Highlights from “Does Technology Drive the Growth of Government?”, by Bryan Caplan
On the Origins of the Arts, by E. O. Wilson
The Irrationality of Irrationality: The Paradox of Popular Psychology, by Samuel McNerney
Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?, interview with Lawrence Krauss
La subida del IVA y la estrella ascendente del ministro De Guindos, de Jesús Cacho
En lo de Caplan me ha parecido especialmente interesante este comentario de J. Storrs Hall:
“There’s a strong case to be made that technology gave people the luxury of being able to afford extra government. One can also make the case that it changed what they wanted to some extent. I make a case for that here and here.
But it seems that there is an additional case to be made for a memetic argument. As technology moved people up the Maslow hierarchy, it changed the criteria with which they tested arguments. Beforehand: is it true, does it work? After: does it feel good? So people became more susceptible to the socialist meme, which took off from say 1880-1920, just as living standards were doing. A contributing factor was surely technology itself, which not only promised but delivered prosperity from vast designed mechanism. The analogy to political mechanism was explicit in writings like H. G. Wells.”
En lo de Caplan me ha parecido muy interesante este comentario de J. Storrs Hall>/a>:
“There’s a strong case to be made that technology gave people the luxury of being able to afford extra government. One can also make the case that it changed what they wanted to some extent. I make a case for that here and here.
But it seems that there is an additional case to be made for a memetic argument. As technology moved people up the Maslow hierarchy, it changed the criteria with which they tested arguments. Beforehand: is it true, does it work? After: does it feel good? So people became more susceptible to the socialist meme, which took off from say 1880-1920, just as living standards were doing. A contributing factor was surely technology itself, which not only promised but delivered prosperity from vast designed mechanism. The analogy to political mechanism was explicit in writings like H. G. Wells.”