1. Twittergraphy, based on the history of the telegraph and message condensation.
2. Dawn of Discovery, a new economics game.
3. Thoughts on the evolution of blogging.
4. Test your grit.
5. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future — Chris Mooney's new book — is now out.
6. Six economists on why we should not audit the Fed.
In a world where political correctness has defeated the spirit of skeptical inquiry, scientific literacy is no longer relevant.
Wow, an economics computer game! I’ve been looking around the internet, but it’s hard to get a good idea of what this game is about. Can someone explain if/how this game really relates to economics? I’m an old C&C, Warcraft, SC, AoE, etc. player from back in the day, but I encountered the same problem as the NYT reviewer: the games lose their appeal when it becomes a competition of who can click the right build order fastest. I love economics and strategy, but I hate juggling.
4. Isn’t this a “test your willingness to expose yourself to loss of privacy by willingly giving them your name needlessly when they could create a random identifier” survey?
We were asked to do something like this on the relationship between students and advisors. I loved the disclaimer. “Every effort will be used to ensure anonymity, but the information may be provided to your department.” It was awesome.
Damien,
I’ve been making the same points for years. As a scientist (or, actually an engineer, a scientist who actually makes stuff work in real life) it is the liberals who worship at the altar of the infallible scientist who are creating a new religion, and maybe the most dangerous faith yet seen.
That didn’t take long. Thirty seconds of research revealed that Robert Shiller owns a Wall Street company:
http://www.macromarkets.com/about_us/our_founders.shtml
OF COURSE he’d oppose transparency. He and his clients and friends and associates make a lot of money doing deals with the Fed.
Why didn’t Professor Cowen have the integrity to point out that the “economists” have a direct financial interest in the current regime?
The article on Dawn of Discovery mentions German-style board games. (Or, if you like, “Eurogames.”) Anyone wishing to learn more about tabletop board games can find information at http://boardgame.geekdo.com/ which. Boardgamegeek is to board games as the IMDB is to movies.
SC was the shizzle fo’ rizzle. There really wasn’t the “build order fastest” only who was fastest to the right punch-counterpunch. I contend that it was and remains the greatest computer game ever. Any game that results in the deaths of multiple Koreans must be high on any objective list.
If you missed what Bernanke said about auditing last week on the Newshour, follow this link and scroll down to the last video clip:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/business/july-dec09/bernanke_07-26.html
I submit that the real problem is not illiteracy but a false sense of knowledge. The problem is not that people are ignorant about economics, physics, etc., but that they *think* they know a lot about these fields and act/vote according to their mistaken beliefs.
I agree with the first sentence, but I agree with William Buckley as regards the second:
“I am obliged to confess that I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”
And G.K. Chesterton said something similar:
“Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round.”
That didn’t take long. Thirty seconds of research revealed that Robert Shiller owns a Wall Street company:
http://www.macromarkets.com/about_us/our_founders.shtml
OF COURSE he’d oppose transparency. He and his clients and friends and associates make a lot of money doing deals with the Fed.
10 more seconds of Googling would have taken you to the Fed list of primary dealer banks. MacroMarkets does not appear on the list because, of course, MacroMarkets is not a primary dealer nor is it a broker or investment bank. It appears to be solely in the business of issuing exchange-traded products.
Damien:
5: In most cases, scientific illiteracy has to do with areas that have very little practical impact on people’s daily lives. For instance, why should it matter if someone is a creationist? … [F]rom my interaction with these types, it seems that their skepticism is usually limited to evolutionary biology (and climate science, but they are right on board with many libertarians on this one).
Isn’t that the answer to why scientific illiteracy is harmful? Scientific results influence real-world policy debates and when people base their opinions on incorrect or misleading information, the rest of us are hurt.
Also, generally, division of labor is a good thing. I don’t know much about how car works. I earn my living in academia and I hire a mechanic to repair my car for me.
OK, but the point is that some people are unwilling to defer to the opinions of the scientific elite. Division of labor is fine if you just tell your mechanic to find out what is wrong with your car and leave it to him to fix it. If you insist you know the problem, despite a lack of knowledge of cars, then there is a problem. Your choices are to either learn more about cars or else defer to the expert opinion of your mechanic. Ignorance along with a mistrust of those who know more than you is a very, very bad combination: either learn enough about the subject to disagree with the experts on substantive grounds or else the logic of division of labor requires some deference to expert opinion.
Andrew:
it is the liberals who worship at the altar of the infallible scientist who are creating a new religion, and maybe the most dangerous faith yet seen.
I don’t know any liberals like this but they would also be guilty of scientific illiteracy. Part of being educated about science means understanding the importance of evidence and the role it plays in scientific debates.
“Scientific results influence real-world policy debates”
After 40 years, I have a hard time believing this is true. Science is cherry-picked by political idealogues (for example, the author of the book in question, as well as politicians and others), just as any other type of data. If “scientific results” played much of a role in policy debates and popular public discourse on those debates, the issue of health care reform (to name one example) would look and sound quite a bit different.
“and when people base their opinions on incorrect or misleading information, the rest of us are hurt.”
Or when people base their opinions on cherry-picked data that fits with their pre-existing beliefs. See above.
As an avid player of Age of Empires/Age of Kings, Dawn of Discovery piqued my curiosity as I always spent more time building up a solid economy than playing “rush” military games (building up a military as fast as possible and demolishing your enemies early on, for those not familiar.) The reviews of the game itself seem excellent; however, there is apparently a DRM issue where you’re limited to three installations, and only three installations. That’s simply not practical for someone such as myself who not only has multiple computer units but also no qualms sharing the game with, say, my younger brother (who uses a separate family computer.)
That’s really too bad. I’m not refusing to buy the game in protest or anything, just out of practicality. Maybe once the price drops ~$20 I’ll grab it, but definitely not for close to $50.
liberals who worship at the altar of the infallible scientist who are creating a new religion, and maybe the most dangerous faith yet seen.”
Congrats, this is by far the silliest comment I’ve ever read on MR.
“liberals who worship at the altar of the infallible scientist who are creating a new religion, and maybe the most dangerous faith yet seen.”
Congrats, this is by far the insightful comment I’ve ever read on MR.
The anti-American elitism is annoying in that article, but Dawn of Discovery is an excellent game (with no elitism). It’s a significant improvement on 1701, and plays at a speed much more akin to other great economics games than to combat RTSs (I’d say it’s closest analogs are SimCity and Railroad Tycoon 3).
This audit the fed thing is going to turn tribalistic on us very quickly if we’re not careful. See those comments? Did either one make much of a substantive argument (CAPITAL LETTERS and !!!!’s not included)? Not to take those as representative of the internet at large, although I think it is, but “if you’re opposed to auditing the Fed you must be on their payroll” is one of those little leaps of logic that seems to kill rational debate.
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