Advice for sci.electronics.design

No, they're caused by _denied_ hostility and stress.

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Cheers!
Rich

for further information, please visit http://www.godchannel.com

Overt hostility and anger is a killer. It keeps the immune system revved up and whacks telomeres like crazy.

John

Actually, it's a well-known example used by the economist Milton Friedman. I just spiced it up a bit.

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Regards,
  Bob Monsen

That's out of the Rationale for sci.electronics.basics, thus earning you my SMARMY OUT OF CONTEXT QUOTING DIPSHIT AWARD of the year. Hell, make that the decade.

sci.electronics was, for the seven years I'd been reading it before that reorg, been a rough place, and this was the justification for creating the s.e..basics "no such thing as a stupid question" policy. Not an attempt to discipline the readers of the mainline group. (If you'd ever seen John De Armond and Dr. Larry Lippmann going at each other hammer and tongs, or RSW in full flower, you'd have the minor half a clue that playing net.cop like you're trying to do just makes things worse).

You seem to be determined to follow the success of the moderator of alt.dcom.telecom. He was so successful that two other groups with the same topic were created to avoid him, and the traffic of "his" group dropped by a factor of (about) four.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Washington State resident

....

And on rereading while sober, I do, in fact see your point. Sorry I got a little poopy there.

Pretty much, yup! :-)

Thanks! Rich

Some years ago, Steve Allen told a joke something like, "Well, at the rate they've been building highways in Southern California, they've finally paved over the whole state. You don't need maps any more - just pick a direction and drive, and there will be concrete under you" - liberally paraphrased here, of course.

Cheers! Rich

Sounds like Boston to me. ;-)

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  Keith

Thanks for the historical perspective. Mark appears to some credentials in this matter:

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Regards,
  Bob Monsen

My quote sounds almost identical to the quote of Friedman in that link I posted. I had actually read the example in a couple of other books.

I heard the story originally in a book by Thomas Sewell, who I believe was a student of Friedman at Harvard. However, Friedman used the example in an NYT oped, which I linked upthread. It's an effective example of the invisible hand, which is exactly why I was using it. It shows that if one attempts to control things with arbitrary rules, one inhibits larger and more subtle effects. This is also the point that Friedman was attempting to make, which is that the Soviet Union, by attempting centralized control, was interfering with the positive feedback (the 'invisible hand') which allows efficiency.

The article you posted by Read also has the quote: "The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited". That is what I had hoped to convey with the example. Using a backdoor policy to impose moderation on this group is, in my opinion, an attempt to inhibit creative energies.

Rich is a Libertarian. However, to my knowledge, he has not claimed any real expertise in economics. I was simply parroting something I'd read in one of the many popular books on economics that I've read over the last few years. However, I have never claimed to be an economist.

By saying that my post "lost the core meaning" of the original, however, you seem to be claiming to both understand the original argument, and to know how I went off the rails with my posting. I challenge you to back up this assertion, rather than just taking a pot-shot at me and running away like some frightened child. The reason I hang out here is that I'm interesting in learning things.

The original is preserved above.

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Best regards,
  Bob Monsen

"The most hostile group was the one with high but unstable self esteem. These people think well of themselves in general, but their self-esteem fluctuates. They are especially prone to react defensively to ego threats, and they are also more prone to hostility, anger and aggression than other people.

"These findings shed considerable light on the psychology of the bully. Hostile people do not have low self esteem; on the contrary, they think highly of themselves, But their favorable view of themselves is not held with total conviction, and it goes up and down in response to daily events. The bully has a chip on his shoulder because he thinks you might want to deflate his favorable self image."

-Roy F. Baumeister, _Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty_ p 149

...and by doing so you lost the core meaning[1]. You also failed to mention that Milton Friedman was quoting Leonard E. Read.

The original is here: [

]

(Leonard Read was re-telling Adam Smith's story. Read it here: [

].)

[1] As evidence of this, I predict that Rich, who disagreed with your "spiced up" version, will pretty much agree with the original work.

Thanks for the correction. It's been a few years since I read his book.

Here it is:

He is astoundingly conservative, so the book was lots of fun to read and argue with. It was lent me after a heated conversation with a co-worker.

Another fun author of economics popularization/history is Todd G. Buchholz. It's also possible that I read the reference in one of his books, of which I own two, "From Here to Economy", and "New Ideas from Dead Economists". He is also very conservative. He was Chairman of George HW Bush's council of economic advisors.

It is a common example, so I'm sure economics professors the world over use it when explaining the power of the free market.

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Regards,
  Bob Monsen

Thomas Sowell, who holds the Rose and Milton Freidman chair at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. I believe (but could be wrong) that he studdied under Freidman at the University of Chicago. I seem to remember him making that comment in an editorial a couple of years ago, but can't find a reference right now.

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  Keith