In Kevin Kelly’s recent appearance on Econtalk, he talked about his new book What Technology Wants. I have not read the book but some of Kelly’s statements about human evolution are worth comment. Kelly notes that, to a degree, humans created our own humanity. Kelly talked about how humans are the first domesticated animal, in that we used our minds to domesticate ourselves. While we are a continuation of the primate line, we have added with our minds things other primates don’t have.

Over the weekend I listened to the three-part Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures 2010, this year given by Lord Adair Turner. Lord Turner gives a fantastic and balanced critique of the practice of economics and its use in public policy and regulation of the financial sector. Most refreshingly, he does not end his critique with a demand to regulate and restrict, but rather lays out a range of considerations in setting policy and which arguments he considers should be given most weight.

In a recent discussion as part of the Cato Unbound series, Matt Ridley suggested that we shouldn’t forget the Materialist explanation for the industrial revolution. The difference between the British and other bursts of economic activity, such as that of Ancient Greece, is that the British event did not peter out. The reason for that, says Ridley, is coal. On one hand, this explanation feels like a Jared Diamond style geographic explanation, although in a more modern era.

An article by Anna Goodman and Ilona Koupil in last month’s Evolution and Human Behavior found a link between school performance and number of children and grandchildren (in Sweden 1915-1929). This effect, as might be expected, held in males only. The number of children was linked almost entirely to whether the male married, with marriage largely a function of socioeconomic position. As most males married (around 90%), the effect of schooling performance on number of children was largely evidenced in those males at the bottom of the distribution.

Procrastination bothers me. Not in the sense that I want to procrastinate, but biologically. Why would a tendency to procrastinate evolve? Even without considering evolution, time inconsistency is a subject of debate in economics. The problem of “hyperbolic discounting”, in which people rapidly discount events in the near future but discount more slowly for further delay, has been well established in experiments. This also accords with our experience (For an example of hyperbolic discounting, as well as some general thoughts on procrastination, it is worth reading James Surowiecki’s recent article).

Today I listened to an old (2006) interview with E.O Wilson by Michael Novacek (thanks NYAS). Wilson had a few criticisms of economics - the heavy basis in mathematics for one - and he stated that this had come at the expense of building a microeconomic foundation based on evolutionary biology. He also spent some time on the subject of valuation of diversity and ecosystem services. Much of this is a no-brainer.

“There is only one social science and we are its practitioners” - George Stigler, economist I am not sure of the source of the above quote (it has been mentioned several times on Econtalk), but I consider that Stigler was thinking of the wrong field. He should have thought of biology. An article in the Economist this week noted the increasing use of biology in the study of business and management.

An ABC news article last week reported a study by Professor John Endler on the use of visual tricks by male bower birds to make themselves look larger to females. By placing small objects at the front and larger objects at the back of their bower, the court in which the male bower bird is viewed appears smaller, which makes the male look larger. Endler noted, however, that it was not clear whether the male had any empathy for the females perspective or if the male simply arranged the objects based on his own preferences.

Over the past few days, Tim Harford has been engaging in a debate with Gideon Rachman (along with a few other bloggers) regarding Rachman’s contention that economists should be swept from their throne and historians given greater due. A debate like this is always going to be at cross purposes. Both history and economics are large fields with differing schools of thought (and battles within). To tar all of economics with the same brush is to ignore the breadth of economics.

Following from my recent blog on over-education, Tyler Cowen’s words on under-education for most of the world should be noted. Of course Bryan favors rising wealth and falling fixed costs, as do I. But in the meantime he also should admit that a) education “parachuted” in from outside can have a high marginal return, b) collectively stronger pro-education norms raise demand and can alleviate the high fixed costs problem, c) there are big external benefits, some operating through the education channel, to lowering the fixed costs, d) stronger pro-education norms put a region closer to a “big breakthrough” and weaker education norms do the opposite, and e) a-d still impliy “too little education” is the correct judgment.