Left home for a boarding school when I was 14 years old and by the time I got to the university I think I was ready to be home with my family and to work - be productive. I became interested in economics in college but did not like what they wanted to teach me. There was something wrong with it but I didn’t know what. It has always been hard for anyone to teach me anything. I just don’t learn well unless I do it my way.
So, I went home and went to work without finishing.
Gun rights and political interests kept me motivated to understand what the whole government thing was all about. I never really saw that governing accomplished much of anything. I read and studied what I could identify as relevant information but never really found any good alternatives until I came across Andre Marrou and Harry Browne. Later on my brother’s kids went to Hillsdale and information began flowing in. IMPRIMUS was a good source to start connecting dots. The Mrs. & I attended a few ‘Discussion Club’ meetings in St. Louis and Jacob Hornberger was one of the speakers. Getting a little closer… Next came a Thomas Sowell book, then the Intellectual Conservative site, and eventually I noticed the mises.org website on an IMPRIMUS.
I really can’t say what year it was that Austrian Economics became a topic of study but it was from my brother’s association with Hillsdale College that I first became aware of the terms “Austrian” and “Economics”. Yes, I wondered what in the world the Austrian Economy had to do with anything…
I am glad in a way that my first exposure came later in life. I was ready for it. Archery came the same way. Been hunting all my life but never picked up a bow until I’d passed the 40 yr. mark. There is something about discoveries later in life that lends relevance to ‘keepers’ in the interests and ideas department.
Correct knowledge tempers experience. Pride contradicts. Humbling experiences are ageless.
Some of my humbling experiences have been right here.
19 here and I became more interested in Austrian economics when someone said to me a couple years back “supporters of both mainstream parties get inspired by empty rhetoric; supporters of Ron Paul get inspired by austrian ideas”. It’s paraphrased but you get the gist of it.
And I agree with resist in that it’s nice that a lot of us are so young. You dont see anything like this for the other major schools, but I was wondering can anyone fill me in on why the school had a “crisis”
I’m inclined to agree with your position. When reading more intricate material, many of us struggle to understand the ideas presented at the speed we’re reading them - reflecting on their implications or developing counter-arguments is nearly impossible in such a setting.
Going for a walk is a great idea to ponder a new concept. If you don’t want to leave the house, you may also try to lecture to a fictional class on the idea you’ve just learned about. By verbally expressing what you have just read, you are forced to connect some dots in your mind - which will probably help you gauge the value and possible consequences of an idea.
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Excellent site, keep up the good work. I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks
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I would agree that thinking may be more productive on building a solid foundation than simply reading but I find I easily fall into reading more and thinking less when it comes to subjects outside my professional area.
Part of this is simple to explain–I’m trying to economize on someone else’s labor . I certainly don’t try to empirically compare every piece of available computer hardware before making a purchasing decision–I can spend days trying to do a cost/benefit on computer hardware or I can spend hours reading about the days others have already spent to collect their data (and the conclusions).
I suppose what I’m saying is that I tend to value resultant data (top down) and take some of the methodology for granted rather than focus on the methodology itself (bottom up) . E.g. I value knowing how steel alloys function more than how the constituent atomic bonds themselves contribute to that function. I’m not saying this is the correct way about things–but it’s how I approach many subjects outside of my professional sphere (i.e. I’m an engineer, not a metallurgist or an economist).
That all said–I’ll still attempt to know everything if you give me enough time.
25 years old. Discovered this stuff in early 2009 when I saw “Peter Schiff was right” and started following his stuff. About a month into it, I found LvMI and got hooked.
AJ, I have the same terrible habits you do when it comes to the thinking:reading ratio.
As weird as it seems, I tend to do that all the time. Its a great exercise to reinstill the ideas you’ve learned into your head and get a firm grasp of the material you’ve read. I thought the median age would be higher, but most people seem to be around my age and even younger. Thanks to the Internet. Thanks Al Gore.
I too was initially surprised, but after thinking about it longer, I shouldn’t have been. I do think that from the time I first showed up on the forum, some of the posters with much bigger post counts and points have gone away or at least haven’t posted in here, so maybe that has something to do with it. Would be curious as to how old these forums are, and if you were to take the all time top 10 or 25 posters in terms of points (not that that means much beyond shear activity) , and see how many of them have been active and participatory (10 post min) on the forums in the last 2 months. I would also think that there are probably a lot of lurkers as well. When I look at some of the group members, I see a lot of people with 0 or less than 5 posts. Why would these people bother to join a group, but not post? maybe they just lurk? I mostly lurked for the first 2 months after finding the forums, its not exactly the most inviting place on the internet.
I can also see why people would only stick around for about a year. Seems like you could get in all the sort of ‘classic’ issues in year with some repeats (just do a search for any new topic and there is a good chance (75-80%)of finding an old thread on it), and then these forums aren’t exactly a go to place for debating issues in the news either, so there is not a lot to keep one here after gaining an introductory level awareness of AE. And of course this is a bit of over generalizing things too.
An alternative to giving imaginary lectures is of course asnwering questions on this board as good as you can and wait for others to correct your mistakes.
There’s this tendency to equate reading with studying, and extensive reading with deep study. People seem to feel idle if they are just pondering, rather than digging into a book. As a result, I think most people interested in learning end up reading way more than they can possibly digest. This isn’t just wasteful, but actually harmful to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In my own case, a 10:1 ratio of thinking to reading and a 100:1 ratio of thinking to (important) writing, is about where the sweet spot seems to be in terms of efficiency per unit time for political topics. Way more thinking time is ideal for deep conceptual philosophy and political theory based on it (1000:1), and of course less processing is required for more factual/historical works, for example (1:1 or 1:2 or even more could be possible).
Good point. I tend to fall in the same catagory. What I am wondering is if this is (to not get technical) a “personality” thing to information processing.
