This policy works great with intelligent and reasonable kids, but if the children refuse to listen to reason, or take a *very* long time to be convinced by reason while you have be somewhere in fifteen minutes, being able to say "because I said so" makes life a lot easier.
>My high school driver’s ed textbook asserted that a head on collision between two cars each going 50 miles an hour had the same effect on each as running into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. I constructed a simple proof that it could not be true, offered it to the teacher.
What is the explanation? From my vague recollections of highschool physics, that is how collisions and relative motion works.
Let the two cars be identical, save that one is a mirror image of the other. Hang a sheet precisely between them. When they collide neither can pass the sheet, since the other is pushing exactly as hard on the other side of it. So the sheet is acting like a perfectly rigid brick wall. You don't actually need the sheet — that's just for exposition. The plane exactly between the cars acts like a brick wall even if there is nothing there.
That was my proof. If you prefer, calculate kinetic energy. A car at 100 mph has four time the energy. Or look at momentum transfer. If the collision, with the other car or the brick wall, is perfectly elastic each car changes momentum by 2 x 50 mph x mass, whether it hits the other car or the wall --from 50mph forward to 50 mph backwards. If perfectly inelastic, from 50 to zero. The claim that it is like 100 makes no physical sense at all.
What is true is that the 50mph collision with a brick wall is equivalent to a 100 mph collision with a car that is standing still, but that wasn't the claim.
Look at the second in a reference frame moving at 50 mph in the same direction as the car. In that reference frame it is a head-on collision between two cars both moving at 50 mph. I have already explained why that is equivalent to a car colliding with a brick wall.
> In that reference frame it is a head-on collision between two cars both moving at 50 mph.
This sounds a bit muddled. In the reference frame of either car, the car itself is standing still. Velocity, momentum, kinetic energy etc. are only defined relative to some coordinate system, so if your coordinate system (i.e. the reference frame) is centered on your car, then said car just sits still at the origin.
From such a reference frame, it's the street that's moving 50mph beneath you in the reverse direction. Similarly, the opposing car has 50mph on its speedomoter, traveling on a street that's moving 50mph in the same direction, hence it's approaching you at 100mph.
If it's a head-on collision, the reference frames should be moving in opposite directions, in which case surely the crash should be more severe, not less.
A better way to phrase it would be, in case of two cars moving towards each other at 50 mph, from the reference frame of either of the cars the other car should surely be coming at 100 mph.
To spell it out a little more clearly, the problem with the original statement is that a wall is not a car. We assume the brick wall mostly doesn't move and is mostly undamaged. So, it doesn't absorb nearly as much kinetic energy as a parked car would. Essentially all of the kinetic energy in a car hitting the wall will be absorbed by the car itself as damage, since it's stopped afterwards.
To set up a situation that's equivalent to two cars colliding head-on, let's say that we have a car at 100 mph hitting a stopped car in neutral, and afterwards, both cars are moving together at 50 mph. If a car moving at 50 mph has 1x kinetic energy, a car moving at 100 mph has 4x. After the collision, because we're assuming symmetry, there is 1x kinetic energy in each moving car and 1x energy absorbed by each car, so the total is still 4x, distributed differently.
The symmetric head-on collision starts with 2x kinetic energy and puts 1x energy into each car, so the amount of damage is the same. Unless they bounce, which means there's more energy remaining in the cars' movements, but is probably worse for the passengers. It's good that crumple zones absorb energy.
But the part that's still not symmetric is that after a collision with a parked car, with two damaged cars moving at 50mph, there will likely be *another* collision. By the time both cars are stopped, the extra 2x kinetic energy has to have gone somewhere.
> This policy works great with intelligent and reasonable kids, but if the children refuse to listen to reason, or take a *very* long time to be convinced by reason while you have be somewhere in fifteen minutes, being able to say "because I said so" makes life a lot easier.
And there were circumstances where one of my parents said "this is an urgent situation, we can discuss it when we get back but for now I need you to do it."
Does the brick wall have infinite mass, such that after the collision it is still going 50? That makes it equivalent to a 100 mph car in the reference frame where the brick wall is standing still and perfectly rigid.
Hmm. Okay, I think I see it. We didn't have to posit an infinite mass in the case where one car hits a stationary wall -- except we sort of did, because we are assuming that nothing happens to the wall: It just stops the car in an instant.
I guess the argument is that in he case of the two cars, each is travelling at 50mph and then stops essentially instantaneously, and it makes no difference to that car what made it stop. If one of the cars was a super-tank that continued on at 50mph without noticing, then the delta-v of the other car would be -100mph and it *would* be equivalent to hitting an immovable wall at 100mph.
I think it's fair to say that the damage to the colliding cars is the same as the damage to the faster car against the wall? But in the former case the damage is split between the two cars. Maybe that's the source of the false intuition.
Yeah. Googling suggests that the resolution is that doubling the cars doubles released energy from suddenly stopping, but it also doubles the mass that stops, so for each car it's no different from hitting a stationary wall. My thought experiment makes me doubt that explanation, but it's been way too long since I had to cypher anything out in physics.
It's probably slightly different when cars crash than walls because of stuff like two cars would both have crumple zones and airbags, it's possible to go completely through a brick wall, etc. but I think that would be basically a rounding error and miss the point of the driver's ed example
Yeah, but Dr Friedman’s story makes it sound like there is a simple billiard-ball-level analysis that doesn’t have to model the internal structure of cars (or the wall) — something that requires only the physical equations for momentum and energy rather than a numerical simulation. And to be honest I rather think I have *read* such an explanation, but I apparently didn’t retain it or I could explain why it’s different if one of the cars is a moving brick wall.
It doesn't even require that, although that's an option. It's sufficient to observe that, if the cars are identical mirror images, no part of either car can pass the plane between them by symmetry, so that plane acts like an invisible brick wall.
It depends on the nature of the discussion. If I tell my kids to clean their room, I expect them to do it because I said so. If instead I were to argue that Trump would be a bad president, and one of my kids wants to argue otherwise, I encourage that sort of debate.
I disagree. If you explain why he should do it and he, without offering a rebuttal, refuses, you make him do it. But you don't refuse to justify your command — that is teaching the wrong lesson.
