Meron35
@Meron35@lemmy.world
- Comment on It's barely a science. 3 days ago:
No need to convince me of Econ 101 BS, economists themselves are well aware of it since at least the 1980s. That’s why basically every unit of Econ above the 101 level shits on it, and any good Econ 101 shits on itself.
As a general rule of thumb, anything in economics before 1970 basically ran on vibes due to lack of data. Unfortunately, current day undergrad Econ 101 lags at least 20 years behind the current consensus.
That’s why the Card, Angrist, and Imbens paper was such a big deal. They used (natural) experimental data, and found out that using Econ 101 supply and demand to study the labour market doesn’t work. That’s why there’s an entire field called labour economics, which is only taught at the graduate level.
Most policymakers probably only learnt Econ 101 maybe 4 decades ago, so they’re impression of Econ is probably six decades out of date.
The Death of “Econ 101” - www.currentaffairs.org/…/the-death-of-econ-101
- Comment on It's barely a science. 4 days ago:
I’m so tired of this flack that economics gets, that it is somehow “lesser” because it is a “soft science.”
Economics does run randomised control trials. Economics does adhere to testable hypotheses. Economics does use rigorous statistics/maths.
You how sometimes grants/government programs are randomly allocated? Those are live, randomised control trials, and if you read the fine print you’ll find a project number for researchers studying the effects of rental subsidies, health insurance, etc, one of which being the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment. Those cancerous recommender algorithms, which are the culmination of millions of live A/B tests? Developed by the Econ PhDs poached by Big tech.
Oregon Medicaid health experiment - Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/…/Oregon_Medicaid_health_experim…
It is true that many hypotheses cannot have experiments run. But this makes it even more impressive when economists find natural experiments. For example, the 2021 Nobel Laureates Card, Angrist, and Imbens studied the effects of minimum wage by looking at the towns on the border of New Jersey/New York, which had implemented different minimum wages. They found that increasing minimum wage did not increase unemployment, completely contrary to ahem conservative wisdom.
The Prize in Economic Sciences 2021 - Popular science background - NobelPrize.org - www.nobelprize.org/prizes/…/popular-information/
In contrast, many of the supposed “hard” sciences cannot run experiments either, or also adhere to untestable simplifying assumptions. Ecology, physics, geology (just to name a few) all study systems which are too large and complex to run experiments, yet the general public does not perceive them as “soft”.
The difference is that economics is unfortunately one of those fields where lots of unqualified people (read politicians) have lots of strong opinions about, and in turn has a disproportionate influence on everyone. Those criticised austerity measures in the wake of the GFC? That was due to politicians implementing the policies of the infamous “Growth in a Time of Debt” by Reinhart-Rogoff paper, which was published as a “proceeding” and hence not peer reviewed. During the peer review process was found to contain numerous errors including incorrect excel formulas. It didn’t matter - policymakers liked the conclusion, and rushed its implementation anyway.
Growth in a Time of Debt - Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt
If you look into any awful policy, you will see a similar pattern. Even Milton Friedman, as an ultra hard libertarian for advocated for lowering taxes and abolishing all government benefit programs, recognised that poor people need some assistance, and so actually advocated for replacing benefits with a universal negative income tax (an even more extreme version of UBI). It didn’t matter - policymakers of the Reagan Thatcher era heard the lowering taxes and cutting welfare part, and didn’t do the UBI.
- Comment on My morning routine in 2026 1 week ago:
- Comment on Drag 1 week ago:
Shannel should be the guest judge
- Comment on If you're a parent, how do you prevent your kid from watching AI slop? 2 weeks ago:
Unfortunately this is an increasingly unviable strategy, because even “good” creators have started using clickbaity titles and thumbnails, even if their content has remained the same. Some have even retroactively changed the titles/thumbnails of their older videos to this style.
Clickbait is engineered by behavioural scientists to be as addictive as possible, and has been proven to trigger similar neural pathways to other addictions, such as drug or gambling.
Basically every creator with a shred of self awareness has admitted that they hate creating clickbait thumbnails, titles, and phrases like smash that like button and subscribe; they end up doing it anyway because A/B testing with randomised thumbnails and titles clearly show that they work.
The live A/B testing in particular obscures whether a creator employs clickbait or not - you may be under the impression that a certain creator has remained principled, when in reality you were just allocated to the control group by chance.
I feel that it’s one of those situations where the game is rigged, and the only way to “win” is to change the rules yourself.
- Comment on If you're a parent, how do you prevent your kid from watching AI slop? 2 weeks ago:
Look into DeArrow (by same creators of SponsorBlock), which offers crowdsourced “de-clickbaited” video titles and thumbnails.
- Comment on Anon watches Super Size Me 3 weeks ago:
Not disinformation. A 2006 study explicitly studied and showers that while a heavy diet fast food diet is not good for your liver, it cannot explain the extremely poor liver conditions Morgan presented in the documentary.
10 years later, Morgan admitted that he was a heavy alcoholic during filming.
Fast-food-based hyper-alimentation can induce rapid and profound elevation of serum alanine aminotransferase in healthy subjects - PMC - pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2565580/
A Big Mac Attack, or a False Alarm? - WSJ - wsj.com/…/a-big-mac-attack-or-a-false-alarm-15271…
- Comment on Ubisoft Closes Canadian Studio After It Unionizes 3 weeks ago:
Ubisoft asked the Rayman team (who have produced some of the best platformers) to develop Prince of Persia The Lost Crown, regarded as the best metroidvania of 2024.
