Happy to Be Here…
I’d like to thank Rafe for graciously inviting me to occasionally co-blog with him here. I see this collaboration as an extension of the many engaging discussions we’ve had over the years. You see, we’re sort of kindred spirits. We both grew up in Southern California beach towns as children of middle class parents, with psychologist fathers. We both went to Stanford where we variously worked, played, and lived together.
Over the years, it’s become clear that we share a lot of the same core beliefs and values (one of which is that play is very important–but that’s a topic for another time). More importantly, we mostly agree on how to reason through a problem. This shared context makes for productive conversations. It also makes it both possible and worthwhile to explore the areas where we disagree. While these areas of disagreement form a multidimensional space with a complex topology, I’ve identified one subspace that is fairly easy to characterize.
In general, I think I’m more optimistic about the current state of the world and Rafe is more optimistic about the potential for interventions to improve the future state of the world. Maybe it’s because my graduate degree is in engineering-economics and his is in computer science. I see a robust equilibrium where he see potential for optimization. But this analysis isn’t simply idle navel-gazing. It means that when we agree that an intervention is warranted, my confidence in the positive expected value of the intervention is pretty high, an example of which will form the meat of my first substantive post.
Thanks for having me and I look forward to getting to know you all better.
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2 Responses to “Happy to Be Here…”
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Hey! I know both these guys too.
For a topic not relevant to this blog, ask Kevin Dick whether mixed martial arts is equivalent to “human cockfighting”, or not.
Recall my parenthetical comment that play is very important. Mixed-martial arts is just good clean fun–both the doing and the watching. I just love the small of glove leather and mat vinyl.