Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
Turns out, not as much as you -- and they -- would like to think. by Russ Roberts
But there is no way of knowing reliably if the consensus reflects the truth. It may rely instead on the underlying biases of the prosecutors and defendants in the intellectual trial of ideas. Or where they received their PhD degrees. Or the fashionability of certain positions over time as society changes. Unlike product markets where poorly made products are punished by low prices or fewer and fewer consumers, there are no clear feedback loops in the world of academic economics. You can say something that is wrong and the price you pay may be zero. In fact you may be rewarded.
And that is because of what does not happen. There is never a clean
empirical test that ultimately settles these issues. There is no
reliable scientific experiment where each side is forced to make
a prediction and the results settle the matter.
...
Most economics claims are really not verifiable or replicable. (And
if you are interested in the related crisis of statistical
reliability and replicability in psychology and elsewhere, follow
Brian Nosek on Twitter and listen to him
here).
Most economic claims
rely on statistical techniques that try to simulate a laboratory
experiment that holds all relevant factors constant. That is the
hope. My claim is that in general, holding all relevant factors
cannot be done in a way that is reliable or verifiable. And that is
why so many empirical issues such as the minimum wage, immigration,
fiscal policy, monetary policy and so on, have smart people on both
sides of the issue each with their own sophisticated analysis to
bolster their claim.
...
I am arguing that the math and science of economic predictions
and assessments are nothing like the math and science of space
travel. Economics provides the illusion of science, the veneer
of mathematical certainty.
In the early 20th century, beards once again began to be associated with anti-capitalist movements, and for nearly a century they were nowhere to be seen in corporate board rooms and many parts of society, being relegated to "fringe" sets.
Then along came the tech boom, which made many scruffy outsiders in Silicon Valley rich and powerful members of the capitalist landscape. People like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jack Dorsey redefined how we view powerful business heads and have helped usher in a new period of beard acceptance and popularity.
Lanhee Chen explains why Republicans landed on this health care bill, and this process.
The culture war over religious morality has faded; in its place is something much worse.
Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay
marriage and pot legalization. But it's also making America's
partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of
both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members
see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. As Americans
have left organized religion, they haven't stopped viewing politics
as a struggle between "us" and "them." Many have come to define us
and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.
...
For decades, liberals have called the Christian right
intolerant. When conservatives disengage from organized religion,
however, they don't become more tolerant. They become intolerant in
different ways. Research shows that evangelicals who don't regularly
attend church are less hostile to gay people than those who do. But
they're more hostile to African Americans, Latinos, and Muslims.
Book Review: The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science by Will Storr.
We would like to believe people are rational. We would like to
believe that if they have formed a false belief based on inaccurate
information and poor reasoning, they will change that belief when
they are provided with accurate information and better reasoning. We
are frequently disappointed.
...
We can't even trust our memories. They are reconstructed every
time we access them, and they can become distorted or contaminated
with other memories. Psychological studies suggest that about 30%
of our memories are false, including some of the ones we are most
confident about.
...
Cognitive dissonance is painful; confirmation bias is
comforting. Experience is re-interpreted in such a way that it
doesn't force us to rebuild our internal models of reality. We are
all prejudiced, but we need prejudices to function efficiently. They
serve as a practical starting point for our guesses about the world.
We are subject to confirmation bias; we get a feel-good "neurochemical kiss" as a reward for confirming a brain model. Confirmation bias serves a purpose. If we had to fairly evaluate every new argument and every bit of new evidence from scratch and constantly rebuild our models, we would become hopelessly overwhelmed and unable to function.
We are a politically diverse group of social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and other scholars who want to improve our academic disciplines and universities.
We share a concern about a growing problem: the loss or lack of "viewpoint diversity." When nearly everyone in a field shares the same political orientation, certain ideas become orthodoxy, dissent is discouraged, and errors can go unchallenged.
To reverse this process, we have come together to advocate for a more intellectually diverse and heterodox academy.
Ping-Pong, or table tennis as it is officially known, is one of the fastest racket sports, requiring muscular and cardiorespiratory endurance. Players need nimble footwork and upper body flexibility to return balls that can fly over 60 miles per hour, demanding faster response times than tennis or badminton.
If you are what you eat, Neanderthals might have been a diverse, flexible bunch ... just like their diets.
Examining the contents of the calcified plaque of five Neanderthal specimens that range from 42,000 to 50,000 years old, researchers who study ancient DNA were able to determine their diet. And, it turns out, not all Neanderthals ate alike.
Some dined on a lot of meat, eating the flesh of animals like woolly rhinoceros and wild sheep. But others may have been complete vegetarians, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature. In the plaque of these Neanderthal vegetarians, researchers found no evidence of any meat. Instead, they say these individuals dined on mushrooms, pine nuts, and moss.
The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction
Nothing "goes viral." If you think a popular movie, song, or app came out of nowhere to become a word-of-mouth success in today's crowded media environment, you're missing the real story. Each blockbuster has a secret history--of power, influence, dark broadcasters, and passionate cults that turn some new products into cultural phenomena. Even the most brilliant ideas wither in obscurity if they fail to connect with the right network, and the consumers that matter most aren't the early adopters, but rather their friends, followers, and imitators -- the audience of your audience.
by Tim Harford
Messy: How To be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives: why it's important, why we resist it, and why we should embrace it instead.