Any plans to post this elsewhere? I feel like some readers will ignore anything on a site with as many pictures of ponies as fimfiction.

I want to understand what it is I should do according to my values (not just regarding voting, but in general), but the world is such a big place that I can't even begin to fathom how I would go about trying to figure this out. Does anyone have any advice about where to start, what resources to consult? I want to shut up and multiply, but I don't even know what I'm multiplying!

For politics there is a lot going on, but one of the biggest of big picture items is macro-economic philosophy. If you get your macro right, you are most of the way there on issues like prosperity and job creation which are a big component of what matters to people’s daily lives.

-Look at what the big schools of macroeconomics have to say

-Pick some schools which have actual models (i.e. not just talk and rhetoric) that are capable of making at least directional predictions about changes in GPD /GPD growth, interest rates, inflation etc. in response to changes to various components of spending.

-Pull a representative model out of a text book or article that’s at least 8 years old to avoid something that’s just been fit to recent data

-Check the model with data from the St. Louis Fed and Euro Stat

-Do a Google search to see if other people have gotten similar or different results to you and to see if there are any known pitfalls in the data which might impact your results

-Repeat above 3 steps for each school of economics that seemed worth checking

Relevant paper: Gelman, Silver and Edlin estimated that the average American voter has a 1 in 60 million chance of deciding the election.

Took it. The autism test makes it seem like it is easy for people to get more or less autistic with time. I would have scored much higher 10 years ago.

I'm currently retraining from a moderately successful career in IT into econ/maths, and explaining my motives for this is always an uphill struggle against people's misapprehension of what economics is even about.

In many ways it's kind of an invisible discipline. There are all sorts of benevolent aspects of everyday life which are clearly the product of chemistry or engineering or medical science, but it's hard to assemble a collection of concrete, object-level stuff and say "all these things were made by economists!"

There's also a problem of motive when it comes to a lay appreciation of economics. No-one develops an amateur interest in physics because they have a crazy partisan political agenda, but in r/Economics/ there are thrice-weekly arguments on the gold standard you can set your watch by. It takes a special kind of nerdery to be interested in something for the sake of interest, but a lot of cranky trouble-causers speak with great unearned authority on economic subjects because they're really pissed off about something.

I study/teach economics for a living, this made my try to think about why it is useful (besides that it gives me a job).

How To Run A Government

Economics has a lot to say about which government policies will make people better off or worse off. This is a big reason I got interested in economics, but its not very practical for the vast majority of people, who have essentially no influence over government policy (and in fact it is economists who are famous for arguing, perhaps incorrectly, that votes don't matter).

Understand How The World Works

It's always nice to just understand more, but in particular I think some insights are likely to make you happier. For instance, you may worry about not being a good person because you are selfish, but economics argues that in market settings being selfish often helps others too. Several insights of economics make you appreciate other people more: knowing that their specialization and labor is what makes the world, and you, so rich- people of different countries, religions, et cetera cooperate to make everything from your computer to your pencil. Whenever I get annoyed at the crowd in a coffeeshop or on the subway, economics reminds me that if it weren't for the other customers, there would be no coffeeshop or subway. Learning about subjective value helps you not to look down on others so much for "bad taste" in music, books, et c.

Practical Skills

Econometrics (basically our word for data analysis) is the main practical skill of economics. It is a great tool for figuring out how the world works. I use it for academic research, but many private sector realize the value of econometrics (though they may call it analytics or data science or forecasting or something else). Another skill that only a few economists really master is mechanism design, which has been used to sell ads and spectrum and allocate kidneys, students, and medical residents.

Save Money

A lot of people get the idea that economics is about "how to make money", but anyone seeing my paychecks would realize I'm not the one to teach that. We do have some things to say about how not to throw money away though. By learning about the Efficient Markets Hypothesis and investing in broad index funds, you will avoid losing money to fund managers fees and brokerage trading costs, and avoid the possible catastrophic failure of an undiversified portfolio. Sometimes you can use efficient markets to save time as well. If I want to know whether the recent jobs numbers were better than expected, I could read a lot about it, or just look at how the stock market reacted in the 15 minutes afterward. If I want to know who is going to win the US presidential election, I could follow the news for hours and hours and make a guess, or just look on Intrade for one minute.

Act Rationally

Economics teaches a model of how "rational people" act. This helps you notice when you are departing from the model of rationality and think about doing things differently. For instance, write off sunk costs and make decisions at the margin.

All in all, I'm not sure if economics is the most useful subject to learn (what are other contenders?), but it does seem to have a fair amount of practical utility.

(crossposted)

On the politics question about libertarianism, "distribution" should read "redistribution". Also, ideally the political questions would ask about regulation and/or spending rather than taxes.

I would stay away from the accept/reject terminology and simply say they should assign low probability to this theory due to Occam's razor, and increase the probability if it survives experimental tests.

Without addressing the substance of the papers, I can say that in practice most health economists still think the RAND experiment is really important. Robin Hanson is not unusual in this regard, the RAND experiment was featured prominently in the 2 graduate health econ classes I have taken, and in recent textbooks and papers.

FYI, the marker on the google map is pointing to the wrong place, even though the address is correct (and works when I type it into google maps myself). La Colombe is just to the southwest of city hall, and looks out at it.