Tuesday, April 15, 2008
cougars in chicago
this is not entirely accurate, as i have it on good authority that many locals are well-practiced in the art of cougar hunting.
note: this is not the FH's first cougar post. she was almost eaten by the feline variety in 2004.
also, thanks for the tribune link, jdt!
Labels: personal
the trackback URL for "cougars in chicago" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/188822939334741190
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
what jefferson 1 is about.
to me, this is certainly not about the questionable dancing of some participants, or the questionable activities of thomas jefferson. to me this is not about misuse of public property, it is not about race. this is not about the interaction between the jefferson 1 and the officer, the group's motives, or what the law should be.
this is about the transparent enforcement of a clear rule of law, and the need for easy access to laws. officers could not cite any type of rule authorizing the arrest. this strongly suggests they either a) didn't know one or b) didn't think she needed to know. this is about detaining a human being without citing or, as it seems, having, just cause. it's moreover about the real possibility that countless individuals outside the jefferson 1's socioeconomic status are arrested without being shown the law in writing. and they may not have the resources to fight back. they mayn't feel that they even should fight back. that is what this is about.
the albeit flawed founders were generally in favor of a government with clear, set rules not subject to the whim of the ruler like their former king, or his extensions in the form of a state. this is about that perhaps-impossible ideal, as certainly there are unavoidable gray areas in enforcement. but this is about asking the law's representatives to move a little closer towards that ideal.
that's what i think, anyway.
the trackback URL for "what jefferson 1 is about." is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/8204698540268552435
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Monday, April 14, 2008
mill's psychology of subjection
An active and energetic mind, if denied liberty, will seek for power: refused the command of itself, it will assert its personality by attempting to control others.he (and likely, his wife) further argue:
To allow to any human beings no existence of their own but what depends on others, is giving far too high a premium on bending others to their purposes. Where liberty cannot be hoped for, and power can, power becomes the grand object of human desire; those to whom others will not leave the undisturbed management of their own affairs, will compensate themselves, if they can, by meddling for their own purposes with the affairs of others.this puts to mind another theory on power-seeking, a rephrasing of adler's theory in j. burns' leadership:
human beings strive toward power to overcome and compensate for inevitable childhood feelings of inferiority, impotence, and dependence on adultsso, subjection creates the desire for subjecting in its victims. (n.b. the cycle of subjection bastiat attributes to other causes)
of course, mill's essay has many more gems than this. visit the librivox project page to be notified when the audiobook is complete. better yet, volunteer yourself!
Labels: misc. psych, political
the trackback URL for "mill's psychology of subjection" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/2325781616110935144
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Sunday, April 13, 2008
illegal peaceful assembly
find details here from:
the event's co-organizer
the agitator
megan at the atlantic
outside the beltway
below the beltway
julian sanchez
f & s .org
peaceful assembly is, at times, restricted. what about this case? certain elements seem suspicious, including that police refused to give badge numbers or cite cause for arrest. the memorial website states that it is open 24/7, but that "for planned events dependent upon the activity and number of participants a permit may be required." the number and nature criteria are oddly missing. the phone line is closed on weekends so we must wait for monday to find out.
but whatever the case, it reminds me of a certain movie about dancing...
update: eye-witness interview
update 2: great article in the american spectator on the incident. though the eye-witness interview is down, footage of the incident is online now.
the trackback URL for "illegal peaceful assembly" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/8473927311092083274
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
haudenosaunee: the first libertarians?
one thesis drove home repeatedly was: indians weren't much different than europeans. that is, they had large, structured, complex societies. for example, tenochtitlan was bigger than london or rome. these societies had astronomy and mathematics, philosophy and war, oppression and freedom. some had authoritarian socialism, yet others had limited representative government and equal rights for all people. his concluding argument is laid bare using the example of the haudenosaunee. he goes so far as to call them libertarian, despite their collective land use, and cites highly circumstantial evidence that they may have shifted colonial thought - and even the scottish enlightenment - towards individual liberty and equality.
of equal interest was his criticism of environmentalists - rather, preservationists. he notes that the "wilderness" seen by 1491 visitors was largely designed, but overrun and decomposing, and full of domesticated plants. indians manipulated their environment to suit their needs, e.g. converting "perhaps one quarter" of what we now consider the south american rain forest into farms and gardens, domesticating many trees and vegetables, and controlling game populations. he argues that what we see as "nature" is really the result of entropy, as sickness wiped out the majority of the indian population who were then incapable of maintaining their large farms and gardens. to his argument, there is no one "nature," rather sustainable and unsustainable environmental manipulations.
my main question while reading, though, was: well, why were they so "behind" europeans? they couldn't sail ships to colonize spain, after all. from the book, it seems to be a combination of factors, the principle one being the lack of beasts of burden, which in turn made the meso-american invention of the wheel useless, which prevented the flurry of development seen elsewhere. i'm sure that many other, perhaps more prominent, factors (such as lack of disease immunity) are involved. ideas?
