Externalities: Why We Can Never Do “One Thing”
No action exists in a vacuum. There are ripples that have consequences that we can and can’t see. Here are the three types of externalities that can help us guide our actions so they don’t come back …
Garrett Hardin
The Best of Farnam Street 2018
We read for the same reasons we have conversations — to enrich our lives. Reading helps us to think, feel, and reflect — not only upon ourselves and others but upon our ideas, and our relationship …
The Generalized Specialist: How Shakespeare, Da Vinci, and Kepler Excelled
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you ever ask kids this question? Did adults ask you this when you were a kid? Even if you managed to escape this question until high school, then by the …
The Fairness Principle: How the Veil of Ignorance Helps Test Fairness
The Basics If you could redesign society from scratch, what would it look like? How would you distribute wealth and power? Would you make everyone equal or not? How would you define fairness and …
Why Fiddling With Prices Doesn’t Work
“The fact is, if you don’t find it reasonable that prices should reflect relative scarcity, then fundamentally you don’t accept the market economy, because this is about as close to …
Important Truths about Population Growth
Garrett Hardin‘s Living Within Limits had a huge influence on how I thought about population. In the book, Hardin convincingly demonstrates the folly of allowing human population to grow …
Three Filters Needed to Think Through Problems
One of the best parts of Garrett Hardin‘s wonderful Filters Against Folly is when he explores the three filters that help us interpret reality. No matter how much we’d like it to, the …
The Effect of Scale in Social Science, or Why Utopia Doesn’t Work
Things change as they scale, often drastically. This is true for living creatures and it’s especially true for social systems. Here’s how the dynamics of social groups change as the numbers do and why …
Garrett Hardin: The Other Side of Expertise
From Garrett Hardin‘s mind-blowingly awesome Filters Against Folly. In our highly technological society we cannot do without experts. We accept this fact of life, but not without anxiety. There …
The Tragedy Of The Commons
What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others. — Aristotle The rules pay you to do the wrong …
The Art and Science of High-Stakes Decisions
How can anyone make rational decisions in a world where knowledge is limited, time is pressing, and deep thought is often unattainable? Some decisions are more difficult than others. Yet we’re often …
Social Dilemmas: When to Defect and When to Cooperate
Social dilemmas arise when an individual receives a higher payoff for defecting than cooperating when everyone else cooperates. When everyone defects they are worse off. That is, each member has a …