Monday, December 25, 2017

Reaction to Beauty Pays

[Just a public copy of the email:]

Just finished your book Beauty Pays and feel like I have to comment, even though I can't say much that is good about it... Yes, it does have a lot of interesting data, including some that was new to me, and I'm interested in specialized branches of economics (though you didn't mention ekronomics), but the flaws were so overwhelming that I feel like I could write another book about the problems.

So let me first provide some easy outs and reasons to discount my negative reactions: I think you should probably just regard my comments as sour grapes related to my mostly worthless second degree from UT (Austin). Or maybe the sour grapes are related to my own physical appearance and generally bad attitude? Or maybe I was just put off by the excessively legalistic perspective, and more so when I discovered why in the footnotes?
However, your fundamental misconception of genetics was so bad that I can't stop myself from commenting about page 143. The genes come in PAIRS, and the genetic cookbook that is assembled in a fertilized egg has one half coming from each parent. The "half the genes" that come from the father will absolutely NOT "be the same regardless of the choice of the egg donor", but it will be a uniquely random mix of half of his genes in each instance. Ditto the mother, no matter how beautiful she is.

Some of the math involved in genetics is pretty basic, well below the level of the fancy equations of today's economists. However before I would spend more time on this topic, let me pose a challenge. Do you understand the genetic relevance of this algorithm and its result?

(1) Skip n/e.
(2) Accept the next outcome with a better score than any previous outcome.

That outcome has a 1/e probability of being the best outcome possible.

Just thought of one more good thing to say about your book. I like having my thoughts provoked, even though I favor positive provocations over negative. Your book qualifies as thought provoking.

--
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful + Justified - Coerced) Choice{~5} ≠ (Beer^4 | Speech | Trade)
It took me so long to learn patience that now I have no time to be patient!

1 comment:

shanen said...

Did NOT want to waste much time on this few-to-none readers forum, but just wasted several minutes trying to fix those missing blank lines between the paragraphs. I'm giving up and regarding it as yet another possibly good thing the increasingly evil google could not care less about.