Things I Ask

More than a Nudge Robert Thaler, the soon to be winner of this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, wrote about how organ donation rates can change significantly when the question is asked differently to potential donors . In a nutshell, he differentiates the opt-in and the opt-out method, where the opt-out method gets more people to become donors, because the default choice is to be a donor. But he goes on to mention that the presumed-content law may be upsetting to some people, and that the Illinois system, which "makes one's wishes to be a donor legally binding . . . is a winning combination." Here, Thaler, in his strict adherence to libertarian paternalism, fails to consider a morally and economically superior policy: the policy of mandatory donations. It is not hard to see that mandatory donations are economically superior. To see why mandatory donations are morally superior, one need only consider the trolley problem. Here is the thought exp...

Youtube algorithms allow users to browse related videos. Recommendations are based on what other viewers, who have also watched the same videos, have browsed. This nifty feature has become an essential part of Youtube, where 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute. By clicking on a recommended video, the Youtuber can reach new content with expectations that it will fit one's taste. But what if a Youtuber wanted to learn something new? What if a Youtuber who only watches NBA highlights has an undiscovered desire to watch videos of a cobra fighting a mongoose? Though the sidebar recommendations are great at featuring interesting, related content, there is no way for interesting, unrelated content to show up. And while the Cobra v. Mongoose  example is facetious and trivial to some people, the idea of unrelated recommendations can be applied in education. Picture a curious student who wants to learn about the world. One problem that the curious student faces is that he may no...

As I was reading Robert M. Pirsig's second novel, Lila , I came across the idea of "Philosophology". Philosophology, or the study of philosophy. This idea saved my life. One of my goals since graduating high school was to study philosophy, to get a coherent understanding of major ideas from major philosophers. I wanted to know enough to group philosophers, to concisely sum up their ideas, and to read their works in the original languages that they were written in. I, like the people Pirsig described, thought that knowing about philosophy was essential before pursuing my own philosophy. What if people already wrote down what I wanted to write down? What if strong counterarguments already existed? But Pirsig said the same thing that a professor from the Yonsei Philosophy Department had said to me a year ago: given our short lifespans, it would be impossible. "You can imagine the ridiculousness of an art historian taking his students to museums, having them wri...

The Freakonomics guys summed it up well: "... voting exacts a cost -- in time, effort, lost productivity -- with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your 'civic duty.' As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, 'A rational individual should abstain from voting.'" -excerpt from a New York Times article This is unsettling, because many people consider the economic policies of candidates to be of the utmost importance. (According to the Chosun Ilbo article written on May 4th, 2017, polls revealed that economic growth policy was the most important factor of the 2017 Korean elections, at a rate of 28.5%. Policies regarding job creation came in second place, at 18.8%.) What to do, when the people who allegedly know the most about the economy take no part in shaping it? Surely, this major problem is difficult to remove without hurting democracy. Perhaps, then, hurting democracy is the best way to solve thi...

Sometimes, theories based on evolutionary psychology sound a bit too forced . For example, there is a claim that babies tend to look more like their fathers. The evolutionary explanation is well summarized by the Scientific American: " Fathers, after all, do not share a mother's certainty that a baby is theirs, and are more likely to invest whatever resources they have in their own offspring. Human evolution, then, could have favored children that resemble their fathers, at least early on, as a way of confirming paternity." (The actual Scientific American article debunks this view.) The reason that such theories sound "forced" is that the phenomena can have a myriad causes that sufficiently explain it. The paternal resemblance explanation is just one of the many possible explanations. Forced theories are bad because anyone can make them while no one can satisfactorily dispute them. To illustrate this point, I will propose a theory that seeks to explain...

Today, our police squad went to a mountain in Seoul, looking for an elderly man who was suspected of attempting suicide. (After 6.5 hours of searching, we were ordered to end the search. As of the time of this writing, the man has not yet been found.) Because I drive our squad's bus, I had the privilege to wait inside the bus. This was in case someone tried to break in, or in case someone needed me to relocate the bus. I parked the bus on the side of the road, just below the hiking trail. During the long wait, hikers passed by left and right. I noticed that the hikers coming from the left would pause, look, and (if they had companions) mention the existence of the police bus before moving on. Meanwhile, hikers from the right rarely paused. Pause vs No Pause I believe that this behavior could be explained by an amount of time that is needed to appreciate an unexpected sight. I will call this duration surprise time . Highly unusual and intriguing moments have long surpr...

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon [...] Now Thrasymachus had many times tried to interrupt, and at last he burst out and said, "What is this nonsense, Socrates? How are we to protect ourselves without guardians at our borders? Should we allow aliens to enter our lands without restraint? What lawlessness! You wish for an ideal that cannot be translated into reality. I say that unless you provide answers to these complications, your speech is nothing but a waste of time." I was staggered by his attack but managed to answer him: "Don't be so hard on us, Thrasymachus. If we had made any mistake in the course of our discussion, I assure you we have not done so on purpose. It's the ability that we lack, and clever chaps like you ought to feel sorry for us." "I would much rather listen to you try and defend your arguments," he replied with a bitter laugh. "I will try my best. But we must first agree to ignore possible anac...