prior probability

I had to suspend my reading of Samuel Fleischacker’s new book on Adam Smith when my copy of Michael Lewis’s latest book The Premonition arrived in Tuesday’s mail. Suffice it to say that Lewis is a great storyteller (it took me less than two full days to read all 304 pp. of his fascinating book), but at the same he also tends to over-generalize on the basis of flimsy or anecdotal evidence. On pp. 288-291 of The Premonition, for example, Lewis draws a distinction between political appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president, and career civil servants, who for all intents and purposes can’t be fired (see the footnote on p. 290) and concludes that political appointees are more likely than career civil servants to be risk-averse “Chamberlains” (unwilling to make hard choices or make risky decisions) instead of risk-loving “Churchills” (willing to take risky actions early to minimize the risk of dangers in the future). Although the distinction between risk-averse Chamberlains and risk-loving Churchills is a memorable one, is this observation really true? What about Article III judges, i.e. federal trial and appellate court judges who have lifetime tenure?

According to Wikipedia (footnotes omitted), the question of which of these two characters on the 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island” fans of the show prefer — the glamorous movie-star Ginger or the wholesome country girl Mary Ann — has endured long after the end of the series: “This question has inspired commercials, essays, videos, and a sermon.”

Via the Arid Travel blog: https://aridtravel.wordpress.com/

My “Leibniz Conspiracy” paper was recently featured on Professor Larry Solum’s popular “Legal Theory Blog.” See here.

Via Kottke (links in the original): “The Cornell Lab of Ornithology recently added the ability to identify birds from hearing their birdsong to their Merlin Bird ID app — a “Shazam for bird songs” as Fast Company says. You just start recording with your phone and the app starts telling you the birds it’s hearing.” You can download the bird-song app here.

Before going on my working vacation last week, I picked up a copy of Stephen Budiansky’s new intellectual biography of Kurt Goedel, Journey to the Edge of Reason (W. W. Norton), which came out in May of this year, as well as a copy of Samuel Fleischacker’s new book about Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, Adam Smith (Routledge), which came out in mid-July.

I have already finished reading the Goedel biography, of which I will have many things to say in some future blog posts (not the least of which is the fact that Budiansky cites my paper “Goedel’s Loophole” in chapter 8 of his book!), and I have just started reading Fleischacker’s Adam Smith biography. Among the statements in Fleischacker’s book that caught my attention is this one on page 3:

“… Smith never married, nor is he known to have had so much as a single love affair.”

I respectfully beg to differ, however, for the reasons I give in my March 2021 paper “Adam Smith in Love,” the final version of which is available here (via Econ Journal Watch). Although Smith instructed his literary executors to destroy his private correspondence upon his death, a careful review of the remaining available evidence suggests that he may have had multiple loves during his lifetime — one in the Scotland of his youth with the “Lady of Fife,” another in France in 1765 or 1766 with one Madame Nicole, and yet another in Dalkeith House (pictured below) with a young aristocrat in the fall of 1767.

Stop the madness! Why is Disney World in Orlando, Florida making us wear masks outdoors on the attractions, even on the Kali River Rapids ride(!) in Animal Kingdom?

Happy Birthday, Adys Ann! As I patiently explain in my paper “Lockdowns as Takings” (available here via SSRN), in place of unlawful eviction moratoria or ad hoc stimulus checks, our political leaders should have remained resolute and faithful to our first constitutional principles from the start. How? By requiring the payment of just compensation to all “non-essential” workers whose labor rights were taken under State and local lockdown orders. After all, as John Locke taught us long ago, labor is not only a form of property; it is the source of all other property rights. #LaborIsProperty #RuleOf Law

Happy 8th Birthday Adys Ann!