Earlier this year, the University of Chicago announced plans to create a new research institute devoted to:

providing a distinctive intellectual environment that encourages discourse and synergies across a variety of research areas, that fosters ambitious research agendas, and that promotes criticism and scrutiny as a device to maintain excellence. (PDF)

However, this institute was met with strong opposition from a number of Chicago faculty and students. The reason? It would be named the Milton Friedman Institute (MFI).

The University might have foreseen and headed off concerns, if possible, but they did not. The situation escalated, resulting in a petition signed by 101 professors. Their letter raised two solid points: One, that the 200-million-dollar institute will exclusively concern itself with one ideology (free market) and one discipline (economics). Two, that they will be embarrassed to acknowledge to their international colleagues that the invidious Chicago School of Economics is alive and well. This latter opposition on ideological grounds claims that Friedman's ideas have weakened local economies.

A response by UC professor John Cochrane dissects the petition in a humorous, but rather effective, manner. In fact, on reading the initial institute proposal (PDF), I noted that many of their concerns were addressed preemptively, particularly regarding synergies with other research fields and institutes.

There is no room now to address either point in detail, nor perhaps am I the person fit to do it. Suffice to say, many people in "weakened" local economies, who are now able to own businesses and trade with the world, would strongly disagree with the second point.

On the first, all I have to go on is the founding document and the founders' stated intentions. One committee member told the New York Times that its founding document ensures that it will be an "economic research institute without a particular ideology."

Though this document praises not only Friedman's technical work but also his promotion of market alternatives, it also makes clear that it:

will encourage the production of durable analyses that can withstand the highest level of scrutiny and be supported by the best modeling and most informative empirical evidence. While addressing important economic and social problems, it will provide the impetus for rigorous analyses in support of creative approaches to research.

If this indeed is the case - and here we must assume the founding documents will be binding - of what in the world are these 101 professors afraid? It certainly cannot be this proposal.

Labels: economics, ideology

a new study finds that the average of two of someone's guesses is more accurate than the first or second guess alone. the authors posit that we draw from an internal probability distribution instead of having one best guess. further research could help us make a better estimates, critical for professions such as medicine and the military.

this indicates that the "wisdom of crowds" idea, roughly that averaging a crowd's answers is better than asking one person, applies to individuals as well. as surowiecki notes, this has many caveats. however, scienceblogs is curiously attempting to falsify it using this guessing study.

how is that? well, they erroneously claim that under w-o-c each person must give stable answers over time, their "best guess." they then misinterpret this guessing study to say that second guesses were more accurate (the study clearly states the reverse). ergo, w-o-c is false because people don't give best guesses first.

rather, this study may bolster woc: even though people are possibly drawing from some internal distribution of answers, the woc effect persists. this study simply illustrates the benefits of "benefits from polling the 'crowd' within" when making your own estimates, leaving the idea of polling from the crowd outside to stand on its own merit.

Labels: decision making

an interesting, seemingly contradictory, quote from wired:

He's a merciless competitor, a shameless "fan" of other people's ideas and an unapologetic monopolist. And because of all that, Bill Gates has done more to create the thriving computer industry than anybody else.

update: internet robot pirates must have stolen the link to the wired article. i've put it in (again?).

Labels: economics

chicago's mayor daley, though seemingly incapable of stringing together a coherent thought on camera, has actually done something decent. he bullied city council into repealing the foie gras ban last week.

unfortunately, the ban was repealed not because the council realized it has no purview over foods we eat:

Anybody who has traveled anywhere in this country knows that people are just laughing their heads off at us.
-Council member on the ban, which he supported

it was repealed almost unanimously, the same way it was passed. here's a great article on the year-long silly saga.

Labels: political

at 6 p.m. last night, chicago police cornered and shot a wild cougar. the chicago tribune reports that it is the first to roam city streets since chicago's founding.

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

i have been paying particularly close attention to the jefferson 1 situation (see the press release). though response has generally been outrage, a not-insignificant portion of blog/youtube comments are in the "she was being irresponsible" camp.

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.

Labels: personal, political

i just completed my recording for the subjection of women by john stuart mill on librivox. in this essay, mill provides a theory on the development of power-seeking personalities:

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 adults

so, 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!

update: the project is finished and ready to download!

Labels: misc. psych, political

in honor of thomas jefferson's birthday, last night twenty individuals gathered with ipods at the tj memorial in dc to hold a "silent" dance party. unfortunately i wasn't there, but i hear that quiet dancing ensued at midnight... and ten minutes later a participant was arrested.

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.

Labels: personal, political

i just finished 1491, an attempt by author charles mann to piece together what indian culture was like before the arrival of columbus. despite spending a quarter of the book pointlessly debating the illness hypothesis (that most of native america was wiped out due to foreign disease long before 1491), mann's retelling is an excellent example of a trend in indian historical analysis to humanize native cultures.

one thesis mann repeatedly drove home was that indians weren't much different than europeans. for example, they had large, structured, complex societies including cities, such as aztec tenochtitlan, which was bigger than london or rome. indigenous societies had astronomy and mathematics, philosophy and war, oppression and freedom. some governments favored authoritarian socialism, yet others had limited representative government and equal rights for all people. mann's 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 commentary on the preservationists movement. he notes that the "wilderness" seen by 1491 visitors was largely designed 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. there is no one "nature," rather sustainable and unsustainable environmental manipulations.

my main question while reading, though, was: if native societies were so similar in intelligence, culture, and government, why were they so "behind" europeans? they couldn't sail ships to colonize spain, after all. going off the book, an answer could come from 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, preventing the flurry of development seen elsewhere. i'm sure that other, perhaps more prominent, factors (such as lack of disease immunity) are involved. ideas?

Labels: misc. science

it is common trivia that the tomato is actually a fruit. but did you know that it is also technically a berry? yes, kids. though it may blow your mind, a berry is a fruit that has all its seeds in one ovary; our Lycopersicon esculentum fits the bill. it should be noted that other so-called "berries," such as the elitist raspberry, blackberry, or strawberry, are not berries at all but common imposers.

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 tariffs

the 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

society has long shunned athletes for using performance-enhancing chemicals. congress has even gotten into the act by holding hearings on baseball and steroids. however, what about the doping that goes on in other fields - and in our everyday lives? you may even be doping up if we transfer baseball's definition to mental enhancers such as caffeine.

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

the old and the young utilize different mechanisms to evaluate alternatives:

"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

often i'll save a link as a draft for a blog post, particularly if i don't have the time right then to devote to a proper treatment on the subject. however, this is certainly a mistake as i end up with mountains of drafts and few posts! so i'll be posting some brief notes for a while with all of the links i've saved... stay tuned!

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

a basic public good game consists of a group playing together where each person has some money and can give some to the public kitty. the sum amount is then multiplied and divided back amongst the group. it creates a dilemma where you really should not contribute, keeping all of your money, but let everyone else contribute and get some of their money. of course, if everyone did this, no one would contribute and everyone would earn less than if they all contributed everything.

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?

Labels: economics, social

it seems a natural conclusion from the theory of temporal discounting is that individuals that expect to die soon should have high discount rates. that is, people in poor health will want things now, as opposed to in the future, even if the benifit now is slightly smaller. afterall, they may die before getting the future reward.

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