flying hedgehogs

two guesses better than one

2008-07-08T14:41:00.002-05:00

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.

bill gates the monopolist

2008-06-27T17:41:00.002-05:00

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?).

ban repealed for wrong reasons, but replealed nonetheless

2008-05-18T12:09:00.005-05:00

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unfortunately, the ban was repealed not because the council realized it has no purview over foods we eat: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it was repealed almost unanimously, the same way it was passed.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.

cougars in chicago

2008-04-15T15:22:00.005-05:00

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!

what jefferson 1 is about.

2008-04-15T15:21:00.003-05:00

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.

mill's psychology of subjection

2008-04-14T13:08:00.000-05:00

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!

illegal peaceful assembly

2008-04-13T11:39:00.007-05:00

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.

haudenosaunee: the first libertarians?

2008-04-08T18:15:00.010-05:00

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

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?

is new york safer?

2008-04-03T15:58:00.008-05:00

the other day at lunch, visitors from new york city proclaimed how safe their city is. new york city safe? apparently. and if we look at the statistics, new york city has a paltry per capita murder rate of 7.3. nyc doesn't even make it into the top 25, 30, or even 40. omaha and indanapolis rank far higher; even the "sunshine city" of st. petersburg florida comes in well above nyc.

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.

a fruit by any other name...

2008-03-31T20:49:00.001-05:00

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.

brain doping vs. steroids

2008-01-07T14:12:00.000-06:00

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?

from the archives: age and decision making

2007-08-10T15:38:00.000-05:00

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."

cleaning out my drafts box

2007-08-09T21:42:00.000-05:00

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.

we like punishment

2007-07-30T20:07:00.000-05:00

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?

health and discounting

2007-07-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

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

do alzheimer's patients remember social norms?

2007-07-21T09:49:00.000-05:00

a working paper indicates that the neurodegeneration involved in the early stages of alzheimer's disease does not alter typical behaviors in a dictator game.

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.

why i haven't blogged in 400 years

2007-07-20T13:00:00.000-05:00

i've had a good excuse. okay, not really. but who has time to blog when they're...

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

anyway, i'm not going to say i'm back, because i always do that and then stop blogging again. so, i'll just say i will post some more stuff soon, probably short links to cool articles. perhaps i should blog about why in the world we have all auto-flush toilets, which malfunction half the time so you have to go press the nasty button instead of using your foot to flush which is much cleaner. was there some huge un-flushed toilet epidemic that necessitated replacing every flusher in existence with a testy sensor that flushes when it's not supposed to? please help me understand this, particularly from an economic perspective.

thanks for proving skinner wrong by checking the site!

ants and economics

2007-02-25T20:13:00.000-06:00

a neat story from the insect world:

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.

adam smith would be proud. read more here.

o'rourke on wealth of nations

2007-02-05T20:00:00.000-06:00

p.j. o'rourke has a great piece on adam smith's wealth of nations... on NPR, of all places. it's worth a listen.

Smith's logical demonstration of how productivity is increased through self-interest, division of labor, and trade disproved the thesis (still dearly held by leftists and everyone's little brother) that bettering the condition of one person necessarily worsens the condition of another. Wealth is not a pizza. If I have too many slices, you don't have to eat the Domino's box.
By proving that there was no fixed amount of wealth in a nation, Smith also proved that a nation cannot be said to have a certain horde of treasure. Wealth must be measured by the volume of trades in goods and services - what goes on in the castle's kitchens and stables, not what's locked in strongboxes in the castle's tower.

insular cortex and addiction

2007-02-01T13:12:00.000-06:00

folks with a damaged insular cortex are able to stop smoking immediately and permanently. the insula is on the left side of the brain and is involved in emotional processing, hinting that addiction may be primarily emotional after all. interestingly, studies show that it's this part of the brain that is altered during extensive meditation (though the insula is large and has numerous functions).

a million questions follow from this. what is it about the insula? does this work with all additions? would it work for non-drug addictions such as shopping (a personal question)? will surgery or new drugs targeting the insula replace nicorette and hypnotism? does this poke holes in or confirm the disease theory of addiction?

individual differences in insular activity, linked to genetics, may also help us understand more about the addictive personality.

reference: Nasir H. Naqvi, David Rudrauf, Hanna Damasio, Antoine Bechara. Damage to the Insula Disrupts Addiction to Cigarette Smoking. Science. 2007 Jan 26; 315(5811):531-534.

do straight teeth increase happiness?

