The Old Standby

Whatever truth correlation does not equal causation might have is outweighed by the damage it does when it is used to ignore evidence.

- Seth Roberts, "The Link between Lead and Crime"

Education against Human Nature

Human nature: People who are the same want to be different. Formal education: People who are different should be the same.

Seth Roberts, "What Happens If I Stop Grading?"

On Metaconfidence

Those who don’t know the past are doomed to over-trust experts.

Seth Roberts, "The Next Time a Top Economist Predicts Disaster…"

Conoisseurs Are Easy to Please

People think of connoisseurs as having higher standards. [...] Connoisseurs make unusual demands, yes, but in some ways they are easier to please than non-connoisseurs. Indie films are less pleasant than mainstream films. Yet film connoisseurs like them more. To most people, indie films are also much cheaper and more experimental than mainstream films. By supporting them — by preferring them — film connoisseurs are supporting innovation. The connoisseurs have lowered their standards for film in the sense that they can enjoy cheaper films. A friend of mine attends the San Francisco International Film Festival each year. He enjoys it. I wouldn’t. The SF film festival films don’t cost much, yet they have a certain innovative quality. (I”m not a film connoisseur, I barely understand it.) The source of pleasure has shifted from conventional sources (plot, music, dialogue, gorgeous actors, sets, and landscapes) to something else, perhaps novelty and complexity.

Seth Roberts, "The Willat Effect: More Consequences"

The Progress Equation

progress = resources*knowledge*time*freedom*motivation

Seth Roberts, "Alexandra Carmichael Almost Eliminates Headaches"

Exchange and Power

Should police officers be paid per arrest? Most people think this is a bad idea, I imagine, but the larger point (what can we learn from this?) isn’t clear. In Systems of Survival, Jacobs tried to spell out the larger point. She wrote about two sets of moral rules. One set (“guardian syndrome”) applied to warriors, government officials, and religious leaders. It prizes loyalty and obedience, for example. The other set (“commercial syndrome”) applied to merchants. It prizes honesty, avoidance of force, and industriousness, for example. The two syndromes correspond to two ways of making a living: taking and trading. [...]

A powerful newspaper isn’t inherently bad; we want a powerful newspaper to keep other powerful institutions (government, large businesses) in check. Murdoch’s News International, of course, has became very powerful. Yet Murdoch newsrooms retained commercial norms, especially an emphasis on selling many copies. Reporters in Murdoch newsrooms were under intense pressure to produce — like policemen paid per arrest.

Seth Roberts, "Phone Hacking and Jane Jacobs"

One-Trick Pony

A friend of mine from Poland was surprised we had jokes in America. He thought the sole purpose of humor was to criticize the government. And our government was pretty good.

Seth Roberts, "Humor as Catalyst"

So, What about Perfect Uncertainty?

[L]ogarithmically right is a good way of describing how one’s beliefs should be transformed to be a fair approximation of the truth. When you think you are right, you probably are — but logarithmically. Much less than you think.

Seth Roberts, "Logarithmically Right"

Psychology of Learning: The Road Not Taken

Learning is the central theme of experimental psychology and perhaps all academic psychology. Psychology professors have done more experiments about learning than anything else. Practically all of those experiments have been about efficiency of learning: The amount of learning (e.g., percent correct) in Condition A is compared with the amount of learning in Condition B, where A and B “cost” about the same. As a result, we know a great deal about what controls efficiency of learning, at least in laboratory tasks. I think many psychologists are surprised and disappointed that this research has had almost no effect outside academia. I have never heard a good answer to the question of why. If you’d asked me this a month ago I would have said it’s because they haven’t discovered large non-obvious effects. That’s true, but says nothing about how to discover them.

[...] Hedonics matter. Learning exactly the same material can be more or less pleasant. When Learning X is pleasant, it is learned easily; when Learning X is unpleasant, it is learned with difficulty or not at all. In the real world, hedonic differences matter more than efficiency differences. If they want to improve real-world learning, psychologists have been measuring the wrong thing.

Seth Roberts, "Three Observations about Walking and Learning"

The Scientist's Incentives

Science (search for truth) and profession (making a living) are not a good fit. In a dozen ways, the demands of a scientist’s job get in the way of finding and reporting truth. You need to publish, get a grant, please your colleagues, and so on. Nobody pays you for finding the truth.

Seth Roberts, "The Decline Effect"

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'"