Category: Education
How An Economist Explains Hanukkah
From Seth Gitter at the Blog of Diminishing Returns.
Arthur Schopenhauer on tetragamy
Was any major philosopher better than Schopenhauer at starting with genuine insight and turning it into an untenable conclusion?
Tetragamy adjusted marriage into an institution that would make life better for men and women, Schopenhauer theorized, because it accommodated the natural sexual and reproductive capacities of humans in ways in which monogamy did not. It also addressed the material and financial needs of all parties in a more rational way. Two young men should marry a young woman, and when she outgrew her reproductive ability, and thereby lost her attractiveness to her husbands, the two men should marry another young woman who would "last until the two young men were old." The financial advantage of this type of marriage would be considerable, Schopenhauer thought. At first, when the two young men's incomes were low, they would only have to support one woman and her small children. Later, when their wealth increased, they would have the means to support two women and many children…Schopenhauer never published his musings on tetragamy…
That is from David E. Cartwright's recent Schopenhauer: A Biography.
Unusual sentences
In one school that was closed, Homeland Security Academy, a middle school with a security-industry theme, students regularly set fires in the bathrooms.
The full story is here, and I thank Samuel Henly for the pointer. Or how about this one:
Deborah A. Cunningham , the manager of $261 billion at Federated Investors Inc. , was squeezed into the bathroom of her family’s recreational vehicle, trying to help save the $3.6 trillion money market industry.
Don’t Play Games with Your Kids
Seeing that my 9-year old was reading The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma I thought this was an excellent opportunity to teach my kids some game theory. Thus, I explained the prisoner's dilemma and offered the 9 and 12 year old the opportunity to cheat or cooperate with substantial cash payoffs.
My kids are competitive so I didn't foresee any problems. Yet the kids kept cooperating. Did they not understand the game? Alas, it soon became clear that they understood all too well. Silly me. I had neglected to take into account that the opportunity to take money from Daddy greatly raised the payoff to (cooperate, cooperate). (As an aside this did increase somewhat my belief in Steve Landsburg's unusual interpretation of some experimental games).
Ok, I was losing money but no problem, I resolved to change the game on the fly greatly increasing the payoff to cheat. Only I miscalculated. In my eagerness to drive the kids to the (cheat, cheat) equilibrium I raised the payoff to cheat so high that they did best by (cheat, cooperate) followed by a side-payment to split the spoils. Of course the kids saw that right away. Daddy loses again.
Having satisfied myself that the kids understood strategic thinking, unfortunately even better than me, I ended the game. But now I was a substantial sum of money in the hole. What to do? I resolved to auction off some money with an all-pay auction. Success! As usual, I managed to sell a dollar for well over a dollar. Even the kids didn't see their way past that one.
Having regained some dignity I sent the kids to bed. Still the kids were up on net. What could I do? Finally, after some thought I figured out how I could rebalance our portfolios and at the same time teach the kids all about Ricardian Equivalence and (appropriately) the Rotten Kid Theorem. All I had to do was give them less for Christmas. Daddy wins!
(Well, at least until I explained my clever idea to my wife. Nuff said.)
A Kansas 8th grade exam from 1895
The full test is here, here are a few questions:
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per are, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
And these:
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fermandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
For the pointer I thank Chris F. Masse.
Ideas Behind Their Time
We are all familiar with ideas said to be ahead of their time, Babbage’s analytical engine and da Vinci’s helicopter are classic examples. We are also familiar with ideas “of their time,” ideas that were “in the air” and thus were often simultaneously discovered such as the telephone, calculus, evolution, and color photography. What is less commented on is the third possibility, ideas that could have been discovered much earlier but which were not, ideas behind their time.
Experimental economics was an idea behind its time. Experimental economics could have been invented by Adam Smith, it could have been invented by Ricardo or Marshall or Samuelson but it wasn’t. Experimental economics didn’t takeoff until the 1960s when Vernon Smith picked it up and ran with it (Vernon was not the first experimental economist but he was early).
(Economics, and perhaps social science in general, seems behind its time compared say with political science.)
A lot of the papers in say experimental social psychology published today could have been written a thousand years ago so psychology is behind its time. More generally, random clinical trials are way behind their time. An alternative history in which Aristotle or one of his students extolled the virtue of randomization and testing does not seem impossible and yet it would have changed the world.
Technology can also be behind its time. View morphing (“bullet time”) could have been used much more frequently well before The Matrix in 1999 (you simply need multiple cameras from different angles triggered at the same time and then inserted into a film) but despite some historical precedents the innovation didn’t happen.
Ideas behind their time may be harder to discover than other ideas–“if this is so great why hasn’t it been done before”? is an attack on ideas behind their time that other innovations do not have to meet. Is this why social innovations are often behind their time?
What other ideas were behind their time? Are some types of ideas more likely to be behind their time than others? Why?
Addendum: See Jason Crawford on Why did it take so long to invent X?
David Brooks on Tolstoy
Tolstoy devoted himself to activism and spiritual improvement – and paid the mental price. After all, most historical leaders write pallid memoirs not because they are hiding the truth but because they’ve been engaged in an activity that makes it impossible for them to see it clearly. Activism is admirable, necessary and self-undermining – the more passionate, the more self-blinding.
Here is more. By the way, here is the Pope on padded pipes.
Local news or rumor?
Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein is joining the faculty at George Mason University and will cut back his twice-weekly column to once a week.
Pearlstein, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, wouldn't confirm the newsroom buzz about his new dual role when The Cutline reached him Tuesday morning. "I'm going to write about that in my column tomorrow," Pearlstein said, adding that he's "not going to scoop myself."
