Monday, October 16, 2023

Pacifist ChatGPT-3.5 on Christian Wolff's views of civil war. Reflection on corruption of truth.

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Question ... Summarize Ch Wolff's position on civil war in Jus Gentium Answer ... Christian Wolff, a prominent 18th-century German philo...
Sunday, October 15, 2023

[M]any witches she knew were talking about the degree program, announced last week, and were thinking about enrolling

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Bad times in several fronts: Christina Oakley Harrington, a retired academic of medieval history and the founder of Treadwell’s, a London bo...

The Washington Post & Gavin Schmidt on Sept 2023 temps

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1  Honesty at the WaPo...: A sudden spike in global warmth is so extreme, it’s mysterious, Oct 13 2023,  https://www.washingtonpost.com/weat...
Thursday, September 21, 2023

Chicago was once the "City of the Big Shoulders," the "Freight Handler to the Nation"

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Chicago was the "City of the Big Shoulders" in 1914, the "Freight Handler to the Nation" [1]: Laughing the stormy, husky...
Monday, September 11, 2023

Hopelessly optimistic despite the known evidence... "the remarkable durability of that error paints a more pessimistic picture of human reasoning than we were initially inclined to accept"

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We knew this already, although we didn't pay attention, and Tversky & Kahneman certified this before 1974 (Nobel for Kahneman in 200...
Thursday, August 31, 2023

Governmental chutzpah at a maximum: Before, insulation was a must, for the homeowner and for the planet; now, to qualify for a heat pump grant you don't need to install loft or cavity wall insulation

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Press release: Boost to heat pump rollout with plans for cheaper and easier installation. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Lo...
Tuesday, August 15, 2023

The main reason why people—even introverted people—feel most authentic when they act extraverted is that it feels good

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Why is authenticity associated with being and acting extraverted? Exploring the mediating role of positive affect. Joshua A. Wilt,Jessie Sun...
Monday, August 14, 2023

Many studies tout interventions as effective when all that was observed was a rise in self-reported desire to learn more about how to reduce suicide or general knowledge about it; there is scant evidence that most suicide prevention strategies are effective, and the public doesn’t know

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McCaffree, Kevin. 2023. “Pulling Back the Curtain on Suicide Research: Understanding Why People Die by Suicide Is a Harder Problem to Solve ...

Chapter 9 - On the Randomness of Suicide

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Chapter 9 - On the Randomness of Suicide. C. A. Soper , Pablo Malo Ocejo and Matthew M. Large.  Current Perspectives on Evolution and Mental...

Democratic Republic of Congo: CMOC, the Chinese operator of the Tenke-Fungurume mine, agreed in April to pay $800mn to the government to settle a tax dispute (plus an export ban for the previous 10 months)

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The new commodity superpowers. Leslie Hook in London, Harry Dempsey in Lualaba Province, and Ciara Nugent in Buenos Aires. Financial Times, ...
Monday, July 17, 2023

People underestimated how often their romantic partner toyed with the idea of breaking up the relationship

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When one's partner wants out: Awareness, attachment anxiety and accuracy. Kenneth Tan, Laura V. Machia, Christopher R. Agnew. European J...
Saturday, July 15, 2023

People cling to ideas they already know at the expense of fresh ideas, regardless of the true quality of the idea

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Greul A, Schweisfurth TG, Raasch C (2023) Does familiarity with an idea bias its evaluation? PLoS ONE 18(7): e0286968, Jul 5 2023. https://d...
Friday, July 14, 2023

Combining Human Expertise with Artificial Intelligence: Unless the documented mistakes can be corrected, the optimal solution involves assigning cases either to humans or to AI, but rarely to a human assisted by AI

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Combining Human Expertise with Artificial Intelligence: Experimental Evidence from Radiology. Nikhil Agarwal, Alex Moehring, Pranav Rajpurka...
Thursday, July 13, 2023

Observations of a wild colony of macaques over three years show same-sex sexual behavior among males is widespread and may be beneficial

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Jackson Clive, Ewan Flintham, Vincent Savolainen. Same-sex sociosexual behaviour is widespread and heritable in male rhesus macaques. Nature...