To some extent yes, and parents should usually be ready to offer a justification. The degree to which I'm prepared to justify something depends on the nature of what I'm doing.
If I'm asking them to clean their rooms I am willing to provide some justification, but ultimately they have to do it. However, if it is a discussion about the optimal nature of the federal government, then they do not have to agree with me.
I agree to a point. If the kids wants to argue about cleaning their room, I'd be happy to argue a little bit, but assuming they didn't change my mind and I couldn't change theirs, eventually I would want them to just do it. Similarly, if a kid wanted to put up a Trump lawn sign, I'd argue against them, but even if I couldn't change their mind I still wouldn't let them, it'd ultimately come down to "my house my rules" even if I'd normally let them put up most types of signs.
I wouldn't stop them personally unless I thought it'd get them in trouble at school or something, although that's also because I don't think Trump is *that* bad. If I had a kid and they became an unironic white supremacist and started wearing a Hitler shirt because they loved Hitler, and I couldn't convince them not to love Hitler, well I'm not sure what I would do but I probably wouldn't let them wear it around me.
I know “ideas, not position” is a theme of your views on child rearing. But I don’t understand it. It’s rare even among adults that every party to a discussion converges in agreement what the correct arguments and outcome are. In that case there has to be some decision procedure to decide an outcome. Unless a family magically ends up agreeing at the end of every discussion, either the parents need to have the decision making authority or there has to be some other mechanism (voting, where three kids can defeat the parents?) to decide questions. I agree that arguments are what should decide these things but everyone has his arguments.
In most contexts, the parents have the decisionmaking power, and we needed to convince them in order to get them to use it differently. With regards to things affecting my body and my property that weren't life-critical, I had the decisionmaking power, because those were mine.
> Many years later I heard an elderly man of whom I had a generally favorable opinion tell a child who had disagreed with him not to contradict his elders. I was shocked — the statement struck me as heresy, very nearly obscenity.
Yes indeed! It wasn't until I got to college that I met more than a couple of people for whom arguing was a mutual search for the truth rather than about status. It was a revelation. I still live in my university town, because it's the only place in the world I've ever been where it's possible to construct a large group of friends who are like that.
"His argument was right, mine was wrong; I cancelled, flew home and isolated until vaccines became available." Especially in retrospect, you were wrong. How did you miss the totalitarian "lockstep" motives behind the whole thing!
I have criticized the government response to the pandemic but the pandemic itself was real and, for a man my age, there was a serious risk that it would be mortal. Is your claim that Covid didn't happen or wasn't dangerous?
Without a White Coat I can't be sure. But, the death rate was no worse than a bad flu year (fraction of a %), flu disappeared mysteriously probably due to the inaccuracy of the PCR test, and the captured regulatory agencies acted as vaxxx salesmen along with the captured MSM. The toll in vaxxx injuries is vast contrary to the pharma captured media. Only now is the dam on vaxxx injury news starting to break, just in time to undermine "warp speed" Trump, most likely.
BTW: I think your Dad, though almost always right on everything was wrong on the effect of the drug regulatory agencies. He thought regulation held back drug progress if I recall correctly. In fact, I now think it is the opposite. The captured agencies enable extremely risky drugs and vaccines. Removing liability from vaxxx manufacturers was a catastrophe.
BTW: I sat in on your Dad giving a presentation to the Economics Department on his monetary theories circa 1966 at the University of Michigan. Of course, he ran circles around them. With few exceptions they were just government and/or union shills. There was tremendous faith in government then. I was in Engineering, but took several elective courses in economics.
You should have quit while you were ahead. Because the rest of what you said is (based on what I've read) wrong. The Economist did an excellent analysis and found that deaths were fairly massively underreported around the world: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates
I know he is defamed terribly by the MSM, but Del Bigtree of the Highwire is a great medical journalist in my opinion, presenting and comparing the science of the pharma controlled scientists vs. the mavericks. The evidence against the absurd childhood vaxxx regimen and the Covid vaxxx is overwhelming.
The mRNA vaxxx per the expert Robert Malone who was the first to experiment with the idea decades ago is a grievously flawed technology. The synthetic mRNA enclosed in a toxic lipid nano particle causes any cell in the body to manufacture the toxic spike protein similar to the virus spike protein. The immune system then attacks not only the spike, but any cell manufacturing it, thus potentially causing damage to any organ. The idea the mRNA stayed in the muscle where injected turned out to be totally wrong, but the authorities wouldn't acknowledge the evidence as it came in from independent scientists around the world. Worse yet, the lipid nanotech particles were designed to cross the blood brain barrier.
I've been an anarcho-capitalist for a long time reinforced by your writing and others as I evolved away from, Ayn Rand way back. I became enthralled with Ayn Rand in 9th grade, about 1961.
Capture of government by Corporations & Central Banks is bringing the world deep into statism, so far from libertarian ideals I get pretty discouraged. We libertarians, I think under estimated, the ability of predatory monopoly to develop with the help of captured government.
Statism appears to have a better feedback loop than liberty.
To conspire is human nature and especially prevalent among ruling classes. Thus, conspiracy theories, though easy to get wrong, must always be considered. The Economist is perhaps THE premier ruling class publication, owned still I think by the Rothschilds though Evelyn Rothschild I think must have passed away by now. If the World Economic Forum is NOT a front for the ruling class conspiracy, nothing is!
The ownership of a publication doesn’t inherently discredit its content- that, as you may or may not know, is the Genetic Fallacy. If The Economist were biased or falsifying information, you’d need examples of specific reports or data they deliberately manipulated, not just insinuations about its historical ownership. This is especially true in this case since The Economist is widely respected for its data-driven journalism. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Even if you wanted to make a "finger on the scale" style argument (that despite being demonstrably fact-based, the choice of topics discussed or the language choices used themselves might lightly further "ownership-class" interests), that borders on a conspiracy theory argument.