Labels: misc. science
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond is in a a nutshell about this divergence. It also won the Pulitzer.
By 
chris, at
Tue Apr 08, 11:45:00 PM
i should read that. however "collapse" disappointed me so much that i have been put off him.
By ns, at
Wed Apr 09, 12:06:00 AM
I have Collapse. I read about a chapter and was thoroughly uninterested. GGS is orders of magnitude better, and worth reading at least the first 2-4 chapters.
By chris, at
Wed Apr 09, 12:27:00 AM
the trackback URL for "haudenosaunee: the first libertarians?" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/8481382611767319505
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Thursday, April 03, 2008
is new york safer?
why does this ranking seem so wrong? perhaps because it is. as someone pointed out at lunch, this is the per capita rate. although your probability of getting shot in new york is much less according to the per capita rate, it would be much higher than sprawling indianapolis using a per mile rate. that is because new york is very small; all those murders are concentrated on a tiny island.
i don't advocate always living life by statistics. however, if i am going to think about statistics, they'd better be the right ones. when i walked outside, i would ask myself: what is the probability of someone getting shot on this block right now? that is per mile rate, not the per capita rate (and neighborhood, time of day, etc. rates).
in conclusion, nyc may be safer than it used to be. but you'll still have to carry your mace on your next visit.
Labels: decision making
Umm. Were the NYC stats just for Manhattan? Manahattan is a small island (about 25 sq miles), but only a single borough. NYC has four other boroughs comprising 303.3 sq miles, which is only a smidgen smaller than Indianapolis at 372 sq miles. And your per mile rate seems rather dubious. How would you calculate the probability of the Bernoulli trial without having sample space defined on the occurrence/non-occurrence of the event? A rate of 20 per mile versus 200 per mile doesn't tell me very much about the probability of my being murdered. I'd be much more concerned by the former if the population is only 40 individuals within a mile, than the latter with a population of 400,000 individuals.
By chris, at
Fri Apr 04, 04:04:00 PM
good point re: manhattan chris. i can't so far find the answer, and what, if 7.3 is not for just manhattan, that rate is. will report back.
you're right i think about probabilities. though imo whatever that probability is, it doesn't matter to that one in x number of people who does get shot.
By ns, at
Fri Apr 04, 07:39:00 PM
At the close of 2007, Manhattan had 70 murders. Brooklyn, the most populous borough had 200, and so on.
http://tinyurl.com/5vrz3c
That's all out of 500 murders in entire city - not just Manhattan - for the year, the lowest since 1963.
More importantly for the question of whether visitors to NYC need to worry: Just 100 of those 500 murders involved people who were not acquaintances with their assailant. That's the number that one would have to worry about if one was just visiting the city. The largest component of the other 400 were probably involved in the drug trade, in which case not getting involved in the NYC drug trade probably lowers your chance of getting shot quite a lot.
As to your last line: Of course it doesn't matter to the person getting shot, but is that really the question? Or is the question, really, what is the likelihood of getting shot?
thanks for all of the useful info! i agree there are many more statistics of use than general murder rates, when considering how safe you are. but as to the question of "is the question, really, what is the likelihood of getting shot?" i am not sure, it is maybe a philosophical question. if i get shot, the probability of me getting shot was 100%, so the statistic that i was "safe" was of absolutely no use to me and had no predictive validity. i realize this is not a kosher view.
By ns, at
Tue Apr 08, 08:52:00 PM
You having been shot doesn't change the underlying probability (from either a frequentist or Bayesian perspective); your having been shot is the realization of random variable. The probabilities we've been talking about would be conditional on not having been shot yet, in which case we ought to think of them as hazards (the instantaneous proby that x will happen right now | on x not having happend prior to now). Of course all this would be conditional on other covariates (age, current location in NYC, involved in drug running, etc). Further (and albeit ironically, ns) once you've been shot, you will become a statistics.
