A tough question

What have you changed your mind about in 2007 and why?

I find this is a real tough one. As I am still quite young, according to the rough mental model I have of people up there in my head this is not in general a time where I should be changing a lot on a fundamental level. I have well-established priors but I have not had them long enough for me to really question their basis yet, so this is rather, again according to my rough mental model of people in general, a phase where I’m supposed to develop and refine my ideas in whichever direction they might be going. I must admit I have not given this question a lot of thought, I just stumbled upon it, so this is just an off-the-cuff list:

i) My views on Russia and the future of Russia have changed. Before 2007 I hadn’t really given this matter much thought, even if I was not completely clueless. In general my thinking was along these lines: Russia is a country of the past, and in the future they will have a hard time positioning themselves on the international arena, and they will have great difficulties managing the increased globalization. I still think along those lines, but when it comes to one important subject my thinking has changed. Before 2007 I thought of Putin as a temporary thing. I don’t anymore, for a lot of reasons, but his own actions tell a big chunk of the story. It bodes bad for the Russians, and it bodes bad for the rest of us. In particular, I don’t like the way Russia is positioning itself in terms of foreign policy.

ii) My views on how well the democratic process works here in Denmark, and just as important; how well people think it works, have changed somewhat. Well, they have certainly become more refined than they used to be.

Now, in 2007 Danish voters never got the chance to vote for a libertarian party. One of the main reasons for this, well at least one of the reasons I find it hard to ignore, is that it took the government a year to turn down the name Liberalisterne had proposed, without which the party seems to have had a hard time collecting signatures and money. Imagine what would have happened if New Alliance had had to wait for a year before their name would have been approved, and tell me something isn’t smelling really bad here. And don’t give me a bunch of horse-**** about how ‘Liberalisterne’ sounds like ‘Venstre’ and that voters will have a hard time distinguishing between the two. The real scary part of this is not just that it _actually happened_ in a democracy like Denmark, what’s just as scary is that I think if this stuff had happened in the Ukraine, the average Dane would have heard far more about it (’it’ being in the MSM described as ‘the undemocratic practices of a semi-dictatorship’ or something along those lines) than they did when it happened right here in our little country (I must add of course that these considerations and the following are not meant to encourage Liberalisterne to take on a victim attitude, as this kind of thing never help anything, they should just keep on the hard work so that we have a party to vote for next time).

What has happened has made me think something is seriously wrong with the way MSM work. This story, if it blew up in his face as it might have, could have cost Lars Løkke Rasmussen his post – if what he did was not blatant abuse of power, what is? And even if one or two journalists mentioned Liberalisternes’ ‘problem’, I don’t remember reading any of them criticizing the fact that all new party names have to be approved by people working for the government. This discussion was not even taken up during election time, even if a new party had come about that was likely to yield great influence after the election, that is if they were not hindered by the government in power. Nobody thought anything would happen to them, they would of course not be hindered in any way. Before, I thought both Danes and, in particular, journalists were far less naive and far more curious about – as well as critical of – political abuse of power.

If I were to elaborate on the ‘refined’ part, this is of course also the year that I reread a lot of the first part and completed the last part of The Open Society and Its Enemies.

iii) I have changed my perception of V. I. Lenin considerably. Before I mostly thought of him as yet another run-off-the-mill dictator like so many others at that time, ie. a powercrazed a-**** that murdered a lot of people he didn’t like. Now, I find he’s hardly any better than Stalin or Hitler. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t kill as many as they did, he worked very hard and if he’d lived longer he probably would have.

The two books that made me change my mind are A concise history of the Russian Revolution and The Unknown Lenin, both by Richard Pipes.

iv) The last couple of years I pretty much did not read any fiction at all, only non-fiction could retain my interest. However this year I have begun again a little, ie. by reading a large chunk of Asimov’s Foundation-series. One can of course say it’s merely my utility function that has changed, not my mind, but there’s no reason to be pedantic here. As it is, I don’t know exactly why I started reading fiction again, I can’t remember what made me start out again – but I’m glad I did.

v) I am far less certain about what was the main driver behind the industrial revolution than I used to be. The treatment of Gregory Clark’s A farewell to Alms over at marginalrevolution is the main reason of course, as it made me painfully aware of how little I actually know about this subject.

vi) How I think about the abortion debate has changed since last year. The way I see the problem now is this: The main thing the two groups disagree on basically is relative utility weights. Informally, I might put it like this. The two questions: “How much utility does the parents derive from their right to choose not to have the child?” vs. “How much utility would the child derive from being born?” are the important ones, and the two fractions don’t agree on the answers (or maybe they don’t even agree on whether the opposing groups’ question makes any sense. Even so, what might be termed the conflict of interest framework still, even if I consider it invalid, seems to be the best way for me to understand the position of the pro-lifers).

I believe Megan McArdle was the one who made me change my mind about how to think about this subject, but most of her old blog posts on the asymmetrical information site seem to no longer be available, so I can’t provide a link. Before, my thoughts on the subject were very fuzzy, and a lump of cells’ ‘right to life’ did not even enter my mind.

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As I said, an off-the-cuff list. What have you changed your mind about? Or have you perhaps noticed other areas where I have changed significantly other than those I have mentioned here? Danish readers are of course, if they feel like it, allowed to answer in Danish.