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selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: What's wrong with social science and how to fix it

(Ignore my previous reply I found it myself). To be fair to the authors, it is not their primary specification, that was a linear probability model. The logit model is just a robustness check to make sure the linearity assumption isn't driving the results.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Challenge to scientists: does your ten-year-old code still run?

Sorry to be pedantic, but although Monte Carlo simulations are based on pseudo-randomness, I still think it is good practice that they have deterministic results (i.e., use a given seed) so that the exact results can be replicated. If the precise numbers can be reproduced then a) it helps me as a reviewer see that everything is kosher with their code and b) it means that if I tweak the code to try something out my results will be fully compatible with theirs.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Why people hate contemporary architecture (2017)

I sympathize with the author's disdain for brutalist and some deconstructivist work. But to suggest that all contemporary architecture is a movement towards creating deliberately alienating and impractical buildings, seems to me very wrong. I think Zaha Hadid's work (which the author critiques) is aesthetically pleasing to most people, not alienating, for example https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/e09670a/2147483647... . The author expresses a uniform disdain for skyscrapers, but many skyscrapers are popular with the general public, for example, the Gherkin in London https://i.pinimg.com/474x/b5/78/c0/b578c0732b532b91b5e8455de... or say, The Empire State Building. Personally I do not find the shiny glass and sleek curves of many of these buildings unsettling or alienating nor, I think, do most people. In short, if we accept a basic premise of the author's: that what is good architecture is what is pleasing to most of the people who view and interact with it, then the author's critique is (I believe) too broad because many of the architects and buildings the author implicitly or explicitly criticizes are in fact popular.

Furthermore, something that the author does not address is the movement in contemporary architecture to carefully consider the practical effect of building design on the people within it. For example, how the flow of people is directed by the building, how the layout can help its occupants interact with each other, how interior walls can support privacy or erode it, and how to cater the response to these concerns to the function of the building. This is the opposite of the approach in Eisenman's house design mentioned in the article.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

Well, at the very least, the argument over hypothesis formation is not specific to economics. The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that science should aim to empirically falsify hypotheses, and that the way scientists develop those hypotheses, while an interesting psychological question, is irrelevant for the scientific method. He argued that hypothesis formation always contains an element of irrationality and instinct and he quotes Einstein who expressed views to that effect.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

I admit I haven't read or even heard of Kate Raeworth, but I am an academic economist. Most modern economic research is empirical, a paper poses a policy-relevant empirical question 'did policy X reduce unemployment' and then empirical evidence is presented (perhaps using data from a randomly controlled trial or using quasi-experimental variation). The statistics are calculated and the assumptions required for the validity of the statistical analysis discussed critically and at great length. Undergraduate econ classes unfortunately leave students with the impression that academic econ is mostly unrealistic theoretical models of behavior, but those models are just handy tools for hypothesis formation, and it is the empirical testing of hypotheses that makes a discipline a science, not the manner by which those hypotheses were formed.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Humanities aren't a science and shouldn't be treated like one (2012)

Look at the latest edition of QJE. You will see mostly studies addressing a particular policy question, e.g., 'what was the effect of this policy change on unemployment' which they answer using randomly controlled trials or quasi-experimental methods. Which aspect of this falls apart when you prod it?

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Archaeologists Identify Traces Cannabis in Ancient Jewish Shrines

My understanding is that medieval Rabbis (notably the Maimonides) explicitly discuss cannabis consumption and its psychological effects. The plant also gets some discussion in the Talmud but in the context of its use in fabric and as candle wick. It is speculated that certain plants mentioned in the Torah refer to cannabis but these strike me as a little tenuous. At the very least the use of cannabis as an intoxicant does not seem to be explicitly mentioned in the Torah. So I wonder, if it was commonly used for that purpose in the ancient middle east, why little to no mention of this? I mean, there is a mountain of detail about all the other minutiae of ancient custom.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Is a trillion dollars’ worth of programming lying on the ground?

I think this misses a possibly very important effect: agglomeration. Programmers in the Bay Area were not all born there, many (most?) chose to move there, some from elsewhere in the US, some from abroad. If those programmers who are more skilled tend to move to this area then the resulting greater productivity could explain higher pay. So why might more skilled programmers move to the Bay Area? Perhaps because other skilled programmers live there, and programming skills are complementary. A highly skilled developer may be worth more to a company with other skilled developers who can work together to create advanced products. Note that local PISA scores are irrelevant if people were not educated in the place that they work.

selectionbias | 5 years ago | on: Two dark sides of the inner self: Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele (2007)

I like Schiele's work becuase I find his grimy, corpse-like figures to be very aesthetically pleasing. I do not find it 'beautiful' in the sense that an old Venetian painting of a cherub is beautiful, I simply find the deliberate ugliness pleasing to the eye. I do not find his work shocking and I do not see why I should care about the level of technical skill that went into it.

selectionbias | 6 years ago | on: Quadratic Payments: A Primer

Among the first things you learn in microeconomic theory are the expected utility axioms (developed by Von Neumann and Morganstern), and Afriat's theorem. These results give conditions under which an agent's behavior is indistiguishable from utility/expected utility maximization. This is the standard justification for the use of utility maxmization in economics: that it is a good mathematical model of decision making, not that it captures what actually goes on in people's heads. This is not a heterodox idea, it has been mainstream since at least as early as the 1950s. Of course, modern economists like to empirically verify whether these models of decision-making are accurate or whether other behavioral models are more consistent with the data, because economics is a science. Praxeology, on the other hand, is the opposite of science.
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