It failed to meet sales expectations, so they disbanded the teams and cancelled the sequel.
Turns out gamers™️ do vote with their wallets, and they vote for churned out sequels.
- Comment on Caw caw 3 weeks ago:
Would get them, just to clack them like the velociraptors in Jurassic park
- Comment on Grippy handles too. Luxury. 3 weeks ago:
Ribbed for their pleasure
- Comment on The Lioness does not... 5 weeks ago:
No it’s an accurate reflection of drunk self destructive Cersei in A Feast For Crows and enhances the joke
- Comment on So upset during the holidays! 5 weeks ago:
Merry Christmas: no alliteration❌
Happy Holidays: has alliteration✅
Conclusion: Happy Holidays > Merry Christmas
- Comment on I love Dune! 5 weeks ago:
Idk making libertarians develop empathy seems pretty radical.
Though I guess there’s also Musk as junkie with no morals
- Comment on Why does every commercial depiction of honey involve one of this things? Literally nobody has ever seen one of these in real life 1 month ago:
Honey is acidic with a pH of around 4, so it technically corrodes metal if left for prolonged contact.
Same reason it’s not recommended to use metal pots or utensil for curries, the metallic taste can leech into the food.
- Comment on Change my Mind 1 month ago:
Debate isn’t effective, and its main purpose is theatrical. It is basically the modern day equivalent of gladiator fights, except with the side effect that it platforms and legitimises the opinions of the participants, no matter how extreme.
There is now mountains of scientific evidence showing the debates have limited to no effect at changing people’s minds. Instead, simply making friends and spending time with different perspective is effective.
This article won’t change your mind. Here’s why | Sarah Stein Lubrano | The Guardian - theguardian.com/…/change-mind-evidence-arguing-so…
- Comment on Which countries combine high quality of life and strong equality? 1 month ago:
Except that the Nordic has been replicated across all the Nordic countries, of which only Norway has vast natural resources.
- Comment on same shit every day, on god 1 month ago:
Low key this is a great way to convince people to switch away from fossil fuels.
Most people seemingly don’t know that coal/gas stations work by essentially boiling water. Most are horrified at how trashy and underdeveloped the concept is compared to high tech alternatives like solar, wind, or hydro.
- Comment on Haha, Russia 🤏 2 months ago:
Interactive version
- Comment on Someone should put the 63 actual humans who are still MAGA on suicide watch after this past several days. 2 months ago:
They wouldn’t wear face diapers during covid but no problem wearing
kotex on their earsadult diapers to mimic the rapistTrump Supporters Wore Diapers at Rallies? | Snopes.com - www.snopes.com/…/trump-diapers-over-dems/
- Comment on Is it normal to see this static when you close your eyes? 2 months ago:
If you see this when your eyes are open then it may be visual snow.
Visual snow syndrome - Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow_syndrome
- Comment on You live in Clown World when guys are using bathroom hand dryers 2 months ago:
We know that Dysons can suck but can they blow?
- Comment on I've heard New Yorkers are devastated 2 months ago:
He can be my mam or my man anytime 🥰💖
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
A few weeks? Try at least 12 months for quant finance.
The UK thankfully banned this crap.
- Comment on A hypothesis 2 months ago:
Hot take: macOS, being Unix like, fosters more tech literacy than Windows.
It’s much better now with windows terminal and winget, but a decade or so ago even basic things like installing python and adding it to PATH were infinitely easier on Unix-like environments.
For those privileged to have programming classes, the first 2-3 sessions were the teachers going round doing tech support just to install python on shitty locked down Windows laptops.
Windows being terrible makes you learn a lot of stuff, but so much of it is untransferrable.
- Comment on Get over yourself 2 months ago:
Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire - Cara Daggett, 2018 - journals.sagepub.com/doi/…/0305829818775817
- Comment on a minor to moderate amount of tomfoolery in construction 2 months ago:
it’s great for pedestrians
the highway cuts directly through the heart of these towns
- Comment on a minor to moderate amount of tomfoolery in construction 2 months ago:
Reminds me how whenever someone makes a realistic Australian city in cities skylines, everyone in the comments roasts them for adding stop signs/signals on highway ramps, which extremely dangerous and inefficient.
They really do have stop signs/signals on highway ramps in Australia 😭
- Comment on Are there video media (e.g TV shows, Movies, anime, video games, youtube videos, etc...) with a majority of the dialogue in an fictional language? 3 months ago:
Thee following are more little/no dialogue for the purposes of Immersion, rather than subtitled
Tunica is an unapologetically difficult isometric action/puzzle game
Animal Well is a metroidvania with little/no dialogue
Other similar games are Fez, Hyper Light Drifter
- Comment on And they mocked me for my WoW subscription 😗 3 months ago:
Except that as part of its enshittification Spotify has intentionally changed its algo to push people into more and more homogenous “beige”, nothing music. It has become so prolific that Spotifycore has become a term to describe what happens when you let Spotify autoplay.
With the rise of AI, Spotify is now producing and recommending beige music that is produced on an industrial scale, at the expense of actual artists.
Mood Machine go brrr
Mood Machine by Liz Pelly review – a savage indictment of Spotify | Music books | The Guardian - theguardian.com/…/mood-machine-by-liz-pelly-revie…
- Comment on Covers the bases 3 months ago:
