AAR for APA

Like Roderick, I was pleased with the pro-liberty turnout at the recent APA. There were meetings of at least four groups specifically oriented towards an individualist/pro-liberty position, and at least one session not so oriented but nevertheless featuring a libertarian speaker. (Roderick's post below has the link to the program, so I can be lazy and not link to it myself.)

Things I learned include: 1. When giving comments on a paper, even if the main speaker says he wants to give an extemporaneous talk, that doesn't mean I can give extemporaneous comments. I was less articulate than I had hoped, although others reported that they did get the distinction I was trying to make (between a natural-law type, end-state-driven notion of social evolution and a neo-Aristotelian natural-end-driven notion) and its relation to the main speaker's remarks on Hayek. My bad.

2. I can't do a great job on 2 hours sleep.

3. Jacob Levy is as cool in person as he is on-line. He attended both the Molinari meeting and the AAPSS meeting, and made good contributions to Q&A in both cases, plus I had the chance to chat with him informally a couple times.

4. The newly formed Molinari Society is off to a very promising start.

5. Medieval logic is much more powerful than it is typically given credit for. It can, e.g., answer DeMorgan's Challenge. (I'll discuss this further if anyone is even remotely interested.)

6. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, while not quite the masterpiece that Cryptonomicon is, is terrific.

Although I'm"back" from the APA, I'm still on break doing family things, but I'll resume regular blogging later this week. BTW, thanks again to Roderick for charing the AAPSS session. Happy new year to all our readers.