Economist Bryan Caplan has a recent blog post making a rather weird argument in favor of free will: If you take a closer look at BG research, though, you’ll notice something interesting.  Virtually every BG study partitions variance into three sources: genes, shared family environment, and non-shared environment.  Typical estimates are something like 40-50% for […]

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I recently discovered that one of my favorite films, Last Year at Marienbad, was inspired by Adolofo Bioy Casares’ novella The Invention of Morel. I use the term “inspired” here in the loosest possible sense, as the plots of the book and movie (to whatever extent it’s appropriate to describe the movie as having a […]

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Via Brad Plumer, I see Cato’s Jerry Taylor is riled at responses to an open letter ad the Institute published in which a group of scientists signed off on a statement questioning the strength of the case for catastrophic climate change. I’m broadly sympathetic with his irritation at the proportion of ad hominem attacks in […]

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I’m late to the ball here, but there have been an enormous amount of silly things written about redistribution in the past week or two. First, we have the claim that Barack Obama’s agenda is “socialist,” which is just sloppy. Words mean things, and “socialism” is about centralized economic planning and state control of the […]

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I’m not sure I entirely agree with Will Wilkinson here, but he’s always a pleasure to read.

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If I were to ask you out, would your answer to that question be the same as your answer to this one? (Hat tip to a commenter at Democracy in America.)

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Well, this is obviously incredibly flattering: Among the many dark tidings for American conservatism, there is one genuine bright spot. Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene. These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude. Most of them were dismayed by […]

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John Holbo bristles at a paragraph from Stanley Fish on bias and balance in academia: Even in courses where the materials are politically and ideologically charged, the questions that arise are academic, not political. A classroom discussion of Herbert Marcuse and Leo Strauss, for example, does not (or at least should not) have the goal […]

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In the course of making a somewhat different point, Tyler Cowen writes: It’s funny how Bryan thinks he can cite my actions as evidence against the correct belief.  That’s absurd; for instance I also don’t act as if determinism is true, but citing that doesn’t settle the matter. That seemed reasonable at first pass, but […]

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Buffeted by claims that her campaign cannot hope to overcome “the math” that gives Barack Obama an almost certain lead in pledge delegates as the Democratic National Convention draws ever nearer, Hillary Clinton today struck back, citing the controversial work of MIT mathematician Ian Malcolm as grounds for her supporters to hold out hope. Mr […]

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