Reddit reviews The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World

1. There were tons of governments during that time period. Where specifically are you pointing out?
   
2. So literally a guy leading another group of people becomes government... which is human nature. How on earth do you remove human nature/biology?
   
3. Those places definitely have government. And as far as the 'lack of slavery argument' there are plenty of historical examples of economies working without slaves and plenty of historical examples highlighting why it might be a really bad idea to have a slave based economy prior to 1865.
   
4. What stops them from becoming a government again! That's my entire point. You create this perfect utopian society without government. Awesome, high five. Now why doesn't it regress?
   
5. Again, what stops this?
   
6. I've read those subreddits and mises. They are very good with the theoretical but sorely lacking in the tangible.
   
   You are really pushing out a strong vibe of wanting to believe without having the evidence to back it up. Please, be specific. Thats all I want.
   
   If the case is simply one that this is a belief that is not built by evidence then you know what, I can understand that. Not everything in this world needs to be validated, especially at the personal opinion level. Just state that and I'll leave you be.
   
   But if this is the case I would strongly suggest you go read up regarding internal biases and the ego versus the evidence. One good book I would suggest is The Logic of Life. Specifically the chapter regarding political beliefs and the ego. To summarize, they found that the price of admitting you were wrong is more than the price of actually changing your beliefs. Additional I would add that you read up on the backfire effect.
   
   If that's not the case, then disregard the above paragraph.

On top of this, there are probably hard economic reasons (of the sort discussed in The Logic of Life) to discourage CI.

When a group settles on a long-term strategy that relies on everyone cooperating, it can be very threatening when members choose other strategies.

For example, if you're a member of an under-educated family or community, and you go out and get educated, suddenly you've raised the bar of competition - this undermines everyone else's strategy. It's expensive and time consuming to get an education (prohibitively for some) so it makes sense to discourage this behavior. A more familiar example might be the way a department discourages new members from working "too hard", making the others "look bad".

I imagine the deaf community has worked long and hard for the funding, institutions and social groups it has put together, so if members start disappearing, this support could erode. This makes life potentially much harder for those who can't or won't get CI. CI is presumably not available to everyone - and brain surgery is scary for anyone.

http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2015/257526.htm

> The total number of terrorist attacks in 2015 decreased by 13% and total deaths due to terrorist attacks decreased by 14%, compared to 2014. This was largely due to fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq, Pakistan, and Nigeria. This represents the first decline in total terrorist attacks and deaths worldwide since 2012

Then if we're looking at 2015 and 2016... 47 americans died in 2015 and 63 so far for 2016.

But if you're discounting car accidents because you understand the danger then I guess I need to find a statistic that you have no choice towards?

If you look at every cause of death for males aged 20 - 40 in the united states you have to get down to the mid 30's in leading causes before it MATCHES the number of american deaths in all age groups, and everything rank 20 or below is 5 - 10x more.

Now mind you with that we're comparing two different numbers. One is all americans dead per year, another is male americans dying in a few year age bracket. These are vastly different figures.

All you've given me is emotional responses to this, which imho is what terrorism is. Eliciting an emotional response, or over-response in many cases. I'd argue this reaction is them winning moreso than the number of deaths.

>Your not going to convince me that terrorism isnt something to worry about.

You're right, Im probably not. You cannot reason with emotion. You just feel it. Im going to take a page from Tim Harford's Logic of Life and note that your political opinion costs you pennies to maintain but to admit you were wrong costs an immense amount.

Which is why when people are presented rational, reasoned arguments to their political positions they hold to their guns and refuse to change their mind. At that point they often choose to use emotion over logic in their decisions.

What I would suggest you do is sit down and take stock of your political opinions, how they are formed, where they came from, and if you have real substance to base them on. If not, I would suggest being more open to other's suggestions, insight, and wisdom.

I know I am not 100% right on any of what I've written above. But I've sourced it so others can follow it up and shown it to you as counter to your emotional response. So I might not change your mind, but maybe I'll change someone else's who reads this.

Or maybe I'll get lucky and someone will present sources/information to counter my position.

That's my next book project. =)

That aside, I'd recommend Thinking Strategically and The Logic of Life.

There is some hyperbole in each. The subtitle of Thinking Strategically makes me lol, and half of The Logic of Life is "academics were clueless for decades until an economist looked at the problem for a half hour and solved it." But I enjoyed both of them for what they are.

Edit: I guess my book on bargaining and my book on war are somewhat like that. But the big difference is that Thinking Strategically and The Logic of Life are very light on the actual formalization, whereas mine are not.