The dissenters have carefully reviewed the death toll as well. Even the authorities here in America admit they counted everyone who died "with Covid" instead "of Covid" and that the flu conveniently disappeared. Hospitals got bonuses for each Covid diagnosis using the absurd PCR test whose inventor denied it can be used for diagnosis especially when cranked up to 40 cycles. I won't even get into the details of the deadly protocols of Remdesivir and Ventilators the hospitals were incentivized to use instead of normal flu treatments..
No. The Economist is just a propaganda rag for the World Economic Forum, an offshoot of the Bilderbergers group both of which are patronized by King Charles and the Rothschilds along with most the rest of the World Billionaires.
The Friedmans pointed out some of Murray Rothbard's economic errors, but never dealt with his ruling class theories. Rothbard called it "economic determinism."
You're gish-galloping here but I'm currently unemployed so I'm tackling these anyway in turn:
re: "with" vs. "of":
Public health statistics are designed to capture the full impact of a pandemic, including those who had pre-existing conditions. The fact that someone died ‘with’ COVID rather than ‘of’ it doesn’t negate the severity of the virus—it can easily be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in people with otherwise manageable conditions. This is precisely why the Economist's chosen method of analysis that I linked- analyzing an increase in all-cause mortality- is likely to get us closest to the truth, and neatly sidesteps semantic arguments around "with" or "of".
re: "flu disappeared":
I'd probably agree with you that the push for masking (since only N95 was really effective), social distancing (useless indoors) and hand-washing (almost useless for an airborne illness) had little effect on COVID transmission, but at least consider the effect that it probably had on reducing the transmission of other illnesses that might have ended up comorbid with COVID in some cases, to some vulnerable people. The vaccine, once it finally came out (coupled with herd immunity, which I really hope you won't push back on) was the most effective neutralizer of COVID deaths.
I'm also biased here, as my family just suffered a bout of COVID being passed around for 2 weeks, which is extremely difficult to manage when you're a 2-income family with a toddler and only 7 hours of daycare a day. And it hit us hard, because we only took the first 2 (3?) shots and then gave up with keeping up with it. Whoops.
re: "PCR tests cranked up to 40 cycles" claim:
First off, Kary Mullis (the inventor) had concerns about PCR in certain contexts, but his views have been exaggerated by conspiracy theorists. PCR tests, when run at high cycle thresholds, may detect very small amounts of viral material, but they were part of a broader diagnostic process that also considered symptoms, exposure, and clinical judgment. It’s not as simple as claiming the test is ‘absurd.’
re: remdesivir/ventilators:
Hindsight is 20/20 and makes it super easy to criticize. Hospitals followed the best available protocols during a rapidly evolving situation. As new evidence emerged, treatment protocols evolved. The idea that hospitals were intentionally following harmful protocols for profit requires evidence that goes beyond anecdotal suspicion.
re: WEF/Bilderbergs/Economist/etc. connection:
Well, now you've moved into a LITERAL Gish Gallop. Even if influential people attend WEF or Bilderberg, that doesn’t automatically imply a global conspiracy. These are high-level networking forums, but influence is not the same as control or conspiracy, and control is not synonymous with "bad actor".
Attending forums like the World Economic Forum or Bilderberg doesn’t prove the existence of a coordinated conspiracy. Influential people discuss world issues there, but assuming nefarious intent requires actual proof of a hidden agenda, not just "mere attendance."
In essence, all of your arguments largely fall into conspiracy theory rhetoric without providing substantive evidence. The burden of proof lies with you to demonstrate specific instances of malfeasance, not just broad insinuations- and not just throw out dozens of conspiratorial claims that make it difficult to rebut. You might encounter someone like me who has a lot of time on their hands to shut each claim down. ;)
I was sick with "something" as well. All I can say is that you have a naive view of the statist ruling class. The conspiracy is of the organizers of Bilderberg and the WEF, etc. World leaders are told what to think at said meetings. You are very correct about the meetings themselves. Have you read Klaus Schawb's books? The minions are in lockstep.
Well the conclusion I come up with is that libertarianism can only work for select few people.
For majority of people it too expensive in terms of mental and emotional energy spent. It is much harder to make reasonable choice as opposed to default subconscious emotional shortcut and quick rationalization of it.
What you are describing is rationalism, not libertarianism. Someone could make decisions by emotional shortcuts and rationalization and be a libertarian, and I expect some libertarians do. And someone could think things through for himself, come to different conclusions than I do and not be a libertarian.
Libertarianism only works when people are rational. And on top of it responsible. Most people are not like that.
if people are "libertarian" in name only and live on emotions. When the push comes to shove they will act on emotions and embrace violence, coercion, big state gov. You name it.
Living by libertarian principle needs the ability to be rational.
Libertarianism works better if people are rational, but the alternatives also involve people making decisions, just different people, so also depend on rationality. What system do you think works better than libertarianism if some people, including some of those running it, are irrational? Why?
Also, how rational you are in part depend on to what degree you are in an environment where rationality pays.
I been looking for the answers to that for long time. On an emotional level libertarianism appeals to the most. Particularly the "network state" paradigm of Balaji Srinivasan.
However on a logical level I understand that for most people it will not work. But we live in a time of truly tectonic, epochal changes. So anything is possible.
Just can't look at this based on the past.based solely on humans they they were and are today. Age Of AI brings new paradigms.
P.s. just to highlight the sorry sad state of libertarianism in the mainstream: the news of chase oliver nomination.
We had plenty of great people trying to get traction in real world. Of ideas just a bit closer to libertarianism, like Jeffrey Yang, Vivek.
Nothing works in politics! Libertarianism fails much safer than other strategies in almost every historical circumstance (though I agree that the age of AI will change everything), and there have been periods where we made real and important progress.
This is delightful. Thanks for sharing it. My dad introduced me to both your parents’ and your work in my teens. He was an LP organizer back in the day and stocked a nice library of libertarian books, including Free to Choose and The Machinery of Freedom. Thanks for the peek into what it was like growing up Friedman.
'"people confuse “argument” with “quarrel.”', I find that to be an extremely common problem, i.e. I'd suggest the overwhelming majority of Americans suffer from it sadly and to the point.they take disagreement with extreme hostility. That said, I find it pairs well with the Army truism of "feel free to argue ad nauseum prior to a decision being made but once it's made, shut up and execute compently", i.e. at some point arguing with your kids, or anyone, you can reach an impasse but the fact is like it or not, you are the parent and they need to go to bed.
