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Comment by Evelyn on Traditional Capitalist Values · 2008-10-17T15:48:23.000Z · LW · GW

Thanks for the thoughtful post Eliezer.

A recent economic novel on this topic is The Price of Everything by Russell Roberts. It's about how our economy is a self-organizing system, which works pretty well without a single central authority. And, it's an enjoyable read.

A few more sources for the economic thought behind this are:

Hayek, Friedrich A., "The Use of Knowledge in Society" available online. "What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order?..." I suspect readers of this blog would find this article educational.

Read, Leonard E., "I, Pencil: My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read" available online No single person knows how to make a pencil. How do they come about? Another enjoyable article.

Smith, Adam., The Theory of Moral Sentiments. available online The author of The Wealth of Nations's equally dense book on the morality of economics and trade.

Comment by Evelyn on [deleted post] 2008-06-28T18:54:34.000Z

Eliezer, I expect clearer thinking from you.

"Yes, there are two different sexes in the human species... "Sex" is the biological difference."

Anne Fausto-Sterling's (and others) work on intersexuality proposes that up to 2 percent of all human children born show some biological sexual ambiguity. A significant fraction of them, have the physical appearance opposite to their genetic code. This is in addition to gender dysphoria, where people have one physical sex but feel themselves to be 'truly' the other sex.

Human sex, gender and behavior are much more fluid and complicated than our common sense labels suggest.