2024-12-15
If I had a bitcoin for every time that I have heard somebody use Gödel's proof of undecidability to justify some ideologically attractive statement, I would be hodling. Maybe these claims are right, but it always seems like there is magic involved. I have attempted to brush up on his proof several times before, however, at the moment I have the benefit of purpose as the Undecidability Proof is at...
2024-12-04
In 1952, Hayek published The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology . The aim of his work was to describe processes by which the neurological system classifies sensory inputs. He asserts that the mechanism's he describes support human capacity for higher order classification and classificatory structures. Perhaps Hayek did not fully understand at the time of his...
2024-11-30
Property Taxes and Budgetary Independence in North Dakota Published October 2024; Link to Revised Draft In general, a state policy that limits the extent of taxation can attract individuals and businesses to that state. Restrictions on fiscal expansion also limit the extent of the size of deficits and overall net indebtedness of the state. If parties are sensitive to the increased marginal costs...
2024-11-29
For Thanksgiving, because making a turkey was not trouble enough, I decided to build D3 apps using ChatGPT as a crutch. Over the summer, I had dedicated significant energy to mastering plotly . While there are many advantage to using plotly, D3 visualizations are silky smooth and load from the browser. While in the past I have gotten interactive D3 applications to work, there was always way too...
2024-11-27
If you use neural networks, you may not realize that these were among the earliest forms of machine structures studied as interest in computing grew in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1940s, there was growing interest in cybernetic systems. This early work attempted to frame such systems as deterministic machines that are guided by feedback derived over the course of operation. The most obvious of...
2024-11-13
I have run into a fortunate double problem in the last few weeks. In my research as a fellow at HOPE , I have been finding that, increasingly, text of documents that I am finding only appear in print. So I face the double problem that the text is neither available to be read on my machine nor searchable. So 1) to the extent necessary, I want to save a personal copy of a text and 2) I would like...
2024-11-06
There is nothing like the joy of Fed watching. Interest rates rise and fall based on expectations of the growth rate in expenditures across the economy. Changes in expenditures tend to reflect changes in the expected return to investment in capital. This relationship is complicated by the time to maturity for a given bond. The interest rate on the 1 Year U.S. Treasury, for example, reflects...
2024-11-05
Two years ago, I took a step away from blogging. I had made a habit of regularly blogging for about a decade. Beginning in 2013 with my personal blog, Money, Markets, and Misperception , I used the platform as a space to explore ideas. Exhuberance and a general lack of awareness of what I did not know were a useful combination at the time. My interests moved from monetary theory and monetary...
2017-07-20
Find out in my new post at the NDSU Center for the Study of Public Choice Blog...
2017-02-21
In earliest society, the number of jobs that were available to men and women were limited. They were also strictly allocated on the basis of gender. Goods were allocated amongst a community according to one’s position in the hierarchy. As society grows larger, this structure of cooperation is difficult to maintain. Groups tend to divide at Dunbar’s number, which lies somewhere between 150 and 300...