prior probability

This week’s edition of “Wednesday Writing Tips” comes to us via The Paris Review, which published an intimate and in-depth interview of Ernest Hemingway in 1958–available here (in the PDF format) or here (online version). In the words of one author (Julia Mehalko for Retro Gazing): All writers need to read this Hemingway Paris Review interview. I concur!

You may already know about world-famous Tiananmen Square protests that occurred in June of 1989, but did you know about the Tiananmen Incident that occurred on this day (April 5) in 1976? Via Wikipedia (footnote omitted):

“The Tiananmen Incident [Chinese: 四五天安门事件] was a mass gathering and protest that took place on 4–5 April 1976, at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The incident occurred on the traditional day of mourning, the Qingming Festival, after the Nanjing Incident [when] some people strongly disapproved of the removal of the displays of mourning, and began gathering in the Square to protest against the central authorities …. The event was labeled as counterrevolutionary immediately after its occurrence by the Communist Party’s Central Committee and served as a gateway to the dismissal and house arrest of then-Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, who was accused of planning the event, while he insisted that he was only nearby for a haircut. The Central Committee’s decision on the event was reversed after the Cultural Revolution ended, [and] it would later be officially hailed as a display of patriotism.”

Via Kottke: “This drone fly-through of Tesla’s new factory in Berlin is amazing … the drone flies through the robotic machinery in between cycles of stamping out parts and also through the cars as they are being assembled.”

This song is from 2017, and I still love it!

Via Econ Journal Watch (EJW), check out this series of 22 essays in which authors from around the world write about their country’s political economy and history of classical liberalism. (Also, here is the latest issue of the EJW — Volume 19.) To learn about classical liberalism more generally, see the introductory video below:

More details here; hat tip: @pickover.

Let’s define these terms. The Chicago economist Frank Knight wrote about risk and uncertainty in 1921 (see here), the two sides of the probability coin. In brief, risk is “quantifiable” — think of a casino game like roulette, where you can calculate the odds of a bet before each spin. Uncertainty, by contrast, is impossible to quantify ex ante. Think of a “Black Swan” affair — an unpredictable event like the possibility of a nuclear war. See also the materials below:

To celebrate April Fools’ Day, below is an alphabetical listing of five of my most preposterous or offbeat scholarly papers:

1. “Adam Smith in Love” (conjectures re: Adam Smith’s love life)
2. “Antiblue” (my alternative system of legal citation).
3. “Buy or Bite?” (vampire contracts).
4. “The Leibniz Conspiracy” (retrodiction markets).
5. “Trolley Problems” (the use of auctions to solve moral dilemmas).

It’s that time of year again, time to delve into a new research project! This year, my topic is “Adam Smith in Paris” — the Scottish moral philosopher and father of modern economics lived in Paris for most of the year 1766 –, so my spring 2022 reading list includes the following scholarly tomes (subtitles in parenthesis):

1. Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company (The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment) (2010), the cover of which is pictured below.
2. Julian Baggini, The Great Guide (What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well) (2021).
3. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Origins of Physiocracy (Economic Revolution and Social Order in 18th-Century France) (1976).
4. Steven L. Kaplan, Bread, Politics, and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV (1976).
5. _____________, The Famine Plot Persuasion in 18th-Century France (1982).
6. Nina Kushner, Erotic Exchanges (The World of Elite Prostitution in 18th-Century Paris) (2013).
7. Ann Lewis & Markman Ellis, editors, Prostitution and 18th-Century Culture (Sex, Commerce, and Morality) (2012).
8. Meghan K. Roberts, Sentimental Savants (Philosophical Families in Enlightenment France) (2016).
9. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [1776].
10. Joan Hinde Stewart, The Novels of Madame Riccoboni (1976).

(Note: The above list of books does not include the many dozens of research articles, scholarly papers, historical studies, and unpublished doctoral dissertations on mid-18th-Century Paris that I have also been dutifully reading.)

Although I am now back home in Orlando, Florida, below are a few more memories from my recent sojourn in Columbus, Ohio, the 14th largest city in the USA.