2007-01-31T22:49:00.000-06:00

the BBC tells us that "braces 'may not boost happiness'." the study is published in british journal of health psychology, and claims that orthodontics scarcely impact future mental health.

although this is an interesting idea, i'm not sure it holds water because those who do and don't get braces differ in many ways. there are likely certain kinds of parents who push getting braces and certain kinds of kids who whine until they are allowed them. there are also, potentially, certain kinds of parents and kids who just don't think it's worth it. such individuals may not be worse off later in life, whereas the group who cares would be unhappy later if denied braces. psychology has shown that your concern for others' perception of you colors all social interactions.

since circumstances between the two groups differ, this means it is difficult to measure psychological impact of bad teeth. a better study would control for such confounding variables as preference, income, and insurance. perhaps looking at individuals who wanted but couldn't get braces for some medical/income/insurance/parental reason would be a good place to start. can't we get an economist to do the study?

chicago friedman memorial service audio

2007-01-29T21:49:00.000-06:00

today i attended milton friedman's memorial service at rockerfeller chapel on the university of chicago campus. here are my audio files from the event, in the order given. sorry for the low quality, i just used my ipod.

introduction by robert zimmer, president of university of chicago, with a statement from alan greenspan

vaclav klaus, president of czech republic

leo melamed, former chairman of the chicago mercantile exchange and founding chairman of the international monetary market

arnold harberger, economics scholar and former student

michael walker, former director of the fraser institute and former student

gary becker, economics scholar, nobel prize winner, and former student

it was heartening to hear the warm things such friends & colleagues had to say about friedman. he must have truly been an exceptional man in all respects. equally moving was the tribute of president vaclav klaus, who lived through communism and its fall. although not close to friedman, his tale was incredibly moving and demonstrated how important ideas can be in transforming the lives of everyday people.

"it doesn't matter who said what. what matters is what's right"
-- friedman quoted by a. harberger

can we bury the past and still think of the future?

2007-01-02T15:17:00.000-06:00

the nytimes has a chilling, but illustrative, article on memories of the gulags in kazakhstan.

apparently, there aren't many anymore. these "corrective labor camps" which murdered over one million for crimes against the soviet state, are now simply things such as "just a village for miners," according to one girl. even those who lived through such horrors don't speak of it.

if freud is to be believed, some "forgetting" is natural and healthy. however, as thoughts of the future are inexorably linked to those of the past, i.e. our memories, in our brains, i wonder how this rewrite of the past is changing survivors' abilities to think about the future.

read more about the gulags here or here and, for the bookish, here.

a brave new world without disgust

2007-01-02T00:13:00.000-06:00

marc hauser thinks that disgust is the root of many woes. but not to fear, we may have a solution:

"modern molecular techniques will one day find a way to cure Huntington's, but along the way, work out a method to crank down or turn off our disgust response, while preserving our motor systems"

hauser correctly notes that disgust is involved in many awful things such as india's caste system, war, genocide. however, involved in and responsible for can be two very different things.

moreover, disgust can be a powerful positive force as well. for example, disgust may be partially responsible for the cast system, but modern efforts to eradicate it are also motivated partially based on the exact same emotion. disgust at hunger, homelessness, and other woes motivates many individuals to do good work. perhaps we would still be motivated to enact change without this emotion, as (semi)rational humans, but would our motivation be as powerful? probably not. we should be careful in vilifying certain feelings - and proposing the permanent elimination of them - because of the actions of a few.

trust II, eastern eurpoe

2006-12-31T17:57:00.000-06:00

susan rose-ackerman has an interesting paper on trust in eastern europe that we can use to compare to the US trust questions in my last post.

though the data (PDF) isn't in percents, we can still see categorical differences between the US and eastern europe. trust in individuals is high in both the US and eastern eurpoe, but trust in military scores higher than individuals there, interestingly/ disturbingly. trust in the primary leader and the press are high as well. i would love to see an update; so much has changed since 1998. i also wish they had included the baltic tigers.

another interesting item to note from the data: 88% of ukrainians are either agnostic or distrusting of police. that's 81% in russia. of those who do trust the police only 13% and 17% in ukraine and russia respectively expect fair treatment. the other figures are disturbingly revealing about how opaque and corrupt government still is for our post-soviet friends.

the paper itself is very interesting (though a bit long in the tooth):

Real trouble arises when one trusts public officials to behave like friends or kinsmen in making public decisions. Conversely, if trust in friends is generalized so that people assume the good will of strangers, a society can economize on some of the coercive apparatus of the state.