notes on "the rational optimist"

This is an amazing compilation of historical, biological, and technological facts.  Really amazing and compact.   His most interesting belief is the hardest to believe: the possibility that humans evolved more rapidly the past 200,000 and even more rapidly after 65,000 years due to specialization and barter, aka trade aka exchange. He says it could have started with specialization between men and women which resulted in trading between them for different types of food.  Because of upright posture and large brains in infants (even if only primate-like), there was a longer nurturing period and a difference between male and female hips (he did not mention this last part). So the physical differences lead to different abilities in acquiring different food sources, even if only by comparative advantage. Although many animals have a difference between male and female. He does not mention it, but successful trade is an type of prisoner's dilemma game which is known to require larger brains for social computations, and there are specific algorithms that have evolved.  So as trade increased (with its enormous time-saving aka survival advantages), it could have been a positive feedback loop with intelligence. Successful traders also figured out the most efficient production of specific things which may have encouraged more general intelligence. What if I removed the parts of my thinking  that can trade things and ideas in a peaceful manner with friends and strangers?  How much would I be more like a less powerful primate? If I could not trade anything and had to do everything myself in wild world, how much different would I be from other primates? If I lost access to all trade, I would be forced to lose a lot of pride in being human.


The following are notes I made of things I found interesting for my future reference. He has a great way of stating ideas you're vaguely aware of in concise language. If you blink when reading, you could miss a new idea. This book is full of ideas and perspectives.

