Thursday, May 31, 2018

I have to admit the school-within-a-school scam is a new one on me

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A while back, Andrew Gelman and I wrote a piece for Vox discussing how the focus on a small set of standardized tests was, consistent with ...
1 comment:
Wednesday, May 30, 2018

"The Telephone as a Promoter of Science"

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I've been meaning to open a thread on how some technological advances lay the groundwork for future advances by cultivating enthusiasm a...
Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Theranos was not representative but it was indicative

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Yet another example of how dysfunctional Silicon Valley venture capital culture has become. To be ball-peen hammer blunt, the combination of...
3 comments:
Monday, May 28, 2018

That's Mark W, Palko to you

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Marginal Revolution recently ran a post entitled "Do middle name initials enhance evaluations of intellectual performance?" I d...
Friday, May 25, 2018

I shouldn't have to say this, but it's only a "proof of concept" if it demonstrates the parts of the concept that have not previously been proven.

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Just hearing myself say it (that's one of the disadvantages of dictation software) feels a little condescending. I certainly don't b...
Thursday, May 24, 2018

They weren't giving prizes for humility.

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"It has been a gigantic tidal wave of human ingenuity and resource, so stupendous in its magnitude, so complex in its diversity, so pro...
1 comment:
Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Mars One: still a story too good to let facts get in the way

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I honestly thought we've seen the last of this. Between the irrefutable critiques of every aspect of the plan and the long string of dea...
Tuesday, May 22, 2018

I apologize in advance for the electricity pun

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Unsurprisingly insightful work from Robert Shiller on the enduring allure and almost inevitable failure of radical new forms of money. The ...
Monday, May 21, 2018

Notes on the content bubble

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[If you're new to the thread, check out this , this , and this ] One of the classic recipes for disaster in a market bubble is focusin...
Friday, May 18, 2018

Things don't really get weird till you get "computer dating" in the 60s

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Science fiction is a sometimes useful but often misleading indicator of how people in the past thought about progress and technology. In or...
Thursday, May 17, 2018

Crowdsourcing my work

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If you have a minute, I would appreciate your help with an essay I'm working on. I'm putting together a list of postwar scientific a...
5 comments:
Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Life in the hype economy – – Moviepass edition

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[Continuing the MoviePass thread ] I have no idea whether it is real or apocryphal, but there's an often referred to study with primat...
1 comment:
Tuesday, May 15, 2018

"Oh, the things that you'll see."

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To get a handle on turn-of-the-century mentality, you have to focus not just on the newness of individual technologies, but of the very idea...
Monday, May 14, 2018

Yes, we're losing money on every transaction, but we have a plan to increase volume

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[Apologies for letting this one sit in the queue for so long. I plan to do a fairly long post on the various absurdities of this business pl...
Friday, May 11, 2018

"Those thrilling days of yesteryear"

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I keep getting the feeling that there is some bigger, more profound lesson I should be drawing from these examples of the turn-of-the-centu...