Here is more, from Yahoo. Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
Arnold Kling on the political spectrum
Here in the United States, one thing that strikes me about my most liberal friends is how conservative their thinking is at a personal level. For their own children, and in talking about specific other people [TC: especially in the blogosphere!], they passionately stress individual responsibility. It is only when discussing public policy that they favor collectivism. The tension between their personal views and their political opinions is fascinating to observe. I would not be surprised to find that my friends' attachment to liberal politics is tenuous, and that some major event could cause a rapid, widespread shift toward a more conservative position.
Here is more. I would make the related point that, in the economics profession, academic liberals are especially likely to believe in statistical discrimination: "Does he have a Ph.d. from Harvard or MIT?" On the right, Chicago's previous reputation as an outsider school blunts this tendency, plus there have been Arizona, VPI, and other off-beat centers of market-oriented thought.
The career of a paper mill writer (MIE)
From one of those people who writes other peoples' term papers for a living:
I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.
The article is interesting throughout. The fellow can write a 75-page paper in two days, has never visited a library for his work, and earns far more — $66k last year — than most ostensibly professional writers.
For the pointer I thank David B.
Unsung development miracles?
Dani Rodrik writes:
Which are the countries that have improved their human development indicators the most since 1970 relative to their peers? You’d be surprised, as I was, to find that the top 10 is dominated not by East Asian superstars, but by Moslem countries: Oman, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. This year’s Human Development Report is full of neat analysis and results, including this one.
Leaving aside the oil exporting countries, the North African cases are particularly interesting. As Francisco Rodriguez and Emma Samman, two of the report’s authors, note, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria have experienced remarkable gains in life expectancy and educational attainment, leaving many Asian superstars in the dust. Only Tunisia among the three is a high growth country, underlining one of the report’s main findings that economic growth and human development often diverge significantly, even over as long a time frame as 40 years.
Words of wisdom
I think that where a lot of progressive political junkies go wrong is that they think “blame Republicans for failing to pass plan to fix the economy” is a close substitute for “fix the economy.” In reality, the evidence that fixing the economy would help Democrats politically is overwhelming, while the evidence that the plan/block/blame strategy would work is non-existent. People like me and Atrios would feel better about President Obama and his team if they made public statements that indicated that he roughly agrees with our take on what ideally should be done, but people like me and Atrios are neither swing voters nor marginally attached voters. Our emotional state has very little political relevance.
What’s more, there’s unfortunately a real tension here. The things you would do to outline a bold progressive approach to fixing the economy are very different from the things you would do to try to get the GOP votes you need to pass economy-fixing legislation. In particular, the reaction red state (or district) Democratic members of congress to those things would be very different. The fact of the matter is that the mistakes of 2009 in terms of the stimulus and the Fed can’t be easily undone.
That is from Matt Yglesias.
What kind of letters of recommendation are written for women?
In the scholars' analysis of the words that appeared in the letters of recommendation, they found clear patterns of word use for women's and men's letters. Women were more likely to be described with words such as those cited above, as well as "nurturing," "kind," "agreeable" and "warm." Men, in contrast, were much more likely to be described in words classified as "agentive" — words such as "assertive," "confident," "aggressive," "ambitious," "independent" and "daring."
What the analysis showed is that letter writers didn't need to use words like "feminine" to create female stereotypes — and that they did so, time and again, with women who had the same intellectual achievements as their male counterparts.
…The research is based on a content analysis of 624 letters of recommendation submitted on behalf of 194 applicants for eight junior faculty positions at an unidentified research university.
Which works ought to be read in their original language?
Gabriel Power, a loyal MR reader, asks:
What works really ought to be read in their original language? Does this suggest classes or types that are best read in the original? Does it suggest that some languages are poorly translated into English while others are well translated (indeed, possibly improved upon, e.g. Poe into French)? Why?
I can speak only to German, Spanish, and English. Borges and Goethe and Juan Rulfo are much, much better in the original and I believe they cannot be well understood or appreciated in translation. Vargas Llosa is an example of a conceptual, plot-driven Spanish-language author who translates quite well into other languages. Max Frisch requires German and in general German humor (please don't laugh) does not translate into other languages, less than English-language humor does. Shakespeare translates relatively well into German, but I wonder about other Shakespeare in other languages. I have always thought of Chekhov as requiring Russian, but that is speculation. It is hard for me to imagine James Joyce in any language but English, but most modern American authors can be translated OK, in part because they are not writing "word-rich" material.
Potentially "cheesy" material, such as Poe, often does better in another language. Raymond Chandler in German was excellent, as it added a layer of cranky mystery to the proceedings. I think of "word rich" and "subtly humorous" as hard to translate, so genre fiction is often better in another language.
What can you all add to this?
Why don’t we nudge people toward more risk?
Most paternalistic nudges encourage more safety (or at least the appearance of safety), such as when government steers people away from trans fats with a warning label or when the transportation authority structures the contours of a road to induce drivers to slow down. I can think of a few nudges in the direction of greater risk-taking:
1. QEII and activist monetary policy more generally. Investment tax credits and upbeat Presidential speeches.
2. Military recruitment campaigns and ads.
3. Social norms that people should pursue the love of their life, propose marriage, have children, and so on.
What else?
The Hansonian question is why the bias toward safety is neglected for risk-taking in these areas. Is it a simple utilitarian standard? Is it that these forms of risk-taking are affiliated with larger social purposes, namely ones whose relative status we are trying to boost? Are nudges toward risk just as common as nudges toward safety, but we are less willing to describe them as such?
Risk-taking by eating dangerous food has a relatively low social status, perhaps because the gain is mostly private. Sushi or sampling street food in exotic locales have minority or cult followings, perhaps because they are (sometimes) associated with higher class values. Many people eat and enjoy trans fats but few people defend or elevate them.