On the religious thing, 18th century rationalism isn't exclusive of Judaism. I suffered the same pangs of guilt as your parents did as a parent myself on that, trying to balance a secular upbringing with religious belief and in retrospect I do wish I had leaned a bit more heavily on the religious side though time will tell. There is simply value, great value I think, in participating in the rituals even sans belief as a way to maintain cultural and ethnic identity. Maybe you believe Jews should be regulated to the dustbin of history as did your parents but that's a hard decision and one generations down the road tend to regret until to late and you lose the critical mass to keep in going.
I don't think my parents suffered any pangs of guilt that I could observe. I gather my father was a religious believer as a child, lost his belief by the time he was an adult. I don't know if my mother ever believed in Judaism. The issue wasn't guilt, it was optimal child rearing.
Quite a lot of Jews make Judaism a part of their life although they don't actually believe in it, as evidenced by their willingness to eat food forbidden under the Kosher lives. My grandson had a bar mitzvah although neither his father nor, as best I can tell, his step mother, actually believed in the religion. I didn't, and don't see any reason I should have.
One interesting feature of the Bay Area rationalist community is that they are trying to invent a religion-equivalent that doesn't depend on belief in a god, complete with its own holy days and rituals.
I think you mean "relegated" not "regulated" (or you are using speech to text and the program confused them).
My ethnic identity isn't defined by Judaism. My father said that his friend George Stigler was really Jewish — although ethnically or religiously he wasn't. That points at a bundle of behavioral characteristics which some gentiles have and some Jews don't, although I expect it correlates with Jewish ethnicity. It's what makes me identify someone as one of my people. That includes my wife, who is Anglican.
From the other side, her account of her reaction to meeting me was "I've finally found an interesting person around here." People who find me interesting and are able to argue about ideas with me are my ethnicity.
But it's still true that I have enough Jewish ethnicity to have a more positive emotional reaction to Jews than to other strangers. That was clear to me arriving in the airport in Israel some years ago.
Yep at the word, I knew how it "sounded" (the saying), don't think I ever spelled it before lol so thank you on that.
That wasn't an anti-Jew stab btw, it's just something I've observed in my own life, the end of cultural traditions, as well as something you see from history, i.e. genetically I'm sure Gauls and Picts exist but not as an ethnicity as at some point enough parents, like yours, assimilated. My own great great grandmother militantly converted her children to being American for example and as such not a single traditional from the old world made it to even my grandmother's generation and I think there was a loss there.
I say that because I think, or maybe I'm projecting having had that hard reflection myself, what your parents concern may have been is their complicity in the death of an ethnicity even if they, or you, didn't value it as an individual, i.e. what they were inadvertently saying is being a Jew is something that should be forgotten and sacrificed to modernity and they made that decision for you in how they raised you and possibly felt guilty for it at some level.
To this day for example I still feel guilty not having my child baptized which she never cared about until she got older and even then was only bothered how she was treated differently as a result by her Eastern Orthodox friends (she's an adult now), as socially she doesn't know the trappings as well, i.e. the insanely complex bow etiquette, hence frequent faux pas. She's not high in religiosity but she feels off as a result when participating in the rituals, which she continued as an adult, and I can tell she wishes I would have, like the other parents, brought her up more in it rather than overvalue her independence of thought on the matter. To me it was a religious matter hence my resistance doctrinally but to her it was part of her social and ethnic identity hence the belief was irrelevant.
What I'm curious about is did it really not bother you later in life you never had a bar mitzvah in your interactions with other Jews socially or even learned the trappings of the faith even if you are atheist? Did you really raise your youngest son not even aware what a Jew is and to just simply think of himself as an American (or whatever). i.e. curious if you ever asked yourself the same question your parents did about your own child. I guess in a roundabout economic term, it's a question of guilt, or lack of, over being a ethnic freeloader though that of course ascribes value to that ethnicity.
Sorry a little rambling there, typing on a phone late at night. More conversing that corresponding.
Not sure if your younger son was right about the need for isolation (not there's anything wrong with that)..also not sure, knowing in hindsight what we now know about messenger RNA shots, that waiting for vaccines was wise. Not an opinion, just an observation of (if you have an open and reasonable mind) facts we now have available to us.
As a long time admirer and student of your father and his work, as well as having him for dinner when he came to Lehigh University to speak in the late sixties, when I was on the economics faculty, I'm overjoyed see you cover your relationship with him, and your mother - something I hope you'll continue to do. They were great people and I'm sure lots of us would like to hear more about them from your perspective.
I wonder how much of this is really "liberterian", sounds talmudic to me :)
Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba says: Even a father and his son, or a rabbi and his student, who are engaged in Torah together in one gate become enemies with each other due to the intensity of their studies. But they do not leave there until they love each other
Sorry, Peter, but many non "medical degrees" people have studied medicine thoroughly, and are not beholden to any particular perspective...and yes, you have missed something; do your research without prejudice, and you will find, among other things, what we '"now know"'.
This policy works great with intelligent and reasonable kids, but if the children refuse to listen to reason, or take a *very* long time to be convinced by reason while you have be somewhere in fifteen minutes, being able to say "because I said so" makes life a lot easier.
>My high school driver’s ed textbook asserted that a head on collision between two cars each going 50 miles an hour had the same effect on each as running into a brick wall at 100 miles an hour. I constructed a simple proof that it could not be true, offered it to the teacher.
What is the explanation? From my vague recollections of highschool physics, that is how collisions and relative motion works.
Let the two cars be identical, save that one is a mirror image of the other. Hang a sheet precisely between them. When they collide neither can pass the sheet, since the other is pushing exactly as hard on the other side of it. So the sheet is acting like a perfectly rigid brick wall. You don't actually need the sheet — that's just for exposition. The plane exactly between the cars acts like a brick wall even if there is nothing there.
