Reviews, Philosophy, and More
I’ve been thinking about risk recently.
There are things in life that are always attended by some risk.
In fact, depending on whether we go by perceived risk or actual risk, it’s probably fair to say that there are valid perspectives in which everything carries risks. There may be examples where all the possible and varied outcomes of something have no negative connotations for the actor, but this is rare and generally involves things that people don’t think about.
Read moreI’ve become quite disquieted about the state of the economy.
I’m something of an economic pessimist. I’m not willing to write off society, humanity (though I’m certainly not a sunshine and rainbows type there), and technological progress.
But I’ve always been leery of the economy, and there are a lot of events going on right now that look really bad.
I’m going to talk about what they are and what I think people should expect, though who am I but some random person complaining on the internet?
âI’ve been thinking about praxeology recently, especially as it pertains to information acquisition.
This is a synthesis of two ideas that don’t seem to come together often. On one hand, understanding praxeology–the study of human action–and information acquisition–the perpetuation of knowledge and ideological constructs–partially go hand in hand.
But I believe that praxeology has a piece of the picture missing, and memetics likewise has an oversimplified view of reality. The former field of study cares more about how people act on information rather than how they acquire it. This is because it is most often applied in the field of economics, especially by those in the Austrian school.
Read moreLudwig von Mises’ Human Action is an economic treatise that seeks to cover every major concept in economics. While it dates to the 1940s, its depth and breadth mean that there are few things that are left untouched throughout the book.
Or, perhaps, it would be better to say books. Human Action sometimes occupies multiple volumes, since it is about a thousand pages long.
With that said, it is not as painful as its length might make it seem. Mises is not concise, but he makes up for it by careful explorations of each concept he covers and an ability to turn phrases that make complex topics clear and long discursions bearable.
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