The Inexact Sciences

Democratic backsliding is a growing concern globally. This paper contributes to the discussion by documenting irregular patterns in 2019 general election in...

So, a few people emailed me about this story about fraud among high-profile business school professors. There was this news article by Stephanie Lee, who’s reported on some notable examples of bad research in the past. From her recent article, “A Weird Research-Misconduct Scandal About Dishonesty Just Got Weirder”:

A reanalysis of the STAR*D study’s patient-level data with fidelity to the original research protocol

Where we try to apply second year undergrad physics to the world of intent solving.

For twenty years and more, Flaubert has presided over events just a few feet from my desk. Recently, a friend gave me a...

(or: “Please Do Anthropics with Actual Math”)

comparing athletes across eras makes zero sense

Why do people assume that a generous person should also be honest? Why do we even use words like “moral” and “immoral”? We explore these questions with a new model of how people perceive moral character. We propose that people vary in the extent that they perceive moral character as “localized” (varying along many...

We outline three attempts to replicate experiments that reported priming effects on time preferences measured by delay discounting. Experiment 1 tested the claim that images of poverty prime impulsive choice in people from less affluent backgrounds compared ...

To assess the replicability of social priming findings we reviewed the extant close replication attempts in the field. In total, we found 65 close replications, that replicated 46 unique findings. Ninety-four percent of the replications had effect sizes smaller than the effect they replicated, only 18% of the replications...

On SALMON by Sebastian Castillo and Last Vanities by Fleur Jaeggy

A while back on this blog, I expressed a somewhat unpopular sentiment about large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT or Google Bard: “The technology feels magical and disruptive, but we felt the same way about the first chatbot — ELIZA — and about all the Prolog-based expert systems that came on its heels. This isn’t...

The health impacts of increasing isolation are being doomily exaggerated

Paul and David discuss the influential developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, his theories and legacy, stage theories of development, modern developmental psychology and its methods, and the "nature vs nurture" debate.

Should GiveWell, as some critics argue, take a totally different approach to its search, focusing instead on directly increasing subjective wellbeing, or alternatively, raising economic growth?

Colleen McCullough was a well-respected mainstream novelist (The Thornbirds), with a background in neurology, and a personal interest in Roman history. I found out about her on a Reddit thread when…

Create an infinite amount of straightforward and readable git manual pages.

If computing power doubles every two years, what happens when computers are doing the research? If I created a mind with no built-in desires, what would it do? How can I do something that will still matter in two hundred million years? For answers to these and other questions, Click on the links ...

The study of evolutionary patterns of cognitive convergence would be greatly helped by a clear demarcation of cognition. Cognition is often used as an equivalent of mind, making it difficult to pin down empirically or to apply it confidently beyond the human condition. Recent developments in embodied cognition and philosophy of...

It is increasingly clear that memories are distributed across multiple brain areas. Such “engram complexes” are important features of memory formation...

To the extent that the burgeoning field of metascience has a policy agenda, it is that science should be governed by rigorous science. We should test scientific practices using the scientific method. In large part, this policy agenda has included encouraging the adoption of methods like the randomized control trial (RCT) as the...

Buddhist Geek Vincent Horn describes his vision of virtual, cloud-based, techno-enhanced sanghas.

Or: why you should be a lizard

The Autobiography of Malcolm X isn’t just an important historical document, but skillful storytelling about the investigation of a mystery: why are white people like that?

Hail to thee, O Khepri, who came into existence by himself.