That was my proof. If you prefer, calculate kinetic energy. A car at 100 mph has four time the energy. Or look at momentum transfer. If the collision, with the other car or the brick wall, is perfectly elastic each car changes momentum by 2 x 50 mph x mass, whether it hits the other car or the wall --from 50mph forward to 50 mph backwards. If perfectly inelastic, from 50 to zero. The claim that it is like 100 makes no physical sense at all.
What is true is that the 50mph collision with a brick wall is equivalent to a 100 mph collision with a car that is standing still, but that wasn't the claim.
How exactly is a 50mph collision with a brick wall equivalent to a 100 mph collision with a car that is standing still?
Look at the second in a reference frame moving at 50 mph in the same direction as the car. In that reference frame it is a head-on collision between two cars both moving at 50 mph. I have already explained why that is equivalent to a car colliding with a brick wall.
> In that reference frame it is a head-on collision between two cars both moving at 50 mph.
This sounds a bit muddled. In the reference frame of either car, the car itself is standing still. Velocity, momentum, kinetic energy etc. are only defined relative to some coordinate system, so if your coordinate system (i.e. the reference frame) is centered on your car, then said car just sits still at the origin.
From such a reference frame, it's the street that's moving 50mph beneath you in the reverse direction. Similarly, the opposing car has 50mph on its speedomoter, traveling on a street that's moving 50mph in the same direction, hence it's approaching you at 100mph.
Two cars moving towards each other at 50 mph will collide in exactly the same way no matter how the road is moving underneath them
If it's a head-on collision, the reference frames should be moving in opposite directions, in which case surely the crash should be more severe, not less.
There can be only one reference frame at a time and it can move however you like it to move.
A better way to phrase it would be, in case of two cars moving towards each other at 50 mph, from the reference frame of either of the cars the other car should surely be coming at 100 mph.
To spell it out a little more clearly, the problem with the original statement is that a wall is not a car. We assume the brick wall mostly doesn't move and is mostly undamaged. So, it doesn't absorb nearly as much kinetic energy as a parked car would. Essentially all of the kinetic energy in a car hitting the wall will be absorbed by the car itself as damage, since it's stopped afterwards.
To set up a situation that's equivalent to two cars colliding head-on, let's say that we have a car at 100 mph hitting a stopped car in neutral, and afterwards, both cars are moving together at 50 mph. If a car moving at 50 mph has 1x kinetic energy, a car moving at 100 mph has 4x. After the collision, because we're assuming symmetry, there is 1x kinetic energy in each moving car and 1x energy absorbed by each car, so the total is still 4x, distributed differently.
The symmetric head-on collision starts with 2x kinetic energy and puts 1x energy into each car, so the amount of damage is the same. Unless they bounce, which means there's more energy remaining in the cars' movements, but is probably worse for the passengers. It's good that crumple zones absorb energy.
But the part that's still not symmetric is that after a collision with a parked car, with two damaged cars moving at 50mph, there will likely be *another* collision. By the time both cars are stopped, the extra 2x kinetic energy has to have gone somewhere.
> This policy works great with intelligent and reasonable kids, but if the children refuse to listen to reason, or take a *very* long time to be convinced by reason while you have be somewhere in fifteen minutes, being able to say "because I said so" makes life a lot easier.
And there were circumstances where one of my parents said "this is an urgent situation, we can discuss it when we get back but for now I need you to do it."
What happens if the car is going 50mph and the brick wall is, too?
Does the brick wall have infinite mass, such that after the collision it is still going 50? That makes it equivalent to a 100 mph car in the reference frame where the brick wall is standing still and perfectly rigid.
Hmm. Okay, I think I see it. We didn't have to posit an infinite mass in the case where one car hits a stationary wall -- except we sort of did, because we are assuming that nothing happens to the wall: It just stops the car in an instant.
I guess the argument is that in he case of the two cars, each is travelling at 50mph and then stops essentially instantaneously, and it makes no difference to that car what made it stop. If one of the cars was a super-tank that continued on at 50mph without noticing, then the delta-v of the other car would be -100mph and it *would* be equivalent to hitting an immovable wall at 100mph.
I think it's fair to say that the damage to the colliding cars is the same as the damage to the faster car against the wall? But in the former case the damage is split between the two cars. Maybe that's the source of the false intuition.
If it's a head on collision, I though it'd be the same thing as if the car is going 100mph, but apparently David Friedman is saying otherwise.
Yeah. Googling suggests that the resolution is that doubling the cars doubles released energy from suddenly stopping, but it also doubles the mass that stops, so for each car it's no different from hitting a stationary wall. My thought experiment makes me doubt that explanation, but it's been way too long since I had to cypher anything out in physics.
It's probably slightly different when cars crash than walls because of stuff like two cars would both have crumple zones and airbags, it's possible to go completely through a brick wall, etc. but I think that would be basically a rounding error and miss the point of the driver's ed example
Yeah, but Dr Friedman’s story makes it sound like there is a simple billiard-ball-level analysis that doesn’t have to model the internal structure of cars (or the wall) — something that requires only the physical equations for momentum and energy rather than a numerical simulation. And to be honest I rather think I have *read* such an explanation, but I apparently didn’t retain it or I could explain why it’s different if one of the cars is a moving brick wall.
It doesn't even require that, although that's an option. It's sufficient to observe that, if the cars are identical mirror images, no part of either car can pass the plane between them by symmetry, so that plane acts like an invisible brick wall.
It depends on the nature of the discussion. If I tell my kids to clean their room, I expect them to do it because I said so. If instead I were to argue that Trump would be a bad president, and one of my kids wants to argue otherwise, I encourage that sort of debate.
I disagree. If you explain why he should do it and he, without offering a rebuttal, refuses, you make him do it. But you don't refuse to justify your command — that is teaching the wrong lesson.
To some extent yes, and parents should usually be ready to offer a justification. The degree to which I'm prepared to justify something depends on the nature of what I'm doing.
If I'm asking them to clean their rooms I am willing to provide some justification, but ultimately they have to do it. However, if it is a discussion about the optimal nature of the federal government, then they do not have to agree with me.
On cleaning their rooms they don't have to agree with you either, just to do it.