By chris, at
Tue Apr 08, 11:41:00 PM
yup. my inarticulate point was that in as much as an event is randomly-selected, the probabilities rather speak to a long-term accumulation of events than to one event itself. kind of. or something.
By ns, at
Sun Apr 13, 07:08:00 PM
speaking of statistics:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/science/08tier.html?ex=1208318400&en=282eaa1e2cb5d56f&ei=5065&partner=MYWAY
By ns, at
Sun Apr 13, 07:10:00 PM
The point of the post, as I gathered, was "is NYC safer" in terms of murder and you tried to argued that it was not, in fact, as safe as statistics suggest.
However, it is, in fact, safer, in fact incredibly safe as compared to many other big cities.
If the point of your post had been: "getting shot sucks", then I would've been happy to accept that as true.
whoa, easy now wacked econ. i try to maintain a friendly and cheerful environment here at FH, so please be nice. i have readily agreed about many points by commenters (commentors?) on this post, and in my last comment was simply continuing a conversation that arose on statistics in the comments section (that was the "point" was referring to.
cheers, and be happy!
n
By ns, at
Wed Apr 23, 02:51:00 PM
the trackback URL for "is new york safer?" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/6726474698222611775
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Monday, March 31, 2008
a fruit by any other name...
but back to the fruit vs. vegetable issue. as this post notes, in 1893 the US Supreme Court officially put these national fruit/vegetable concerns to rest. in a case on vegetable tariff duties, it declared that the tomato is really a vegetable. however, do not fear: the enthralling tomato wiki site assures us that:
the tomato remains a fruit when not dealing with US tariffsthe tomato is a fruit and legally a vegetable. confused yet? if not, check out what is, and what is not, actually a berry. you will be surprised, and possibly indignant.
Labels: misc. science, political
Fruits are a subset of vegetables. Glad to see your back on the blog trolley.
By Tom, at
Wed Apr 02, 01:34:00 AM
the trackback URL for "a fruit by any other name..." is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/4008291966464776840
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Monday, January 07, 2008
brain doping vs. steroids
as zack lynch correctly points out, brain doping will only become more prevalent. it's one of the first things i noticed about my fellow graduate students. i was shocked to get texts during midterms asking, "one more paper... anyone have adderall?" students were very open about their adderall use - and most people are open about their use of caffeine as a cognitive booster. dilbert's gary larson said "that one key ingredient [for idea generation] is caffeine." mathematician paul erdos once said, "a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
the only distinctions between caffeine and adderall, so far as i can tell, are duration and effectiveness. the intentions and outcomes are similar: altertness, focus. and steroids are not a muscular equivalent to these cogniceuticals simply because the effects of steroids last longer, for multiple games. so, perhaps the only reason why we're against some performance-enhancing drugs is because, quite simply, they work better than others? is that a rational exclusion criterion?
Labels: drugs, neuroscience
I think it's because there's no such thing as "caffeine rage," and because coffee requires a mug, and steroids require needles, which are way more f-ed up than coffee mugs.
In short, steroids are scarier. But I would love to use them.
By 
, at
Wed Jan 09, 05:44:00 PM
There are oral steroids.
Check out this fine article on the subject (mental steroids, not oral steroids):
http://www.slate.com/id/2118315/
By chris, at
Tue Jan 22, 09:51:00 AM
the trackback URL for "brain doping vs. steroids" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/3599565407061984429
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Friday, August 10, 2007
from the archives: age and decision making
"This pattern suggests that younger and older adults' comparison processes are influenced by different goals," she said. "Even when older adults show little or no signs of cognitive decline, they make decisions differently than younger adults, in ways that should help them avoid regret."
Labels: decision making, well being
the trackback URL for "from the archives: age and decision making" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/110844527019579151
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Thursday, August 09, 2007
cleaning out my drafts box
up first (as it's the oldest): a great lay explanation of how memory works for those interested from the always-interesting sci. am. mind magazine. an excerpt:
The moment-to-moment memories necessary for operating in the present are handled well by transient adjustments in the strength of individual synapses. But when an event is important enough or is repeated enough, synapses fire to make the neuron in turn fire neural impulses repeatedly and strongly, declaring "this is an event that should be recorded." The relevant genes turn on, and the synapses that are holding the short-term memory when the synapse-strengthening proteins find them, become, in effect, tattooed.
