I’ll say something stronger: rationality reckons with econ but badly needs a reckoning with law, the thing that tries to actually do CEV for real humans and societies.
In an ideal world, their intersection helps people price risk, and do exception handling on risk mismanagement. In the real world, it is coopted in order to obfuscate risk and increase internality/externality arbitrages.
rationality reckons with econ but badly needs a reckoning with law, the thing that tries to actually do CEV for real humans and societies.
Well, law is half of what’s trying to do that; religion / theology is the other half of what’s trying to do that. (Or if you’re an ethical monotheist, law is half of God.)
This thread sparked me to have a long chat with Claude about the subject, and look at a few books to potentially understand the field better myself. What do you think a rationalist reckoning with law would look like?
Speculating on my end: Something like having more public intellectuals like Brian Caplan and Tyler Cowen engage with rationality but are lawyers? Or more have more form posts or discussions about legal topics to the point where there are some rationalist concepts that come from law?
There was a comment on astralcodex from a judge recently that was nice and I’d think it would look like more engagement on that front. It reminds me of the situation with banks in 2008 where the general public has a wildly different understanding than the basic facts that any bank accountant could tell you about eg swaps and fractional reserves.
As a lawyer relatively new to the rationalist community—are there any books you would recommend? And I wonder if your chat with Claude is something you’d consider sharing? I suspect it would help me understand.
Although he is known mainly for his writings about Bitcoin, Nick Szabo has a law degree and his writing on the history of the common-law tradition are quite excellent: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
Szabo argues that English common law was a major cause of the economic expansion that created the modern world.
I’ll say something stronger: rationality reckons with econ but badly needs a reckoning with law, the thing that tries to actually do CEV for real humans and societies.
In an ideal world, their intersection helps people price risk, and do exception handling on risk mismanagement. In the real world, it is coopted in order to obfuscate risk and increase internality/externality arbitrages.
Well, law is half of what’s trying to do that; religion / theology is the other half of what’s trying to do that. (Or if you’re an ethical monotheist, law is half of God.)
Any recommended further reading re reckoning rationality with law?
I wish I had a rec here.
This thread sparked me to have a long chat with Claude about the subject, and look at a few books to potentially understand the field better myself. What do you think a rationalist reckoning with law would look like?
Speculating on my end: Something like having more public intellectuals like Brian Caplan and Tyler Cowen engage with rationality but are lawyers? Or more have more form posts or discussions about legal topics to the point where there are some rationalist concepts that come from law?
There was a comment on astralcodex from a judge recently that was nice and I’d think it would look like more engagement on that front. It reminds me of the situation with banks in 2008 where the general public has a wildly different understanding than the basic facts that any bank accountant could tell you about eg swaps and fractional reserves.
As a lawyer relatively new to the rationalist community—are there any books you would recommend? And I wonder if your chat with Claude is something you’d consider sharing? I suspect it would help me understand.
Although he is known mainly for his writings about Bitcoin, Nick Szabo has a law degree and his writing on the history of the common-law tradition are quite excellent: https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/
Szabo argues that English common law was a major cause of the economic expansion that created the modern world.
David Friedman is pretty good.