I agree to a point. If the kids wants to argue about cleaning their room, I'd be happy to argue a little bit, but assuming they didn't change my mind and I couldn't change theirs, eventually I would want them to just do it. Similarly, if a kid wanted to put up a Trump lawn sign, I'd argue against them, but even if I couldn't change their mind I still wouldn't let them, it'd ultimately come down to "my house my rules" even if I'd normally let them put up most types of signs.
But the kid can wear a Trump T-shirt?
I wouldn't stop them personally unless I thought it'd get them in trouble at school or something, although that's also because I don't think Trump is *that* bad. If I had a kid and they became an unironic white supremacist and started wearing a Hitler shirt because they loved Hitler, and I couldn't convince them not to love Hitler, well I'm not sure what I would do but I probably wouldn't let them wear it around me.
Yes I think we see this issue similarly.
I know “ideas, not position” is a theme of your views on child rearing. But I don’t understand it. It’s rare even among adults that every party to a discussion converges in agreement what the correct arguments and outcome are. In that case there has to be some decision procedure to decide an outcome. Unless a family magically ends up agreeing at the end of every discussion, either the parents need to have the decision making authority or there has to be some other mechanism (voting, where three kids can defeat the parents?) to decide questions. I agree that arguments are what should decide these things but everyone has his arguments.
In most contexts, the parents have the decisionmaking power, and we needed to convince them in order to get them to use it differently. With regards to things affecting my body and my property that weren't life-critical, I had the decisionmaking power, because those were mine.
> Many years later I heard an elderly man of whom I had a generally favorable opinion tell a child who had disagreed with him not to contradict his elders. I was shocked — the statement struck me as heresy, very nearly obscenity.
Yes indeed! It wasn't until I got to college that I met more than a couple of people for whom arguing was a mutual search for the truth rather than about status. It was a revelation. I still live in my university town, because it's the only place in the world I've ever been where it's possible to construct a large group of friends who are like that.
Later in my teenage years, I was brought up by several libertarian economists. You were one of them. :-)
"His argument was right, mine was wrong; I cancelled, flew home and isolated until vaccines became available." Especially in retrospect, you were wrong. How did you miss the totalitarian "lockstep" motives behind the whole thing!
I have criticized the government response to the pandemic but the pandemic itself was real and, for a man my age, there was a serious risk that it would be mortal. Is your claim that Covid didn't happen or wasn't dangerous?
Without a White Coat I can't be sure. But, the death rate was no worse than a bad flu year (fraction of a %), flu disappeared mysteriously probably due to the inaccuracy of the PCR test, and the captured regulatory agencies acted as vaxxx salesmen along with the captured MSM. The toll in vaxxx injuries is vast contrary to the pharma captured media. Only now is the dam on vaxxx injury news starting to break, just in time to undermine "warp speed" Trump, most likely.
BTW: I think your Dad, though almost always right on everything was wrong on the effect of the drug regulatory agencies. He thought regulation held back drug progress if I recall correctly. In fact, I now think it is the opposite. The captured agencies enable extremely risky drugs and vaccines. Removing liability from vaxxx manufacturers was a catastrophe.
BTW: I sat in on your Dad giving a presentation to the Economics Department on his monetary theories circa 1966 at the University of Michigan. Of course, he ran circles around them. With few exceptions they were just government and/or union shills. There was tremendous faith in government then. I was in Engineering, but took several elective courses in economics.
> Without a White Coat I can't be sure.
You should have quit while you were ahead. Because the rest of what you said is (based on what I've read) wrong. The Economist did an excellent analysis and found that deaths were fairly massively underreported around the world: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates
I know he is defamed terribly by the MSM, but Del Bigtree of the Highwire is a great medical journalist in my opinion, presenting and comparing the science of the pharma controlled scientists vs. the mavericks. The evidence against the absurd childhood vaxxx regimen and the Covid vaxxx is overwhelming.
The mRNA vaxxx per the expert Robert Malone who was the first to experiment with the idea decades ago is a grievously flawed technology. The synthetic mRNA enclosed in a toxic lipid nano particle causes any cell in the body to manufacture the toxic spike protein similar to the virus spike protein. The immune system then attacks not only the spike, but any cell manufacturing it, thus potentially causing damage to any organ. The idea the mRNA stayed in the muscle where injected turned out to be totally wrong, but the authorities wouldn't acknowledge the evidence as it came in from independent scientists around the world. Worse yet, the lipid nanotech particles were designed to cross the blood brain barrier.
I've been an anarcho-capitalist for a long time reinforced by your writing and others as I evolved away from, Ayn Rand way back. I became enthralled with Ayn Rand in 9th grade, about 1961.
Capture of government by Corporations & Central Banks is bringing the world deep into statism, so far from libertarian ideals I get pretty discouraged. We libertarians, I think under estimated, the ability of predatory monopoly to develop with the help of captured government.
Statism appears to have a better feedback loop than liberty.
https://lloydmillerus.substack.com/p/for-those-who-doubt-global-depopulation
Do you realize that your counter-argument to a consensus of the majority of the medical community is, in essence, a conspiracy theory?
To conspire is human nature and especially prevalent among ruling classes. Thus, conspiracy theories, though easy to get wrong, must always be considered. The Economist is perhaps THE premier ruling class publication, owned still I think by the Rothschilds though Evelyn Rothschild I think must have passed away by now. If the World Economic Forum is NOT a front for the ruling class conspiracy, nothing is!
The ownership of a publication doesn’t inherently discredit its content- that, as you may or may not know, is the Genetic Fallacy. If The Economist were biased or falsifying information, you’d need examples of specific reports or data they deliberately manipulated, not just insinuations about its historical ownership. This is especially true in this case since The Economist is widely respected for its data-driven journalism. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Even if you wanted to make a "finger on the scale" style argument (that despite being demonstrably fact-based, the choice of topics discussed or the language choices used themselves might lightly further "ownership-class" interests), that borders on a conspiracy theory argument.
