Mixed Economies Rule, Libertarian Capitalism and Communism Both Suck

[wufwugy]

Centrism for the sake of centrism is probably the most annoying and poorly backed up argument that people hold that isn't shot down straight away because it's fairly unoffensive.

Totally agree. It's lazy thinking. Though I'm not sure that's boost's game here.

Neat to note, you know how it's common to say moderation is good? I've seen Taleb convincingly explain why it isn't moderation that is good but variation.

[boost]

Totally agree. It's lazy thinking. Though I'm not sure that's boost's game here.

Thanks for the benefit of the doubt; it's not.

Neat to note, you know how it's common to say moderation is good? I've seen Taleb convincingly explain why it isn't moderation that is good but variation.

This sounds interesting, got a link or maybe better just your recollection of what he had to say?

[wufwugy]

This sounds interesting, got a link or maybe better just your recollection of what he had to say?

Sadly, I don't have a link. He linked either his work or some others' work on Twitter and I can't find it again. It was in large part a statistics argument, but I can't say what or how much.

The idea can be analogized like this: take food for example. Moderation is, well, something like balance healthy and unhealthy food. So, you can say balance between high calorie and low calorie, or cheeseburgers and bananas, or eating too much and eating too little. The moderation of each of these would be to do a middle thing, like eat a moderated amount of cheeseburgers and bananas.

But as we can see, this leaves some important stuff out. A truly "healthy" diet is one with a wide variation of food, not just bananas and not just consumed moderately. And if we examine tastes, that "variety is the spice of life" saying becomes interesting, since if you eat a lot of healthy vegetable stew (for example), the more you do it and the less you do other things, the more you may benefit health-wise from eating something healthy that is not vegetable stew. Likewise, the more you may benefit from eating something not healthy in the first place, which could manifest in either a moderate or extreme way. This idea can be extended to lifestyle. What makes for a healthy person? Is it somebody who is moderate in everything? No. Is it somebody who is moderate in everything even moderation? No. That would be a person who does a moderate amount of the same stuff most of the time then an extreme amount of that same stuff some of the time. The healthiest lifestyle is one with variation in the lifestyle.

His reasoning was significantly more sophisticated than this. It's too bad I can't find it again.