Category: Science

Small ideas for a much better world

by  Tyler Cowen in

…participants [at a retreat for autistics]…can wear color-coded badges that indicate whether they are willing to be approached for conversation.

I will be very happy if this ever becomes socially acceptable practice for non-autistics, or for that matter in mixed autistic and non-autistic company.

Here is the New York Times story, fascinating in its own right, about how many autistics do not wish to be "cured."

The most thanked man in science

by  Tyler Cowen in

Apparently it is Olivier Danvy:

Danvy, a French researcher who works
on programming languages at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, says
that at first he was "stunned" to find his name at the top of the list.

But
on reflection, he puts it down to "a series of coincidences". He is
multidisciplinary, well-travelled, is involved with an international
PhD programme, and belongs to a university department that encourages
international visitors.

"It’s
a snowball effect," says Danvy, who admits to being a helpful sort of
fellow. "I encourage people a lot, and advise many students on their
papers."

Here is the full story; text-mining software was used to compile the results.  Here is Olivier’s home page, which lists his six doctoral students as well.  He has, by the way, 15,800 Google entries as of early this morning…

The deadliest day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Christmas is the deadliest day of the year for Americans with 12.4 percent more deaths than normal, researchers said on Monday.

More
Americans die from heart attacks and other natural causes on Christmas,
the day after and on New Year’s Day than on any other days of the year,
the researchers reported.

It is probably because people are
feeling too busy or too festive to go to the hospital over the winter
holiday season, the researchers wrote in Monday’s issue of the journal
Circulation.

I would have expected a different gloss — my mother always claimed that people feel more depressed on Christmas and New Year’s.  In any case, here is the full story.

What are the best Christmas gifts?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is my post from last year:

Experiences, not possessions. Concerts and travel are remembered for
longer than clothes and jewelry. The result is robust to different ages
and groups, but tends to be strongest for high-income individuals.

See the above link for references and more information.  I was reminded of this post by scrolling through John Palmer’s new economics (and miscellany) blog, The Econoclast.  Here is the web site for John’s group, the Philistine Liberation Organization.  Here is John’s list of economics-related websites.

How good was your day?

by  Tyler Cowen in

The researchers [Norbert Schwartz, Daniel Kahneman, Alan Krueger, David Schkade, and Arthur Stone] assessed how people felt during 28 types of activities and found that intimate relations were the most enjoyable, while commuting was the least enjoyable.

More surprisingly, taking care of their children was also among the less enjoyable activities, although people generally report that their children are the greatest source of joy in their lives…

In addition to intimate relations, socializing, relaxing, praying or meditating, eating, exercising, and watching TV were among the most enjoyable activities. Commuting was the least enjoyable activity, with working, doing housework, using the computer for e-mail or Internet, and taking care of children rounding out the bottom of the list.

Interactions with friends and relatives were rated as the most enjoyable, followed by activities with spouses or significant others, children, clients or customers, co-workers and bosses. At the bottom of the list: activities done alone.

…"When people are asked how much they enjoy spending time with their kids they think of all the nice things—reading them a story, going to the zoo," said University of Michigan psychologist Norbert Schwarz, a co-author of the Science article. "But they don’t take the other times into account, the times when they are trying to do something else and find the kids distracting. When we sample all the times that parents spend with their children, the picture is less positive than parents expect. On the other hand, we also find that people enjoy spending time with their relatives much more than they usually assume."

General reports of what people enjoy may also differ from descriptions of how people actually feel in a specific situation because many people hesitate to report socially inappropriate feelings. This is less of a problem when they report on specific episodes. "Saying that you generally don’t enjoy spending time with your kids is terrible," Schwarz said, "but admitting that they were a pain last night is quite acceptable." The new Day Reconstruction Method provides a better picture of people’s daily experiences by improving accurate recall of how they felt in specific situations…

…general life circumstances—such as how secure people think their jobs are, or whether they are single or married—had a relatively small impact on their feelings throughout the day. These factors were closely linked with how satisfied people said they were with their lives in general, but had little influence on how positive they felt during specific activities.

"It’s not that life circumstances are irrelevant to well-being," notes Schwarz. "On the contrary, we found that people experience large variations in feelings during the course of a normal day. This variation highlights the importance of optimizing the allocation of time across situations and activities. If you want to improve your well-being, make sure that you allocate your time wisely."

Unfortunately, that’s not easy. When the researchers examined the amount of time spent on various activities, they found that people spent the bulk of their waking time—11.5 hours—engaged in the activities they enjoyed the least: work, housework and commuting.

Here is the full story, with thanks to the ever-excellent www.politicaltheory.info.  Here is more information, and it seems you can order the study here.

