Elitism is basically the idea that a certain subset of the total population is considered to be significantly better due to their: skills, ideas, birthright, etc. The key word here is “considered”. We have to define what the criteria for being elite are, or conversely perhaps we have to find out what they self-define as the proper criteria for being the “elite”. The answer to this question defines how each flavor of elitism comes into its own.

I'm going to define the flavors by which criteria each group considers to make them elite. I'm also going to narrow thee discussion to intellectual elitism because I really don't care about elitism in sports or any such form. I'll go over the three most popular forms of elitism (at least in the US): cultural / nationalist, leftist, libertarian.

The majority of intelligent people (as least that I know) fall into the last two categories, but I'll go over all of them.

Cultural:

This is very common among republicans, neoconservatives and “blue dog” democrats. In a nutshell, people who espouse this view believe in “American exceptionalism” meaning that they think our culture is superior to all others. They are usually religious and very attached to tradition and the status quo. Their philosophy shows itself in the idea of nation-building in the model of George Bush who thought we needed to spread this philosophy. These people believe that being as close to the American ideal (as they define it) is the criteria by which to judge the elite. This system in its most extreme form gives rise to nationalist parties like the Nazis whose elite defined themselves as the “master race”. Its more benign forms resemble post-WWII America with the ideals of cultural conformity and “keeping up with the Joneses”.

Leftist:

This is very common amongst the intelligentsia in the United States and around the world. They generally place the highest emphasis on social justice – which is usually defined by how narrow the gap is in standards of living for each class. This system defines its elites by their commitment to social equality. This system in its most extreme form gives rise to totalitarian-communism like that of Soviet Union. A more benign form would be that of French social-democracy with the ideals of social equality and distributist policy.

Libertarian:

These views are quite common in a few subcultures: finance, internet and startups. They place high emphasis on individualism, private property, and equality of rights. The elite are defined by implicit meritocracy (i.e. succeeding in their goals). This system in its most extreme form would be anarcho-capitalism, however this has never been sustained in practice. In more benign forms, this philosophy was well exemplified in the period after the American Revolution and to a certain extent in the early American Western expansion.

Flavors reviewed:

Cultural elitists seem to have the least amount of support for their views. All data goes against their idea that America (or whatever culture of your choice) has the right answers of how to run a society. Having a strong culture does help in many circumstances such as winning a war (think WWII and its affect on post-war America). Philosophies that can be disproven in application should be discarded.

This leaves us with last two that aren't empirically disprovable. I'd think the proper measure is to see if the elites in each group are are consistent with their underlying philosophy.

Leftist philosophies have their roots in populism, and they espouse equality for all and the end of social class. I think in practice it seems that they often end up with a rigid two class system. Extreme cases like the USSR have their politburo where the elite reside with a far higher standard of living than the masses. If we look again at European-style social democracy, we see a similar pattern of increased income equality with a loss of social mobility. If you look at European stock indexes, you'll see that most of the companies have been listed for the past 50 years – unlike the US which changes far more rapidly.

Libertarian elitists also have their roots in populism. If you read Thomas Jefferson, you'll see that he was both very libertarian and also very populist. However, I think Ayn Rand's libertarianism, “Objectivism”, is quite elitist. Read “Atlas Shrugged” - you'll see the capitalist elite portrayed as heroes. Pure capitalism seems to always lead to income inequality, however these elites embrace this.

I'll let you decide which is best...