Write, not right.

Sorry if you feel this is nitpicky; it broke up my concentration.

Rachel: I'll have to write that into the new gospel.

E-Merl: New gospel?

Rachel: Gospels should be updated regularly.

Guilded Age

Edit: mispelling of "write" corrected.

Why spend a dollar on a bookmark? ... Why not use the dollar as a bookmark?

-Steven Spielberg

That honestly seems like some kind of fallacy, although I can't name it. I mean, sure, take joy in the merely real, that's a good outlook to have; but it's highly analogous to saying something like "Average quality of life has gone up dramatically over the past few centuries, especially for people in major first world countries. You get 50-90 years of extremely good life - eat generally what you want, think and say anything you want, public education; life is incredibly great. But talk to some people, I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about [starving kid in Africa|environmental pollution|dying peacefully of old age|generally any way in which the world is suboptimal]."

That kind of outlook not only doesn't support any kind of progress, or even just utility maximization, it actively paints the very idea of making things even better as presumptuous and evil. It does not serve for something to be merely awe-inspiring; I want more. I want to not just watch a space shuttle launch (which is pretty cool on its own), but also have a drink that tastes better than any other in the world, with all of my best friends around me, while engaged in a thrilling intellectual conversation about strategy or tactics in the best game ever created. While a wizard turns us all into whales for a day. On a spaceship. A really cool spaceship. I don't just want good; I want the best. And I resent the implication that I'm just ungrateful for what I have. Hell, what would all those people that invested the blood, sweat, and tears to make modern flight possible say if they heard someone suggesting that we should just stick to the status quo because "it's already pretty good, why try to make it better?" I can guarantee they wouldn't agree.

In nearly all countries you need a permit to build a nuclear reactor, and said permits are frequently denied for political reasons. Not to mention that the biggest risk of building a nuclear power plant is probably having it shutdown by anti-nuclear activists before you can recoup the cost of building it.

I think this quote might have the analysis backwards. Politicians are not irrational for spouting irrational nonsense - because that is what voters want to hear. I'm not sure if that is accurately described as "epistemically irrational" because some of the politicians probably know what the correct answers are.

None of that creates incentives on voters to be epistemically irrational - except for game-theoric reasons. There certainly are costs to voters being epistemically irrational (assuming one believes there are meaningful differences between the political parties - which may not be the local consensus.

I detect a contradiction between "brevity not seen as virtue" and "they couldn't afford paragraphs".

I concur, with the proviso that "nice technology" must also include the idea compression style of Twitter.

Also, if paper was so expensive, why the hell did they overwrite so much? Status-driven fashion?

Efficient has a very specific meaning in economics (well, two specific meanings, depending on what kind market you're talking about).

I know of three, although it is a matter of parametrization (weak, strong, semi-strong). What two meanings do you have in mind?