Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012

David_Gerard

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

So, Yvain posted a blog post recently. I was disappointed. I'm posting about it here because I'll have an easier time following a conversation about my thoughts here than in livejournal comments. I will note that he claims the post is, at most, 60% serious, but that seems at least ten thousand times too high.

A major supporting claim is that if modafinil were legal, it would become expected, and everything would be harder to match the increased ability of humans to be productive.

So the religious people flunk out, everyone else has to work much harder, and in the end no student gains. Arguably future patients might gain from having better trained doctors, but I think this wildly overestimates the usefulness of the medical education system.

A parable:

In the Old Country, the people once did not know of iodine. It was not illegal, but only a very specific kind of geek would eat dried seaweed carried long miles on the backs of beasts and men. One day, a stranger came to the village, preaching of this mysterious substance, claiming that its consumption would make all men cleverer.

The elders convened and discussed this 'boon,' if you could call it that. If one man is cleverer, he profits, but if all men are cleverer, then no man profits. No elder spoke this more loudly than the one whose wife feasted on seaweed, and whose children were free of the stunted look of cretinism. To spare the people from having harder lives, the elders sent this stranger on his way, to not change the ways of the village.

A commentary:

Yvain has seen the misery of Haiti and India firsthand; but it seems only with his eyes.

In general, if people are able to get more done in a day, would this give an advantage to the makers or the takers? I don't have a general principle which gives an obvious answer.

7TraderJoe14y

Although I'm unsure of the etiquette of posting about personal blogs on other sites, I was also disappointed with the blog post in question. It was the first time that Yvain wrote something I disagreed with after reading his post in full and digesting in. I've often disagreed with him before reading it, but he usually persuades me. This post seemed to rely on the principle that having more spare time is a positional good, with which I disagree strongly. Essentially, giving everyone another four hours of awake, productive time, is the same as extending your life by four hours for each day you are alive [and you do so in good health - extending the human lifespan from 80 to 95 might or might not be a good thing, but adding years to your healthy, productive life, seems a good thing] Yvain's claim seems to be that 100% of the extra four hours will be diverted into work, but to me that's a) almost certainly not true [the figure would be more than 0% and less than 100%], b) not a bad thing. a) It seems very likely that, given that our day is > 0% work and > 0% leisure, an extra four hours a day will add more than 0 hours of leisure. b) If all med students get more studying done, it's far from obvious that the net result is a bad one. I assume that there is some value to med students' knowledge of medicine [okay, for anatomy courses this might not hold]. If, say, Apple workers work 50% more, then we stand to get better and faster Macs]

17[anonymous]14y

I disapprove of this thread on the principle that people should be able to idly speculate on their own blog without being harangued elsewhere. I disapprove of your use of parables to smuggle in your economic hypotheses, rather than arguing for them competently and clearly. I disapprove of your commentary, because I agree with wedrifid here: [...]