Labels: neuroscience
You should check out "An Introduction to Natural Computation" by some dude named Ballard.
By chris, at
Sat Aug 11, 09:21:00 AM
I read "great lay" and got side-tracked.
What were you saying?
By Mungowitz, at
Wed Aug 15, 07:53:00 AM
the trackback URL for "cleaning out my drafts box" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/7467299139846188919
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Monday, July 30, 2007
we like punishment
the game has been done a million times with many different manipulations. one manipulation is to allow others to punish free riders - those that didn't contribute - by reducing their earnings. this tends to increase contributions, maintaining them at a higher level than without punishment, and generally increase efficiency of the system.
but what of well-being? perhaps people prefer to live in a world without punishment? not the case, says a new study:
...harsher punishment possibilities lead to signifcantly [sic] higher well-being, controlling for earnings and other relevant variables. People derive independent satisfaction from interacting under the protection of strong punishment possibilities.what does this say about humans? do we enjoy living in an environment where we can punish? or are punished? or can injure lazy people? a follow-up should separate satisfaction from punishing from satisfaction and reducing the incomes of their opponents... they attempted it with the hard vs. soft punishment (hard punishment reduced the punished's income much more at the same cost), and it seems to indicate that more than anything they enjoyed the hard punishment - that is, the more they could reduced the free rider's income, the more they enjoyed the game. and, although they controlled for income, can income really be completely separated from punishment when it increases along with income, and "causes" that increase?
the trackback URL for "we like punishment" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/6010684512953279663
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
health and discounting
a new working paper suggests this is the case, but with a twist. they found high discount rates in the sick, but also in the very healthy. this is how they explain the high discount rate for health individuals:
according to Trostel & Taylor (2002) and Olsho (2006), the ability to enjoy consumption depends on an individual’s health, and the healthier an individual, the greater the enjoyment of the same commodity bundle. Because health generally declines over the life cycle, individuals should have a high subjective discount rate when healthy and, thus, enjoy the consumption while they still can.also interesting, age was found to be significant for discount rate, but only until health was entered into the regression.
it's worth a read, although there are problems with the study such biased sample selection (mostly younger business owners).
related post on neural correlates of discounting
Labels: decision making, economics
the trackback URL for "health and discounting" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/2929121163827121916
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Saturday, July 21, 2007
do alzheimer's patients remember social norms?
in the dictator game, the patient had a certain amount of money and is given the option to allot some to another player. most people give at least some money to the other participant. it's a simple game, and the researchers were trying to see whether alzheimer's induces loss of "social" memory along with other memory losses.
results show no significant difference between alzheimer's and normal subjects, indicating that they (paraphrasing the researchers) continue to be bound by the same learned social norms despite loss of other types of memory.
how interesting is this for economics? probably not very. however, it's a good illustration of how economic games are now being used for other purposes, for better or worse. that is, it's still an open debate whether the dictator game says anything about norms (e.g. list 2007). saying a subpopulation conforms to social norms based on this game misleads their audience, who likely knows nothing of the dictator game literature.
Labels: economics, misc. psych
the trackback URL for "do alzheimer's patients remember social norms?" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/8661258081729807082
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Friday, July 20, 2007
why i haven't blogged in 400 years
- training for a marathon
- entertaining out of towners (e.g. alabamians)
- crashing a totally awesome conference
- "finishing" up a master's thesis
- watching videos, e.g. this or this. (this one is very important)
- pondering the necessity of auto-flush toilets
thanks for proving skinner wrong by checking the site!
the trackback URL for "why i haven't blogged in 400 years" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/7438172948500650098
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Sunday, February 25, 2007
ants and economics
adam smith would be proud. read more here.In what researchers describe as "un-peaceful coexistence," multiple ant species stake out the same territory and compete for the same food, but no single species wins out since some are better at finding resources and others better at guarding them.
Some ants, they found, sent out many scouts to look for food, so their species was better at finding resources, said researcher Fred Adler of the University of Utah. Others kept more ants in the colony and were better able to defend what was brought back.
Adler and colleagues described this as a "dominance-discovery trade-off."
Not only were some ants better at locating the food and others at holding onto it, but each was proficient at scavenging for a particular type of food.
the trackback URL for "ants and economics" is: http://haloscan.com/tb/sullifred/1735418500980760963
trackbacks for this post temporarily listed here
Post a Comment