• Cave drawing 32,000 yrs ago.
• Ideas have sex with each other. (And therefore so do products)
• My thought: exchangeable parts like screws are like genes being use in different animals
• Specialization is time saved. Time saved is better standard of living.
• My thought: specialization makes use of low entropy (fewer materials in smaller geographical space to manufacture something). So it's not just energy we tap into, but existing low entropy.
• Markets in goods and services work so well it's hard for them to fail to deliver efficiency.
• Markets in assets are so prone to bubble and crashes it's hard to design them to work at all.
• He supports "careful regulation" in asset markets due to speculation, irrational exuberance, rent-seeking, fraud.
• The average Mexican lives as long as the average Britain in 1955.
• S Koreans live 26 years longer and earns 15 times more than he did in 1955.
• Infant mortality is lower now in Nepal than it was in Italy in 1951.
• The world's poor are advancing twice as fast as the rich. Abject poverty could largely end by 1935.
• 1950's were at least twice as good as in 1900. Last 50 years equal to previous 500 years.
• Improving IQ is due to lower end rising, partly due to nutrition.
• Half gallon of milk cost 10 minutes work in 1970 ($0.66*60/10 = $4/hr) and 7 minutes in 1997 ($1.30*60/7 = $11/hr). Using median income and assuming equal work weeks I see a 15% instead of 30% drop. ($12k annual in 1970 verses $28k in 1997). Using CPI I get 1997 cost only 41% of 1970, so his 70% estimate might be generous. On the other hand milk increased the least of several other similar commodities, and it's still at about 40% of it's 1970 cost now in 2014 based on CPI, so choosing a stop year 14 years before the book was published seems odd and unfairly supports his view. He stated "average" salary, knowing full well the rich had got richer, and yet he is looking at milk as if he is talking about the masses. So it seems he carefully selected the item, the stop date, and the method of averaging to support his view. How many other things he has said might be similarly biased?
• Amount of light you get with an hours wage is a good measure of improvement in lifestyle. To get 1 hour of light: today 1/2 second, 1950: 8 sec (incandescent), 1880: 15 min (kerosene), 1800 6 hr (candle), 750 BC: 50 hours (sesame seed oil lamp...kind of unfair since wood was cheap).  There is also a quality improvement.
• But the government's role in cheap money towards risky assets and middle men in the housing bubble is as much to blame so he mistrusts "too much government"
• He states that too often people look for a gene that caused something like language or barter, but it works the other way.
• He states Neanderthals may have used language, having a certain pair of genes.
• 30% of hunter gather males, 0.5% per year of total population, died of homicide in skirmishes, equal to 2 billion dying in 20th century instead of 100 million.
• Pre-agriculture was not Eden. "Think Mad Max".
• For a million years hominids used the same stone tools while evolving through 3 species.
• Maybe as long as 250,000 yrs ago some sense of art was shown, but more likely 100,000 years ago in shell necklaces. These were modern humans.
• Fire allowed for smaller stomach which allowed for larger brain. Less time to cook, more foods available, more calories made available by cooking, less energy needed to digest.
• Larger brains (longer infancy) meant more division of labor which could lead to the first bartering (at least exchange). Also meant men needed to go get protein.
• Humans consistently extinguished large game as they expanded.
• Reduction of large animals may have necessitated the need for agriculture
• Humans are the only great apes with long pair bonds.
• By 200,000 yrs ago, at least stone tools were being traded long distances.  It was more definite 82,000 years ago.
• 65,000 years ago or a little later, a few hundred people left Africa. This was not the first wave, but it was the first modern homo sapiens. Made it to Australia by 45,000. Pockets of their descendants have remained genetically isolated, seemingly same as us today.
• 26,000 yrs ago: needles.  18,000 yrs ago: atlatls for throwing javelins. 35,000 yrs ago: flute from vulture bone. 28,000 yrs ago buried ornately.  Must have been string for net, etc. 80,000 to 20,000 yr ago saw more development than previous 1 million.
• Larger groups of trade follows Metcalf's law having value as N^2, allowing more specialization and better application of comparative advantage.  Me: Darwin mentions species are distinct because larger groups allow for more diversity of genes.
• Collaboration between different groups of humans is amazingly peaceful compared to other species. Societies without enough trust for trade are less able to trade.
• Trust is huge in making society better. Exchange breeds trust and vice versa.
• More than half of people may be endowed to be more pessimistic. Pessimism sells.
• We have a long history of fear-mongering since we were born, and yet life is getting better.
• Too many doom scenarios look at current trends and do not take into account the reactive nature of markets.
• Gene modification with radiation was going on before modern "genetically modified" and the capabilities are the same.
• Cross-species genetic pollution occurs in nature, too.
• He cites Chimpanzee were shown to not "get" the concept of bartering one liked thing for a more liked thing unless it was the least-liked food for the most liked (carrots for grapes). But the researcher says eating immediately is more natural and Chimpanzees have little concept of possessions. 
• He questions the limited nature of oil citing there is at least 20 times more tar sand oil than oil in Saudi Arabia
• He cites a study that said there was never any acid rain problem.
• He talks about DDT never being a real problem.
• He talks about the population explosion coming to a halt.
• He states 2 billion people do not have access to a light switch.
• Botswana and England improved at times when others faltered because of property rights existed and were enforced, but also because Botswana was left alone by imperialist UK.
• He talks about de Soto (Peru economist) and mentions 3 rules: 1) give property rights 2) allow them to develop a common resource in a sustainable way 3) allow them to form businesses easily
• He mentions copyright for music allow Nashville to advance instead of TVA.
• Markets get along without intellectuals and even pushes science to explain what inventors and markets discover.
• Commerce is a virtue. Markets often enable individual selfishness to result in a greater good.
• Markets have been unfairly accused of being evil. They have ended slavery, enable altruism, and promote civil liberties.
• Fossil fuels prevent deforestation. Fertilizers from nat gas reduce need for crop land. Coal replaces wood burning. Oil replaces need for more palm oil plantations and hay fields for horses.
• 20% of American crop land has been taken out of production to produce ethanol. 5% worldwide. Led to food riots in 2000's.
• Avg human uses 2500 Watts of energy, Americans 10,000, 83 times more than 2500 calorie day.
• Wind farms use 5 times more steel and concrete than nuclear plants, and far more land.
• Converting to palm oil releases more CO2 than oil burning (how?)
• The world is using 1.6% less energy per GDP each year. 
• Competition leads to zero profits which results in rentiers and monopolies, but innovation, an extra factor of production, prevents this steady state.
• The major effects of a technology occur when it is "democratized" (cheap commodity).
• Accounting in trade came before writing language.
• He argues trade (greater specialization) could have been the source of the original cities. Success is measured by ability to prevent a ruling class from developing from the profits. Trade evolved from the bottom up.  Needs to read Michael Hudson's ancient economy texts.
• Stagnation results from producers profiting at expense of consumers.
• Clark on 1960's estimated only 27 m^2 to feed a person. He used 2500 Calories (685 g of grain), doubled this for fuel, then estimated only 50 g/m^2/day could be harvested although photosynthesis can do 350 g/m^2/day (6% efficiency...not real ... see below). Ridely said even this was too optimistic and said 100 m^2 is more conservative. We actually use 1250 m^2 for our staple crops and 4000 m^2 sundry others. 
• Photosynthesis to biomass is 3% to 6% of sunlight (wiki). Good sunlight areas are 6 hours peak sunlight per day per m^2.  So daily energy acquisition is 0.75 to 1.5%, or 43 to 86 g/d/m^2, so 50 g/d/m^2 is reasonable. In the usable wavelengths, photosynthesis is about 20% efficiency to biomass (adjusting wiki's 45% downward). Typical crops plants are 1-2% efficient, sugarcane 7-8%. So solar cells are only 10 times more efficient than plants.
• Governments helps markets at the beginning with infrastructure and law, but always get bureaucratic and kill the good that lays the egg.
• Libertarians think it is a duty to give to the poor while socialists think it is the duty of government.
• Pre-industrial murder in Europe was 10x as common. 
• Markets cater to minority desires very efficiently while government caters to the majority.
• (from his cooperation book: bats that play tit-for-tat with food have the largest brains of the bats)
• My thought: there is species selection because solutions to NP-hard problems are hard to find, and distinct.  Also explains categories of products, categories of ideas, and organs (categories of cells).  It might be combined with what Darwin said: more genes to mix when there is larger group of genes, which results in a locally good solution.