Yeah, Me Too

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

John Kenneth Gailbraith

Ever Heard of Stanley Milgram?

In science we're always testing hypotheses. We never conduct a study to 'see what happens', because there's always at least one way to make any useless set of data look important. We take a risk; we put our idea on the line and expose it to potential refutation. Therefore, all statistical tests in psychology test the possibility that the hypothesis is correct, versus the possibility that it isn't.

Warren Davies, "Statistical Significance Explained in Plain English"

Wider den Exotizismus

Offenbarten die Bororó-Indianer, die dem verdutzten Ethnographen mitteilten, sie seien Papageien, eine andere, 'anarchischere' Mentalität als die Spieler von '1860 München', die von sich sagen, sie seien die Löwen?

Hans-Peter Duerr, Der erotische Leib (Einleitung, S. 26)

Suggests Women Are Capable of Presenting Good Arguments

Appeals to consider myself capable of e.g. engineering despite being female [are] suggesting that the viewer herself is likely in doubt. Such a statement can only be useful to women so ignorant of their own characteristics that they need to rely on their gender as deciding evidence in what career to devote their lives to

Katja Grace, "Why Is Gender Equality So Rude?"

Well, That's Because the TV Spots Were Crap

[I]f a work seems baffling yet remains intriguing, there may be a simple key to its mysteries. I doubt that James Joyce's Ulysses had a big opening weekend.

Roger Ebert, "O, Synecdoche, My Synecdoche"

Sums up Much of (Human) History

Researchers have observed small monkeys called Japanese macaques going bananas at the sight of a flying squirrel.

This riled-up response is probably just a false alarm, with the monkeys mistaking the squirrel for a predatory bird. On the other hand, male macaques – some of whom give chase and even attack a harmless rodent – might be trying to impress females in their troop.

Adam Hadhazy, "Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts", Christian Science Monitor (via)

School's Poison

'Like what?' Heather asked. 'What educational ideas are no good?'

'I think I have believed that if I waited, if I sat quietly at the table, without making a noise or movement - being good - the dish of life would be presented to me.'

Hanif Kureishi, "Goodbye, Mother"

In Praise of Induction

A few years after I became an assistant professor, I realized the key thing a scientist needs is an excuse. Not a prediction. Not a theory. Not a concept. Not a hunch. Not a method. Just an excuse — an excuse to do something, which in my case meant an excuse to do a rat experiment. If you do something, you are likely to learn something, even if your reason for action was silly.

Seth Roberts, "Learning from 'Pseudoscience'"

Living in the Fast Lane

[R]elative to fiction, real grand adventures tend to have fewer guides, and more randomness in success. Real adventurers must accept huge throws of the dice; even if you do most everything right, most likely some other lucky punk will get most of the praise.

If you want life paths that quickly and reliably reveal your skills, like leveling up in video games, you want artificial worlds like schools, sporting leagues, and corporate fast tracks.

Robin Hanson, "Real Adventure"

Consider Yourself a Test Case

Asked by Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs if making a woman laugh was half the battle in seduction [David] Mitchell retorted “If that’s the case, the other half must be the difficult bit.”

"Nick Southgate on Being Witty"

In Other Words, Your Sample Is Biased

One thing Bill James pointed out many years ago, is that the people who privilege intuition over statistics often end up using statistics to make their points. They just don’t use statistics systematically. Instead of looking carefully at offensive contributions, they’ll say that someone hit .300 once and somebody else notched 100 RBI.

Andrew Gelman, "Note to the 'quals': Instead of competing with the 'quants,' take advantage of quantitive understanding to do better qualitative reporting and analysis"

The Perils of Football

For me, 79/80 was a season when football - always hitherto the backbone of life - provided the entire skeleton. For the whole season I did nothing else apart from go to the pub, work (in a garage outside Cambridge, because I could think of nothing better to do), hang out with my girlfriend, whose course lasted a year longer than mine, and wait for Saturdays and Wednesdays. The extraordinary thing was that Arsenal in particular seemed to respond to my need for as much football as possible: they playes seventy games that season, twenty-eight of them cup-ties of one kind or another. Every time I gave an indication of becoming more listless than was good for me, Arsenal obliged by providing another match.

By April 1980 I was sick to death of my job, and my indecision, and myself.

Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch (Chapter "Filling a Hole", p. 117)

It's Not Deception

She will say whatever she needs to say, he thought, even if the dialogue verges on soap opera, to keep it going because she's still aching, all these months later, from the Priscilla shock and the Louise ultimatums. It's not deception her taking this line - it's the way we are instinctively strategic. But eventually a day will come, Axler thought, when circumstances render her in a much stronger position for it to end, whereas I will have wound up in a weaker position merely from having been too indecisive to cut it off now. And when she is strong and I am weak, the blow that's dealt will be unbearable.

Philip Roth, The Humbling (ch. 2: "The Transformation", p. 63-64)

Idea, Meet Real World

[E]ffective political ideas are those that can still do good in half-baked form.

Tyler Cowen, "A Pendulum Swing Toward Austerity"

Sensorische Deprivation

Er erinnerte sich an das, was ihm ein ehemaliger Mitarbeiter des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung von seiner Zeit in einem türkischen Gefängnis erzählt hatte: "Dann fand ich per Zufall eine Zeitung. Anschließend habe ich den Rekord im Langsamlesen gebrochen."

Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Im Keller (S. 80)