Why military elites fight in civil wars and on what side: In addition to home state, economic and professional interests were a major influence on West Pointers

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Rebel, Remain, or Resign? Military Elites’ Decision-Making at the Onset of the American Civil War. Peter B. White. Journal of Conflict Resol...
Wednesday, July 12, 2023

We find that, as Asian students arrive, white student enrollment declines in higher-income suburbs; fears of academic competition may play a role

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White Flight from Asian Immigration: Evidence from California Public Schools. Leah Platt Boustan, Christine Cai & Tammy Tseng. NBER Work...

Traditional beliefs: Commonly-used, but typically prohibitively expensive rituals, partially correct the beliefs about the risk of theft for sellers who report believing in the ritual’s efficacy, which allows for more inventory and larger sales

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On the Importance of African Traditional Religion for Economic Behavior. Lewis Dunia Butinda, Aimable Amani Lameke, Nathan Nunn, Max Posch ...
Monday, July 10, 2023

Credit expansions to the non-tradable sector systematically predict growth slowdowns & financial crises; credit expansions to the tradable sector are associated with sustained output & productivity growth without a higher risk of a financial crisis

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Credit Allocation and Macroeconomic Fluctuations. Karsten Müller & Emil Verner. NBER Working Paper 31420, Jun 2023. DOI 10.3386/w31420 A...
Tuesday, July 4, 2023

In the case of the Aztec Empire, high inequality predates the Spanish–Aztec War; the richest 1% earned 41.8% of the total income, while the income share of the poorest 50% was just 23.3%

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Income and inequality in the Aztec Empire on the eve of the Spanish conquest. Guido Alfani & Alfonso Carballo. Nature Human Behaviour, J...
Monday, July 3, 2023

People prefer natural medicines more when treating psychological than physical conditions, because they perceive natural drugs to be less likely than synthetic drugs to alter their true selves

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Consumers prefer natural medicines more when treating psychological than physical conditions. Tianyi Li, David Gal. Journal of Consumer Psyc...

Self-reported pro-environmental behavior was highly exaggerated, especially by environmentalists

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Identifying bias in self-reported pro-environmental behavior. Katharina Koller, Paulina K. Pankowska, Cameron Brick. Current Research in Eco...

The contribution of work experience and education to human capital accumulation and economic development might be equally important

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Jedwab, Remi, Paul Romer, Asif M. Islam, and Roberto Samaniego. 2023. "Human Capital Accumulation at Work: Estimates for the World and ...
Sunday, July 2, 2023

Consistent with a plausible cultural mechanism, individuals whose origin place a high value on autonomy hold a comparative advantage in positions characterized by a low degree of routinization; this persists among immigrants' children

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Cultural Values and Productivity. Andreas Ek. Journal of Political Economy, Jun 2023. https://doi.org/10.1086/726239 Abstract: This paper es...
Monday, June 19, 2023

Minimum wage increases lead to increased point-in-time homeless population counts; further analysis suggests disemployment and rental housing prices, but not migration, as mechanisms

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Hill, Seth J. 2023. “Minimum Wages and Homelessness.” OSF Preprints. June 5. doi:10.31219/osf.io/z2fqj. Abstract: America's cities conti...
Thursday, June 15, 2023

Game Theory and the First World War

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Myerson, Roger B. 2023. "Game Theory and the First World War." Journal of Economic Literature, 61 (2): 716-35. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20...
Tuesday, May 30, 2023

Mineral and material commodities are essential inputs to economic production, but there have been periodical concerns about mineral scarcity

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Pretis, Felix and Hepburn, Cameron and Pfeiffer, Alexander and Teytelboym, Alexander, Are We Running Out of Exhaustible Resources? (May 24, ...
Saturday, May 27, 2023

Exposure to and engagement with partisan or unreliable news on Google Search are driven not primarily by algorithmic curation but by users’ own choices

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Users choose to engage with more partisan news than they are exposed to on Google Search. Ronald E. Robertson, Jon Green, Damian J. Ruck, Ka...
Monday, May 8, 2023

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has low correlation with gender and ethnic diversity in the boardroom, in senior management, and within the workforce; DEI exhibits no link with future stock returns

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Alex Edmans, Caroline Flammer & Simon Glossner. NBER Working Paper 31215. May 2023. DOI 10.3386/w31215...