Pun Salad

Bryan Caplan's defense of "libertarian" free will: Solipsism>>Determinism.

I'm with Bryan. And his choice of words is telling: he's "long believed in" free will. "Believing in" something means your certainty is strong, but way short of 100%. Would that all philosophical pundits adopted this implicit humility.

(What does this have to do with solipsism? See Bryan's post for his explanation.)

I would love to see a debate on free will between Bryan and Sabine Hossenfelder. Here's a recent video from Sabine:

I think there's a logical gap between asserting (1) "I can't understand how free will would work" and (2) "Free will can't work". I'm perfectly OK with (1); I don't think it necessarily entails (2).

And I'm pretty sure (although she seems to claim otherwise), in her everyday life, Sabine has conscious, rational, control of her actions.

No matter on which side of the free will debate people land on, they all manage to make decisions on matters large and small, every day. (Well, I think so anyway, but—see Bryan—I'm not a solipsist.)

Also of note:

• Trump dropped a different kind of bomb. Not a bunker-buster, the one beginning with F. Christian Schneider comments: Donald Trump Is the Real Obscenity.

  It shouldn’t be at all surprising that on Tuesday Donald Trump became the first president to willingly say the word “fuck” in front of the media. To date, he has sprinkled his stump speeches with the occasional “bullshit” or “ass,” although he had never uttered the Queen Mother of profanities in front of microphones.

  [Video at link]

  But Trump is a walking obscenity, unable to control his emotions or impulses, making American governance a byproduct of his glandular outbursts, not of law or tradition. Using a swear word is merely a symptom of his coarse imbecility, not the cause of it. It is simply further evidence that he has no respect for norms or etiquette if they restrict him in any way.

  Trump uttered the f-word when expressing disgust at Israel and Iran for continuing to bomb each other after the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend. Trump had taken credit for a cease-fire between the two nations, but got the “new phone, who dis” treatment from both nations when they decided to resume attacking each other. When he lashed out, Trump wasn’t mad that more people were being incinerated by warheads, he was incensed that the latest round of bombing made him look like a feckless boob. They had stolen the thing he craves the most: credit.

  Christian looks at how the f-bomb has worked its way into political discourse. ("Disraeli it ain't," he says, and true dat.) It's been a long time coming, and he links to his 2020 Bulwark article about the trend.

• "Don't look at me, I just work here." Ramesh Ponnuru comments on Lutnick's Sadness.

  Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined the administration pile-on against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whose sin is not cutting interest rates. There are good arguments on both sides of the interest-rate question. Then there’s Lutnick’s argument.

  Justifying a go-slow approach to reducing rates, Powell said that tariffs have already caused prices to increase for some products, such as personal computers. Lutnick calls that “really sad”: “You would think Powell would know there are no tariffs on personal computers. They currently don’t exist.”

  This is . . . not true. Some of the data showing it’s not true come from the Department of Commerce. In fairness, tariffs have been hard to keep track of lately — but that’s not a defense that Lutnick can make.

  Fortunately, I'm not currently in the market for a new PC. What, your kid needs one for school? Gee, that's too bad.

• Keep this in your back pocket. For the next time some Green advocate claims otherwise, point her or him to Adam N. Michel's fact-check: Fossil Fuel Subsidies Are Mostly Fiction, But the Real Energy Subsidies Should Go.

  You’ve probably heard the claim that fossil fuels are heavily subsidized by the federal government. The Biden administration estimated there were at least $35 billion of fossil fuel subsidies in the tax code alone. Elon Musk recently expressed a similar sentiment, insinuating that oil and gas receive subsidies comparable to those received by electric vehicles and solar.

  This common refrain simply doesn’t hold up. Official government data show that renewables are subsidized 30 times more than fossil fuels. Most of the subsidies are in the tax code, where 94 percent of the fiscal cost goes to green energy technologies. And even this breakdown is overstated. Most of what critics label as fossil fuel subsidies are standard tax treatments available to many industries.

  I haven't checked, but probably you won't see this at Politifact.