The dissenters have carefully reviewed the death toll as well. Even the authorities here in America admit they counted everyone who died "with Covid" instead "of Covid" and that the flu conveniently disappeared. Hospitals got bonuses for each Covid diagnosis using the absurd PCR test whose inventor denied it can be used for diagnosis especially when cranked up to 40 cycles. I won't even get into the details of the deadly protocols of Remdesivir and Ventilators the hospitals were incentivized to use instead of normal flu treatments..
No. The Economist is just a propaganda rag for the World Economic Forum, an offshoot of the Bilderbergers group both of which are patronized by King Charles and the Rothschilds along with most the rest of the World Billionaires.
The Friedmans pointed out some of Murray Rothbard's economic errors, but never dealt with his ruling class theories. Rothbard called it "economic determinism."
You're gish-galloping here but I'm currently unemployed so I'm tackling these anyway in turn:
re: "with" vs. "of":
Public health statistics are designed to capture the full impact of a pandemic, including those who had pre-existing conditions. The fact that someone died ‘with’ COVID rather than ‘of’ it doesn’t negate the severity of the virus—it can easily be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in people with otherwise manageable conditions. This is precisely why the Economist's chosen method of analysis that I linked- analyzing an increase in all-cause mortality- is likely to get us closest to the truth, and neatly sidesteps semantic arguments around "with" or "of".
re: "flu disappeared":
I'd probably agree with you that the push for masking (since only N95 was really effective), social distancing (useless indoors) and hand-washing (almost useless for an airborne illness) had little effect on COVID transmission, but at least consider the effect that it probably had on reducing the transmission of other illnesses that might have ended up comorbid with COVID in some cases, to some vulnerable people. The vaccine, once it finally came out (coupled with herd immunity, which I really hope you won't push back on) was the most effective neutralizer of COVID deaths.
I'm also biased here, as my family just suffered a bout of COVID being passed around for 2 weeks, which is extremely difficult to manage when you're a 2-income family with a toddler and only 7 hours of daycare a day. And it hit us hard, because we only took the first 2 (3?) shots and then gave up with keeping up with it. Whoops.
re: "PCR tests cranked up to 40 cycles" claim:
First off, Kary Mullis (the inventor) had concerns about PCR in certain contexts, but his views have been exaggerated by conspiracy theorists. PCR tests, when run at high cycle thresholds, may detect very small amounts of viral material, but they were part of a broader diagnostic process that also considered symptoms, exposure, and clinical judgment. It’s not as simple as claiming the test is ‘absurd.’
re: remdesivir/ventilators:
Hindsight is 20/20 and makes it super easy to criticize. Hospitals followed the best available protocols during a rapidly evolving situation. As new evidence emerged, treatment protocols evolved. The idea that hospitals were intentionally following harmful protocols for profit requires evidence that goes beyond anecdotal suspicion.
re: WEF/Bilderbergs/Economist/etc. connection:
Well, now you've moved into a LITERAL Gish Gallop. Even if influential people attend WEF or Bilderberg, that doesn’t automatically imply a global conspiracy. These are high-level networking forums, but influence is not the same as control or conspiracy, and control is not synonymous with "bad actor".
Attending forums like the World Economic Forum or Bilderberg doesn’t prove the existence of a coordinated conspiracy. Influential people discuss world issues there, but assuming nefarious intent requires actual proof of a hidden agenda, not just "mere attendance."
In essence, all of your arguments largely fall into conspiracy theory rhetoric without providing substantive evidence. The burden of proof lies with you to demonstrate specific instances of malfeasance, not just broad insinuations- and not just throw out dozens of conspiratorial claims that make it difficult to rebut. You might encounter someone like me who has a lot of time on their hands to shut each claim down. ;)
I was sick with "something" as well. All I can say is that you have a naive view of the statist ruling class. The conspiracy is of the organizers of Bilderberg and the WEF, etc. World leaders are told what to think at said meetings. You are very correct about the meetings themselves. Have you read Klaus Schawb's books? The minions are in lockstep.
I suppose you thing Central Bank Digital Currency programmed to control your spending, saving and investments is just fine?
PS. I listened to Kary Mullis about the PCR test. No way to exaggerate what he said. NOT a diagnostic tool.
Well the conclusion I come up with is that libertarianism can only work for select few people.
For majority of people it too expensive in terms of mental and emotional energy spent. It is much harder to make reasonable choice as opposed to default subconscious emotional shortcut and quick rationalization of it.
Ai can do it though.
What you are describing is rationalism, not libertarianism. Someone could make decisions by emotional shortcuts and rationalization and be a libertarian, and I expect some libertarians do. And someone could think things through for himself, come to different conclusions than I do and not be a libertarian.
Libertarianism only works when people are rational. And on top of it responsible. Most people are not like that.
if people are "libertarian" in name only and live on emotions. When the push comes to shove they will act on emotions and embrace violence, coercion, big state gov. You name it.
Living by libertarian principle needs the ability to be rational.
Libertarianism works better if people are rational, but the alternatives also involve people making decisions, just different people, so also depend on rationality. What system do you think works better than libertarianism if some people, including some of those running it, are irrational? Why?
Also, how rational you are in part depend on to what degree you are in an environment where rationality pays.
I been looking for the answers to that for long time. On an emotional level libertarianism appeals to the most. Particularly the "network state" paradigm of Balaji Srinivasan.
However on a logical level I understand that for most people it will not work. But we live in a time of truly tectonic, epochal changes. So anything is possible.
Just can't look at this based on the past.based solely on humans they they were and are today. Age Of AI brings new paradigms.
P.s. just to highlight the sorry sad state of libertarianism in the mainstream: the news of chase oliver nomination.
We had plenty of great people trying to get traction in real world. Of ideas just a bit closer to libertarianism, like Jeffrey Yang, Vivek.
Yet with real people voting it fails.
Nothing works in politics! Libertarianism fails much safer than other strategies in almost every historical circumstance (though I agree that the age of AI will change everything), and there have been periods where we made real and important progress.
Did Krugman reply?
No.
I think that a "birth" is a thing that happens from men and women and &c and a "berth" is what you get on a train. :--)
Thanks. Fixed.
But he was right that births are expensive.
I’m jealous. Oh, to have Milton Friedman as my father. I assume you know how lucky you were.
Yes.
