Top all-time · #2625
David Friedman
Personal blog · daviddfriedman.blogspot.comeconomicsphilosophypolitics
David Friedman writes Ideas, a personal blog at daviddfriedman.blogspot.com about economics, philosophy and politics. Since 2008, 32 different Hacker News readers have linked it 50 times, most often “The Living Dead: Thoughts on Macro and Depressions (2010)”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Whatever I feel like talking about.
Most-linked posts?
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-03-12
- The Living Dead: Thoughts on Macro and Depressions (2010)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-10-11
- Stable Cryptocurrencies2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-12-25
- Home Unschooling2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2010-04-17
- The Economics of Status (2006)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-05
- A solution to the prosecutorial overcharging problem2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-01-24
- Why Many Scientific Articles Are Wrong2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-06-15
What Hacker News says?
No, that's not the argument. Again, my root question is "why have there been so many prominent predictions of climate disaster that have failed to materialize?" The sources for these predictions have largely been the media, but the sources are generally respected institutions or individuals, and the articles have claimed the backing of scientific authority. To what extent have these failed predictions stemmed from t…
Comment linking /2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html
on “Coronavirus and Credibility”Submitted Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know as a story · 78 points
HN discussionThe question here is whether that 97% accept that humans are the main cause of global warming, which is arguably not supported by the evidence presented in the Cook paper. To quote Friedman in a follow-up post: > My objection was that the 97% figure lumped together categories 1-3, when only category 1 fitted Cook's "main cause." Categories 2 and 3 were papers saying or implying that human action was a cause—"contrib…
Comment linking /2014/03/john-cooks-response-to-my-criticism.html
on “Coronavirus and Credibility”Submitted Land Gained and Lost: A Fermi Estimate as a story · 76 points
HN discussionDavid Friedman wrote a very short post 5 years ago on accounting: "I have been teaching a new course that includes two weeks explaining accounting to law students. To do so, I first had to understand it myself. I think I now do, and in the hope that the information might be useful to others ... ." http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-acc...
Comment linking /2006/02/understanding-accounting-short-version.html
on “Accounting for Computer Scientists”Submitted The Economics of Status (2006) as a story · 72 points
HN discussionBecker-Posner Blog: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ David (son of Milton) Friedman: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Comment linking /
on “America's Real Criminal Element: Lead”Submitted The Economics of Status (2006) as a story · 53 points
HN discussionEconomist David Friedman has a good take on it. Athenian justice had a way to deal with this issue. http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2013/01/overcharging-aaro...
Comment linking /2013/01/overcharging-aaron-swartz-case.html
on “How mandatory minimum sentences distort plea bargaining”Submitted Other Worlds and Wasted Talents as a story · 38 points
HN discussionI loved David Friedman's The Machinery of Freedom. His blog is also filled with a lot of interesting thoughts: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Great books you read in 2009?”Submitted If you want war, work for justice as a story · 33 points
HN discussionName-dropping Milton Friedman would be useful to court Friedmanites, not necessarily libertarians . I'm guessing that his son David ( http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/ ), who is even more libertarian than his father, would likely have a different opinion.
Comment linking /
on “The case for an antibiotics tax”Submitted Prediction vs Explanation: A Puzzle as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSide note - if the article sounds uber-rational econ, it may be in part because the author is the son of Milton Friedman. Here is his first post on the topic. http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-use-of-old-ex... There is a great quote at the end. And, for a last comment ... . I like to say that being a professor is better than working for a living, except when grading exams. One reason is that grading exa…
Comment linking /2012/11/the-use-of-old-exams.html
on “Exam Credit for Knowing What You Do Not Know”Submitted Home Unschooling as a story · 8 points
HN discussionI didn’t want to believe your parentheses text, but I found that the author also has an article criticizing climate projections as volatile and too far into the future [1]. This is straight up climate denial. It’s very pernicious. It admits that climate is changing, it references one of the more dire predictions (3 C), and it doesn’t deny that the change is human caused. It’s pernicious because it shifts attention f…
Comment linking /2021/11/a-prediction-we-will-get-to-test.html?m=1
on “Land Gained and Lost: A Fermi Estimate”Submitted A Better Way of Learning as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThere's at least one other survey that did the same trick - turned ~80% agreement in a big group into 97% in a minuscule subsample. Additionally, John Cook - the guy who runs skepticalscience - did some studies claiming to find high agreement with "the consensus" among published papers about climate . But his paper were terrible , didn't show what he claimed they did, and were less relevant to your claim. Here's a b…
Comment linking /2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html
on “Life’s Work: An Interview with Penn Jillette”Submitted Stable Cryptocurrencies as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMacroeconomics is a tour of either a cemetery or a construction site. http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2010/09/living-dead-thoug...
Comment linking /2010/09/living-dead-thoughts-on-macro-and.html
on “The Trouble with Macroeconomics (2016) [pdf]”Submitted Why Many Scientific Articles Are Wrong as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe David Friedman cited here is the son of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, and the father of Patri Friedman (former Google engineer, now director of the Peter Thiel-funded Seasteading Institute: http://seasteading.org/ ). His book The Machinery of Freedom has a lot more about law without government, both historically and speculatively: http://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capita... His weblog is pr…
Comment linking /
on “Medieval Iceland and the Absence of Government”Submitted Another Economics Joke as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDavid Friedman, a prominent libertarian/anarcho-capitalist theorist (and son of economist Milton Friedman), has a similar but deeper article about the Amish, wherein he interprets their legal system as essentially an anarchy where laws, despite being extremely constraining, are produced and enforced non-violently. http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/10/are-amish-anarchi...
Comment linking /2011/10/are-amish-anarchists.html
on “Amish: The kindhearted people”Submitted Bitcoin, Anonymous ECash, and Strong Privacy (2014) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou might be interested in the "unschooling" ideas of David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman): http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/case-for-unschool... http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2006/02/unschooling-advan... http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/12/home-unschooling-... http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/12/home-unschooling-...
Comment linking /2007/12/home-unschooling-practice.html
on “Books all kids should read at school (a list)”Submitted A solution to the prosecutorial overcharging problem as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis is really really really hard to believe, unless man and woman play the same role in the process of evolution. Think in this way: if evolution made man and woman physically different, how come it made man and woman mentally same? Read: Who is Against Evolution? http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2008/08/who-is-against-ev... Read: Is There Anything Good About Men? http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm
Comment linking /2008/08/who-is-against-evolution.html
on “Men's and women's brains are the same, says scientist”Submitted Controlling Corporations: Stockholders vs Stakeholders as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
