prior probability

Some background: Upon my return from Scotland I found the June 2023 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought in my mailbox. Among other things, this issue contains a special “Smith at 300” symposium featuring a number of classic quotations from the works or correspondence of the great Adam Smith. (The editors of JHET had invited scholars “to write short pieces telling us what their favorite Adam Smith [is] and why.” Alas, I somehow missed this call for papers.) In all, no less than 17 Smith scholars ended up contributing to this special symposium. Not surprisingly, most of the quotes singled-out for this symposium issue are from the Scottish philosopher-economist’s magnum opus The Wealth of Nations; below is a complete tally:

A. The first quote — my favorite of all — is from Smith’s private correspondence, a letter to his mother dated 29 November 1743, while Smith was still a student at Oxford: “I am just recovered of a violent fit of laziness, which has confined me to my elbow-chair these three months.” (Shout out to Sarah Skwire for featuring this quote in her contribution to the “Smith at 300” symposium.)

B. Another quote is from Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence: “The laws of most countries being made by men generally are very severe on the women …“

C. Two more quotes are from Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: (1) “Prose is the Stile in which all the common affairs of Life, all Business and Agreements are made. No one ever made a Bargain in verse.” And (2) “We need not be surprised … that the Cartesian philosophy …, though it does not perhaps contain a word of truth, … should nevertheless have been so universally received by all the Learned in Europe at that time …“

D. Three of the quotes are from Smith’s treatise on ethics The Theory of Moral Sentiments, including the opening sentence in Book 1 of this great work: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” (The other two quotes are from Books 2 and 7 of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.)

E. Four-fifths of the featured quotes — ten out of 17, including the immortal words pictured below — are from The Wealth of Nations: seven from Book 1, one from Book 2, and one from Book 5, as well as one quote from the “Early Draft of The Wealth of Nations“.

Postscript: I will share my personal favorite Adam Smith quote in my next post.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Forget the fireworks, hot dogs, and cold beer until you have committed these immortal words to memory and have read the whole thing, for on this day (4 July) in 1776, the delegates of the Second Continental Congress, who are assembled at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, “mutually pledge to each other [their] Lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor” by publicly and unanimously ratifying the Declaration of Independence, thus committing an act of high treason, punishable by death.

There is no doubt the Supreme Court of the United States has become a “political court”, to borrow my mentor Richard Posner’s apt phrase (no, we still haven’t forgotten the illegitimate and disastrous Bush v. Gore decision!), but how politicized has this unelected, unaccountable, and quasi-legislative committee become, and in what direction: conservative right or progressive left? For some tentative but novel insights into these questions, check out the short and excellent blog post titled “Purple June” by my colleague and friend Josh Blackman, a law professor in Houston, Texas — the first installment of many on the last batch of cases decided by the high court in June of 2020, 2022, and 2023. (Suffice it to say, I am looking forward to reading and commenting on Professor Blackman’s upcoming posts!)

Beware of blog posts on sports, politics, foreign policy, or race! To commemorate the upcoming ten-year anniversary of this blog (5 July 2023), I am featuring ten of my lamest blog posts:

1. A modest proposal (geopolitical edition) (6 February 2022)
2. PSA: Here is the police hotline to report Trump & sons for incitement (7 January 2021)
3. A modest proposal (two-week-holiday-in-honor-of-freedom edition) (5 July 2020)
4. White Man’s Justice? (1 November 2019)
5. Polling blip or historic trend? (Trumpista politics edition) (21 Jan. 2019)
6. Impeach Trump? (14 April 2018)
7. #TrumpYourHand (4 August 2016)
8. “Johnny Bust”? (14 December 2014)
9. Is Keith Olbermann’s the “worst sports person in the world”? (27 August 2013)
10. Is the “Justice for Trayvon” movement finished? (17 August 2013)

Here is the final inning of last night’s “perfect game” (only the 24th such game in MLB history) by 30-year-old right-handed pitcher Domingo Germán:

PS: The previous “perfect game” occurred in Seattle in 2012 (see here).

“Cause-in-fact” is a common law doctrine used to determine the scope of legal liability in accident cases. In summary, judges apply a counterfactual “but-for” test to determine whether event x was a necessary or “legal” cause of outcome y; in other words, “but-for event x, outcome y would not have happened”. This test can also be extended to historical events. By way of example, on this day (28 June) in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (pictured below, left), were assassinated in Sarajevo, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (The perpetrator of this heinous act was 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip, a member of Young Bosnia and one of a group of assassins armed by the Black Hand, a secret military society formed in 1901 by a group of army officers in the then-Kingdom of Serbia.) The assassination of Ferdinand and Sophie became the casus belli of the Central European conflict that eventually expanded to become the First World War.

So, to commemorate the upcoming ten-year anniversary of this blog (5 July 2023), I am featuring ten of my previous blog posts having to do with national flags:

1. Monday music: Wavin’ flag (Spanglish version) (28 November 2022)
2. Two cheers for Betsy Ross (4 July 2021)
3. The family resemblance of national symbols (30 August 2020)
4. Let’s rename Flag Day (14 June 2020)
5. Alternative visualizations of national flag colors (7 March 2020)
6. Our American flags (14 June 2018)
7. A flag for Mars (5 September 2017)
8. The geometry of national flags (23 April 2016)
9. Old versus new: New Zealand flag referendum update (3 April 2016)
10. Final results of the 2015 New Zealand flag referendum (12 February 2016)