Part of the reason I have never considered donating sperm is that I could not assure any resulting child of a comparable upbringing.
This is delightful. Thanks for sharing it. My dad introduced me to both your parents’ and your work in my teens. He was an LP organizer back in the day and stocked a nice library of libertarian books, including Free to Choose and The Machinery of Freedom. Thanks for the peek into what it was like growing up Friedman.
'"people confuse “argument” with “quarrel.”', I find that to be an extremely common problem, i.e. I'd suggest the overwhelming majority of Americans suffer from it sadly and to the point.they take disagreement with extreme hostility. That said, I find it pairs well with the Army truism of "feel free to argue ad nauseum prior to a decision being made but once it's made, shut up and execute compently", i.e. at some point arguing with your kids, or anyone, you can reach an impasse but the fact is like it or not, you are the parent and they need to go to bed.
On the religious thing, 18th century rationalism isn't exclusive of Judaism. I suffered the same pangs of guilt as your parents did as a parent myself on that, trying to balance a secular upbringing with religious belief and in retrospect I do wish I had leaned a bit more heavily on the religious side though time will tell. There is simply value, great value I think, in participating in the rituals even sans belief as a way to maintain cultural and ethnic identity. Maybe you believe Jews should be regulated to the dustbin of history as did your parents but that's a hard decision and one generations down the road tend to regret until to late and you lose the critical mass to keep in going.
I don't think my parents suffered any pangs of guilt that I could observe. I gather my father was a religious believer as a child, lost his belief by the time he was an adult. I don't know if my mother ever believed in Judaism. The issue wasn't guilt, it was optimal child rearing.
Quite a lot of Jews make Judaism a part of their life although they don't actually believe in it, as evidenced by their willingness to eat food forbidden under the Kosher lives. My grandson had a bar mitzvah although neither his father nor, as best I can tell, his step mother, actually believed in the religion. I didn't, and don't see any reason I should have.
One interesting feature of the Bay Area rationalist community is that they are trying to invent a religion-equivalent that doesn't depend on belief in a god, complete with its own holy days and rituals.
I think you mean "relegated" not "regulated" (or you are using speech to text and the program confused them).
My ethnic identity isn't defined by Judaism. My father said that his friend George Stigler was really Jewish — although ethnically or religiously he wasn't. That points at a bundle of behavioral characteristics which some gentiles have and some Jews don't, although I expect it correlates with Jewish ethnicity. It's what makes me identify someone as one of my people. That includes my wife, who is Anglican.
From the other side, her account of her reaction to meeting me was "I've finally found an interesting person around here." People who find me interesting and are able to argue about ideas with me are my ethnicity.
But it's still true that I have enough Jewish ethnicity to have a more positive emotional reaction to Jews than to other strangers. That was clear to me arriving in the airport in Israel some years ago.
Yep at the word, I knew how it "sounded" (the saying), don't think I ever spelled it before lol so thank you on that.
That wasn't an anti-Jew stab btw, it's just something I've observed in my own life, the end of cultural traditions, as well as something you see from history, i.e. genetically I'm sure Gauls and Picts exist but not as an ethnicity as at some point enough parents, like yours, assimilated. My own great great grandmother militantly converted her children to being American for example and as such not a single traditional from the old world made it to even my grandmother's generation and I think there was a loss there.
I say that because I think, or maybe I'm projecting having had that hard reflection myself, what your parents concern may have been is their complicity in the death of an ethnicity even if they, or you, didn't value it as an individual, i.e. what they were inadvertently saying is being a Jew is something that should be forgotten and sacrificed to modernity and they made that decision for you in how they raised you and possibly felt guilty for it at some level.
To this day for example I still feel guilty not having my child baptized which she never cared about until she got older and even then was only bothered how she was treated differently as a result by her Eastern Orthodox friends (she's an adult now), as socially she doesn't know the trappings as well, i.e. the insanely complex bow etiquette, hence frequent faux pas. She's not high in religiosity but she feels off as a result when participating in the rituals, which she continued as an adult, and I can tell she wishes I would have, like the other parents, brought her up more in it rather than overvalue her independence of thought on the matter. To me it was a religious matter hence my resistance doctrinally but to her it was part of her social and ethnic identity hence the belief was irrelevant.
What I'm curious about is did it really not bother you later in life you never had a bar mitzvah in your interactions with other Jews socially or even learned the trappings of the faith even if you are atheist? Did you really raise your youngest son not even aware what a Jew is and to just simply think of himself as an American (or whatever). i.e. curious if you ever asked yourself the same question your parents did about your own child. I guess in a roundabout economic term, it's a question of guilt, or lack of, over being a ethnic freeloader though that of course ascribes value to that ethnicity.
Sorry a little rambling there, typing on a phone late at night. More conversing that corresponding.
The problem with your approach is that it amounts to assuming not easily verbalized experience doesn't exist.
Not sure if your younger son was right about the need for isolation (not there's anything wrong with that)..also not sure, knowing in hindsight what we now know about messenger RNA shots, that waiting for vaccines was wise. Not an opinion, just an observation of (if you have an open and reasonable mind) facts we now have available to us.
On the other hand, as a further observation, the tradeoffs for younger people are very different from the tradeoffs for people David's age.
I may have missed something, what do we "now know" about messenger RNA shots?
Disclaimer: I have gotten extremely fatigued since COVID by people without medical degrees offering up their uninformed opinions on it
As a long time admirer and student of your father and his work, as well as having him for dinner when he came to Lehigh University to speak in the late sixties, when I was on the economics faculty, I'm overjoyed see you cover your relationship with him, and your mother - something I hope you'll continue to do. They were great people and I'm sure lots of us would like to hear more about them from your perspective.
I wonder how much of this is really "liberterian", sounds talmudic to me :)
Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba says: Even a father and his son, or a rabbi and his student, who are engaged in Torah together in one gate become enemies with each other due to the intensity of their studies. But they do not leave there until they love each other
Kidushin 30b
Sorry, Peter, but many non "medical degrees" people have studied medicine thoroughly, and are not beholden to any particular perspective...and yes, you have missed something; do your research without prejudice, and you will find, among other things, what we '"now know"'.