January 2011
41 posts
December 2010
67 posts
Slate - Most scientists in this country are... →
It is no secret that the ranks of scientists and engineers in the United States include dismal numbers of Hispanics and African-Americans, but few have remarked about another significantly underrepresented group: Republicans.
This is the flipside of the old feminist epistemologists’ concern with the underrepresentation of women and minorities in science. It seems a little silly to...
Slate - Most scientists in this country are... →
It is no secret that the ranks of scientists and engineers in the United States include dismal numbers of Hispanics and African-Americans, but few have remarked about another significantly underrepresented group: Republicans.
This is the flipside of the old feminist epistemologists’ concern with the underrepresentation of women and minorities in science. It seems a little silly to...
Tyler Cowen - The Inequality That Matters →
Must-read piece on rising income inequality by Tyler Cowen. Here’s one part that stuck out to me:
It is also the case that any society with a lot of “threshold earners” is likely to experience growing income inequality. A threshold earner is someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more. If wages go up, that person will respond by seeking less work or by working less...
Tyler Cowen - The Inequality That Matters →
Must-read piece on rising income inequality by Tyler Cowen. Here’s one part that stuck out to me:
It is also the case that any society with a lot of “threshold earners” is likely to experience growing income inequality. A threshold earner is someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more. If wages go up, that person will respond by seeking less work or by working less...
Ars Technica - The stock market as a single, very... →
What is a computer? We tend to think of computers as chips inside of boxes, but this gets us pretty far away from the essential qualities of computation. If you get rid of your prejudice that a computer has to be inside of one box, suddenly, you realize that the internet itself is really one massive supercomputer.
And what about the stock market? Ars Technica reports,
The final, and perhaps...
Ars Technica - The stock market as a single, very... →
What is a computer? We tend to think of computers as chips inside of boxes, but this gets us pretty far away from the essential qualities of computation. If you get rid of your prejudice that a computer has to be inside of one box, suddenly, you realize that the internet itself is really one massive supercomputer.
And what about the stock market? Ars Technica reports,
The final, and perhaps...
Ross Douthat - How Partisanship Works →
Ross Douthat gives a good column about the psychology of partisanship. It never feels like you’re picking your argument based on who’s on your side, and yet…
His main points are:
It happens gradually rather than swiftly, and on new issues more than old ones.
It manifests itself in changing emphases as much as in explicit changes in position.
The arguments change, but the...
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Ross Douthat - How Partisanship Works →
Ross Douthat gives a good column about the psychology of partisanship. It never feels like you’re picking your argument based on who’s on your side, and yet…
His main points are:
It happens gradually rather than swiftly, and on new issues more than old ones.
It manifests itself in changing emphases as much as in explicit changes in position.
The arguments change, but the...
slacktivist - Good news and bad news →
It’s been a while since I’ve linked to some Slactivist epistemology, so here you go:
Newspapers like to pretend they don’t differentiate between good news and bad news. That sort of judgment, they say, would be editorializing — characterizing the news rather than simply reporting it disinterestedly and objectively.
This claim is silly, pretentious and impossible....
slacktivist - Good news and bad news →
It’s been a while since I’ve linked to some Slactivist epistemology, so here you go:
Newspapers like to pretend they don’t differentiate between good news and bad news. That sort of judgment, they say, would be editorializing — characterizing the news rather than simply reporting it disinterestedly and objectively.
This claim is silly, pretentious and impossible....
“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else...”
– John Donne (via Robert Pinsky)
“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,
Whose fruit threw death on else...”
– John Donne (via Robert Pinsky)
philosopher's stone - Homo Economicus (Rational... →
My former classmate Nan Chen has been blogging about economics and the good life. He starts by talking about the monetary anti-realism of the efficient market hypothesis crowd and the idea that the 2008 collapse was caused by a “shift in value”:
That seems preposterous to me. But it also seems that his justification is based on the idea that value of things like property is market...
philosopher's stone - Homo Economicus (Rational... →
My former classmate Nan Chen has been blogging about economics and the good life. He starts by talking about the monetary anti-realism of the efficient market hypothesis crowd and the idea that the 2008 collapse was caused by a “shift in value”:
That seems preposterous to me. But it also seems that his justification is based on the idea that value of things like property is market...
