Don't Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight

This YouTube video has been making the rounds, and it demonstrates a couple of propositions, tentatively:

1)  Congressman Trey Gowdy is a talented prosecutor,  a former position he held in Spartanburg, SC.
2)  Jonathan Gruber has been rendered toothless, for whatever reason.  He claims to have not understood what he was saying, nor does he understand it now, other than it was offensive to some political body out there.
3)  One can speculate as to why he didn't try to defend his newsworthy remarks, but to be fair: a congressional hearing is brutal and one-sided.  As the highest legislative body in the land, Congress has the power.  Gruber was in a no-win situation.

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy has a good take on Gruber's "sin."  Money quote:

"Gruber did err in making the common mistake of conflating political ignorance with “stupidity.” In reality, even smart people are often ignorant about politics, in large part because such ignorance is perfectly rational behavior, given the low probability that your vote will make a difference in an election. The problem of ignorance is also exacerbated by the enormous size, scope, and complexity of modern government, which makes it difficult even for more attentive voters to keep track of more than a small fraction of it. By making government even larger and more complicated than it already was, the enactment of the Affordable Care Act helped exacerbate the very ignorance that helped make its passage possible."

Added Value of Philosophy

Jeffrey Dorman has an article on the Forbes website, in which he computes the added value of earning a Bachelor's degree in the humanities, as opposed to stopping with a high school degree.  Perhaps surprisingly,  the humanities do pretty well.  The extra value of a degree in philosophy, e.g., amounts to an average of over $600,000 over a lifetime.

One should, of course, take these correlations for what they are and hence not infer any causal connection.  But it's nice to know that the correlation is positive!   (h/t Daily Nous)

Changing Tides?

A friend of mind sent me this article from the Harvard Institute of Politics.    The interesting result:

While more 18- to 29- year-olds (50%-43%) surveyed in the IOP’s fall 2014 poll would prefer that Congress be controlled by Democrats instead of Republicans, the numbers improve dramatically for the GOP when only young people who say they will “definitely vote” are studied. Among these likely voters, the IOP’s latest poll shows the preference shifting, with slightly more than half (51%) preferring a Republican-run Congress and 47 percent wanting Democrats to be in charge – a significant change from the IOP’s last midterm election poll in the fall of 2010 when Democratic control was preferred among likely voters 55 percent to 43 percent.

I'm wondering if this is simply a result of young Democrats dropping out or instead a sign that the Millenials are changing their political preferences.  

Sex With 21 Women

Loyal readers (are any of you left?):   my significant other and I frequently debate causal reasoning, as she's more prone to jump from correlation to cause than am I.  Hence I was hopeful that this article would create opportunities.  However, she saw the flaw in my post hoc inference, and put the kabosh on any hopes in that direction.

On the plus side,  I will avoid brutal punishments!

How to Run a University

Megan McCardle in a recent blogpost reminds us about the importance of communication, especially from one's critics. A group is always wiser when it is open to the give-and-take of debate.  Large bureaucracies would do well to remember this.   I especially think this is true in universities, where we all think we know best, but we need people with bladders hitting us on the head to do our work effectively.

Government's Pernicious Effect on Culture

So now we know who's to blame!   (h/t Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution)

Get Konnected with The Kronies Action Figures

(h/t Popehat)