19 January 2025

Observations

* While the modern era in many countries is quite technologically advanced, we still lag in adopting new technologies that make sense. Many good, economically sensible ideas that would work are never adopted in almost every industry and walk of life.

* In policy determined by politics, while there is not one correct answer, there are many incorrect answers that are objectively, or at least, intersubjectively, clearly wrong. 

* Many popular beliefs about policy and science and medicine and technology are profoundly wrong.

* While the term is become somewhat hackneyed, "opinion leaders" do greatly influence what the general public thinks is good policy. It is not just a one way street with the views of the masses (who often don't have any meaningful views on something) driving the decisions of politicians. Politicians and judges shape what the public considers right and wrong at least as much as they respond to public opinion.

* Uninformed and misinformed voting can increase public confidence in the system, but it doesn't lead to better choices. But, people who have no vote, systemically get shafted by the decisions that are made by politicians, while the desires of people who vote reliably are far more likely to come out on top when decisions are made.

* It is very common for people, both ordinary people and more sophisticated people, to be aware of a problem but to be greatly mistaken about the cause of that problem. Conventional wisdom about what causes things to happen is often wrong.

* Smart people make different kinds of mistakes than stupid people.

* Only a modest minority of people will change their beliefs when presented with facts and evidence that are contrary to their beliefs. Changing people's views is to a great extent a social process and a function of experience.

* People who are knowledgable about something greatly underestimate how little everyone else knows about what they know.

* People tend to underestimate the capacity of technology to improve and to cause social change, and tend to overestimate the capacity of societies to change non-technologically.

* If people seem to be acting in an economically irrational manner, this usually means that the people observing them don't understand their situation in important respects.

* If you see businesses acting in what seems to be an odd or inefficient way, it is most often some strategy to engage in price discrimination.

* Every law and regulation exists for a reason and you should understand why it was put in place and what effect it had (which may have worked in an unintended way) before committing to changing it. But many laws and regulations nonetheless no longer make sense, especially in a rapidly changing world.

* The folkways and norms of a culture in a particular region often persist long after they have become dysfunctional for current conditions.

* Religion thrives when it protects threatened cultures, it withers when the culture of which it is apart is dominant and secure.

* Most people are more rigid about adopting new languages or language innovations, new religious beliefs, new cultural norms, and new political views once they are past a formative period which is often in their 20s or younger.

* Our society is neither ruled by an elite cabal of a few dozen or hundreds of billionaires and elite politicians, nor by widespread grass roots democratic decision making. Most real decision making is made by perhaps several of thousand to several million people, although some important decisions (especially economic decisions) are more decentralized.

* It is harder to figure out viable paths to improve the status quo than it is to know what a better world would look like.

* Many intelligent people who accurately state the facts and the problems propose bad solutions based upon that knowledge.

* One of the important functions of politics is to prioritize problems vis-a-vis each other. It isn't uncommon for problems that are known to exist and have clear solutions to go unsolved because they aren't ultimately very important to solve yet.

* Demagogues are incredibly harmful to society and hard to regulate.

* Our political system and business firms do a poor job of screening out psychopaths and demagogues from positions of power.

* The most important factor that distinguishes the economic success of capitalism v. communism, and the private sector v. the public sector, is that the capitalist private sector shuts down failing firms and activities more quickly.

* Political power is more concentrated than economic power.

* Small organizations can change themselves more rapidly than big ones, and big organizations broken up into many small ones can change all of them more rapidly than the one big organization can, most of the time.

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