Via Tyler Cowen, a paper by Davide Cantoni casts some doubt on the efficacy of the Protestant Ethic: Many theories, most famously Max Weber’s essay on the ‘Protestant ethic,’ have hypothesized that Protestantism should have favored economic development. With their . . . . Continue Reading »
The Climategate tiff continues to annoy me. I have serious concerns about the methodology that has been used in the mathematical models which purportedly “prove” that we need to spend trillions of dollars, keep the third world in poverty, and restructure the global economy in order to . . . . Continue Reading »
There I was, quietly chuckling over Bryan Caplan and Robin Hanson’s back and forth (and forth ) on the reasonableness of cryonics, when somebody decided to bring Derek Parfit into things . Says Julian: In reality, our ordinary way of talking about this leads to a serious mistake that Robin . . . . Continue Reading »
"At the time and in the country in which the present study was written, it was granted by everyone except backward people that the Jewish faith had not been refuted by science or by history . . . . [O]ne could grant to science and history everything they seem to teach . . . . Continue Reading »
Quick takes on the sparks flying off Helen’s latest: 1. Definitely Alex Massie is right as far as it goes when he heaps criticism on this notion that there is a "Red" America and a "Blue" America. True, this is fostered by all the sweet and pretty maps, but it’s . . . . Continue Reading »
A key source of misunderstanding in my much controverted Manifesto, I think, has to do with the very nature of my undertaking as respects theory and practice. Commenters who blame me for not providing a clear set of actionable principles are still working within a modern (post-Christian) . . . . Continue Reading »
Bowing to relentless and overwhelming demand from postmodern-leaning lovers of truth and virtue waiting somewhere out there in cyberspace, I offer this extended version of the Draft Manifesto from a few weeks ago. (I include the previously published first 8 points here, so you won’t . . . . Continue Reading »