“a... notion which Hayek has called the ‘synoptic delusion’.... is that a single person can hold in his mind all the facts relevant to some social problem.”
David G. Green Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics
“More than a century ago, Sir Francis Galton, a pioneer of statistics, attended an English fair. More than 800 guessed the weight of a bull. The total sum, divided by the number of guessers gave the weight – to the pound. This phenomenon, which is also known as ‘the wisdom of many,’ explains why democratized stock markets, with more people drawing information from more independent sources, can better allocate capital than the isolated few.”
Reuven Brenner in National Post June 15, 2000
“All serious political and moral philosophy, and thus any serious social inquiry, must begin with an understanding of human nature. Though society and its institutions shape man, man’s nature sets limits on the kinds of societies we can have. Cicero said that the nature of law must be founded on the nature of man (a natura hominis discenda est natura juris).”
James Q. Wilson and Richard J. Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature
In my latest National Post column I say Western alienation is a real problem with legitimate origins and needs serious action not mindless anger or mindless scorn.
“The cost of sending a letter used to depend on the distance the letter had to travel, but [Difference Engine inventor Charles Babbage] Babbage pointed out that the cost of the labor required to calculate the price for each letter was more than the cost of the postage.”
Simon Singh The Code Book
In my latest Loonie Politics column I remind people of why projects like Ottawa’s Light Rail Transit are reliably unreliable, taking loger, costing more and doing less than we were promised before it was too late to change our minds.