All of these bring each other more to mind: here, now, me, us; trend-deviating likely real local events; concrete, context-dependent, unstructured, detailed, goal-irrelevant incidental features; feasible safe acts; secondary local concerns; socially close folks with unstable traits. 

Conversely, all these bring each other more to mind: there, then, them; trend-following unlikely hypothetical global events; abstract, schematic, context-freer, core, coarse, goal-related features; desirable risk-taking acts, central global symbolic concerns, confident predictions, polarized evaluations, socially distant people with stable traits. 

I'm trying to ingest this concept of near/far that Hanson is constantly referring to. I can't help but feel as if, once I understand what he's trying to say, I could explain it much better.

Look, in any area where we let humans do things, every once in a while there will be a big screwup; that is the sort of creatures humans are. And if you won’t decrease regulation without a screwup but will increase it with a screwup, then you have a regulation ratchet: it only moves one way. So if you don’t think a long period without a big disaster calls for weaker regulations, but you do think a particular big disaster calls for stronger regulation, well then you might as well just strengthen regulations lots more right now, even without a disaster. Because that is where your regulation ratchet is heading.

Another problem with passion is bias.  Especially in social science, people pick topics in order to convince the world of their one true answer.  But it is healthier to focus on questions, not answers.  By picking an answer before you’ve really studied a topic, not only are you more likely to be wrong, but more important, you could miss interesting new angles.

My colleague Bryan Caplan is the sharpest thinker I’ve personally known.   He has a penetrating insight and willingness to embrace uncomfortable conclusions, except on a few topics, such as free will, dualism, and libertarian ethics, where he developed strong intuitions early.  Fortunately for Bryan, while these opinions may motivate his research, he had not directly worked in those areas.  Similarly, I have to admit it was good that I spent most of research time away from the topics I was the most passionate about.

(Today my graduate research class begins; here is advice for new researchers.)

"Son, don’t marry for money; hang around rich girls and marry for love." A joke I heard years ago from Chip Morningstar. 

Research topics work similarly.  Don’t research a topic because it is popular; expose yourself to many popular topics and you will fall in love with a few.  Fall in love with a dozen topics; too few and you’ll linger too long after they fail. 

Really gushing on Hanson today. My apologies, but I think we're all better for it.

The bottom line is that thousands of people randomly given free medicine in the late 1970s consumed 30-40% more medical services, paid one more "restricted activity day" per year to deal with the medical system, but were not noticeably healthier!  So unless the marginal value of medicine has changed in the last thirty years, if you would not pay for medicine out of your own pocket, then don’t bother to go when others offer to pay; on average such medicine is as likely to hurt as to help.

The lessons to draw here depends on whether you want credit or influence.  If you want credit as an innovator then you should actually be pretty conservative.  Become prestigious in a conservative way, until late in your career.  Reject non-standard views but not explicitly; just ignore them so your quotes won’t bite you later.  When the time is right, look around for ripe once-contrarian ideas and take one.  Change the name and vary the methods and topics, grab the first few high profile resources, and trash the original contrarians as weirdos. 

Just. Phenomenally. Good. Read the whole piece, really.

Some of the differences in our beliefs seem to be heritable.   "The Heritability of Attitutes: A Study of Twins," in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2001, asked 339 twin pairs for their attitudes on 30 topics.  These attitudes had seven common factors, four of which moderate categories of beliefs:   

• Life: voluntary euthanasia, abortion on demand, birth control, and organized religion.
• Intellect: books, chess, education, and capitalism
• Equality: open-door immigration, distinct gender roles, racial discrimination, and getting along with others
• Punishment: death penalty for murder,  and castration for sex crimes

Genetic differences explained most of differences in attitudes to life and equality (66% and 55% of the variance respectively), but none (0%) of the attitudes to intellect and punishment. 

Read the whole thing at the "via" link above. I've repeated this many times, and I'm saying it again: Overcoming Bias is, in my opinion, the best blog on the Internet.

A prosperous and successful plumber is an expert at plumbing.   Someone who is a good source for accurate information on plumbing is an expert on plumbing.  More generally, an expert at a topic is someone who has gained the most attention, praise, income, and so on via their association with the topic.   But this may not be the best expert on that topic.  He may have succeeded by not giving the most accurate information, but by telling people what they want or expect to hear, or by entertaining them.

We often rely on the heuristic of looking to an expert at a topic, when what we want is an expert on a topic.  In fact, most of the people we see being labeled as "experts" are primarily experts at topics.  For example, TV talking heads discussing topic X are usually people who have made a successful career in X.  We may see a general talk about war, or a CEO talk about business.