Warring against the division of labor

by  Tyler Cowen in

A group of British scientists has come up with a brain-taxing spin on the old formula of 100 things to do before you die.

The group – which includes the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield and the inventor James Dyson – urges us all to take samples of our DNA, measure the speed of light with chocolate, and solve the mathematical mystery of the number 137.

The list, compiled by New Scientist magazine, suggests booking to see Galileo’s middle finger (preserved in Florence) or ordering liquid nitrogen to make the "world’s smoothest ice-cream" at home.

Another option is learning Choctaw, a language with two past tenses – one for giving information that is definitely true, the other for passing on material taken without checking from someone else.

Here is a summary article; I cannot find the entire list on-line, here is the book.  My personal "before I die" goal is to study Indian classical music before my dexterity gives out completely; I no longer expect to play in the NBA or even to hold season tickets.

Nature, Nurture and Income

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Some might suggest that parents treat their biological and adopted children differently and this is what accounts for the difference in incomes.  The interpretation is very uncharitable to the parents who have volunteered to raise an adopted child and I think it implausible.  Moreover, unless every adopted child is treated equally poorly in all families, then we would still expect the income of adoptees to increase with parental income but perhaps starting at a lower level.

The other proviso is that the Holt experiment is only informative for the experimental variation in environment.  In other words, we can tell from the Holt experiment that variation in parental income from around 25 thousand to 175 thousand doen’t have much impact on variation in adopted child income but all these children are raised in the United States so culture and other variables are roughly similar.  In other words, move a child from a poor country to a rich country and you would expect a much bigger treatment effect than moving a child from a poor family to a rich family. 

FuturePundit on Space Tourism

by  Alex Tabarrok in

The ever-intelligent Randall Parker – and never so intelligent as when he is agreeing with me! – weighs in on the space tourism debate.  Randall makes two key points in his post:

1938 was 35 years after the first aircraft flight of Orville and
Wilbur Wright on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk North Carolina. Manned
space travel began on April 12, 1961 when a Soviet air force pilot,
Major Yuri A. Gagarin, made an orbit of the Earth. So manned space
travel is over 40 years old. Space travel into Earth’s orbit is orders
of magnitude more dangerous after 40 years than aircraft travel was
when it was only 35 years old….

Newer rockets have been designed in recent years and have unexpectedly
blown up on launch. Rutan’s accomplishment is not as radical as some
media reports present it for a number of reasons. First of all, whether
he has designed a safer spaceship is will not be proven unless and
until it has flown hundreds and even thousands of times without mishap.
Also, and very importantly, SpaceShipOne does not do that much. It can not achieve orbital velocity or decelerate from orbital velocity.
In my view the Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne flight was important
because it demonstrated the potential for prizes to spur innovation. It
also opens up the possibility that that dangerous orbital spacecraft
can be designed and built for much lower costs than NASA and big
aerospace companies typically spend.

Addendum: Randall’s programming work is already in outer-space!

Romance and Realism in Space Tourism

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Space tourism is romantic but is it realistic?  On the basis of 40 years of data, I argued that rockets are dangerous and show no signs of the sort of safety improvements that are required to sustain a serious space tourism industry.  Response fell into two camps, those who misunderstood the argument and those who wanted to deny it. 

David at Cronaca pointed to the continuing demand to climb Mount Everest despite a fatality rate on the order of 4 percent.  Quite right, but that is precisely my point.  At best and for the foreseeable future space travel will remain akin to climbing Everest, dangerous and uncommon.  Yes, we might see 100 flights a year but that’s not space tourism – tourism is fat guys with cameras.  Branson and Rutan, for example, have predicted that in 10-12 years, 100,000 or more "ordinary people" will fly into space.  No way.

The other type of response is well illustrated by Rand Simberg’s reply at TechCentralStation.  Simberg argues that forty years of data are irrelevant because with SpaceShipOne "everything changed."  According to Simberg, SpaceShipOne is "a complete discontinuity", "an entirely new and different approach", and yes – you saw it coming didn’t you? – "the beginning of a new paradigm."

These are statements of faith not of reason.  Simberg has no data to back these claims because none exist.  Let’s also remember that we have heard this sort of thing many times before.  As far back as the 1960s PanAm was selling advance tickets for its inaugural moon flight.  Need I remind you where PanAm is today?

I admire Rutan and I have little doubt that he has made significant advances in rocket design but what I showed in my article was that safety could have improved by a factor of ten or even 100 and rockets would still be too unsafe to support a large tourism industry.

What’s so great about space tourism anyway?  Even though an increase in rocket safety of a factor of ten is not much when considering the safety of large numbers of people it is very significant when thinking about satellite launches or temporary low-orbit launches.  A reduction of risk of this amount means much lower insurance costs that will open up space to new private development.