EconTech

There will soon be another post on the role of theory in advancing knowledge. For the time being, Robin Hanson channels my favorite intellectual of the 20th century, von Neumann:
Keeping Math Real

John von Neumann:
As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only [...]

Blaming The Unlucky

A recent working paper finds that we call the same decision immoral when it leads to a bad outcome, but moral when it leads to a good outcome:
Two studies investigated the influence of outcome information on ethical judgment. Participants read a series of vignettes describing ethically-questionable behaviors. We manipulated whether those behaviors were [...]

Got to Megan’s post through Tyler, though the first comment on hers was more interesting, so here is her post and the comment, though his is worth reading as wel:
Markets in . . . not quite everything
Tyler Cowen does not expect the male birth control pill to be popular. Nor do I. He lists several [...]

I mentioned the other day that I have been far from impressed by the statistical savvy of much of the biology and medical communities. Way, WAY too many statistics are thrown at the medical community for their level of statistical training.[1]  Even then, this seems like this is something they should catch. On the other [...]

The subject has come up before. It gives me some pause, but on the whole, I agree that having sane defaults is just, well, sane. Levitt seems to think so as well:
Nudge

 
I am not a huge fan of what people call “behavioral economics,” which is a subfield of economics that expands the standard economic models [...]

First, Robin:
Inhuman Rationality?
 
We seem comfortable celebrating those who practice complex statistical analysis, even if only one in a thousand can do so. And the one in a billion genius celebrated for greatly improving our understanding or practice of statistics, or other rationality, seems to us an epitome of the best in humanity. Who [...]

So, Robin has this post that we should reject our beliefs if they are off average and we do not have a good reason to believe they are better than the average (oversimplified, read the post for more). I may have more objections to this, but the main one is that I suspect this leads [...]

This conversation about the absence of a compelling 20th century conservative must end at some point. Once a large enough of the search space has been checked, you should find one. Or do what Brad does, and give up the search and declare they never existed. It was done with Iraqi WMD. Why not 20th [...]

Ok, the below advice is probably sound, but it doesn’t work on me, at least, not by the examples given. I know people who do this. I find them patronizing and annoying. If you have an issue with something I am doing, speak up and tell me. Passive aggressive crap will just anger me and [...]

I bring up social welfare functions relatively often. There is not a whole lot written about them these days; they have serious theoretical issues; they have more serious practical issues; and yet, in my mind, it is one of the most important topics in policy oriented economics. Many have accepted the proposition that the social [...]

Ok, they get PAM wrong and that is disappointing, to say the least. However, I have to agree with the substance of some of the criticism of Hanson, though NOT the claims of hyperbole (again, SA are ad hominem attacks really necessary. Let your arguments speak for themselves please).
First, some criticism against SA. The idea [...]

I certainly agree this is a good idea. It is a real world application of libertarian paternalism, which seems to garner some rather absurd objections. I wonder how much my comfort with the idea of a sane default with easy overriding comes from my computer background. However, I don’t believe the idea is completely original. [...]

Apparently, I’m British. Well, not really. But my siding for zero-time preferences is apparently un-American, in terms of the modes of thought of American economists. One of the points I made earlier, that Robin’s point 2 about looking at the market for the rate is non-responsive to Eliezer’s objection that this is a bias, is [...]

I still haven’t seen Sicko and, after seeing the xenophobic farce of a documentary, Fahrenheit 911, I have no desire to. However, this is something worth repeating. Unfortunately, the sample size for cross national studies is just too small to say much of anything with a great degree of confidence; nevertheless, Robin Hanson asks us [...]

Thank you Paul. I said almost exactly the same thing just yesterday w.r.t to several of James’ posts, though my Latin is admittedly weak. I hope to not see this (terribly annoying) fallacy again on Overcoming Bias. They might be able to ignore me, but not their own poster.
Knowing your argumentative limitations, OR “one [rationalist's] [...]