Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
Señor Research Scientist, NPC at the Hertie School in Berlin 🇩🇪 via Princeton, Mannheim, Edinburgh and a bunch of other ivory towers that will probably be billiard balls and decorative boxes by the end of the decade.
Rome Statute appreciator. ..
more
Señor Research Scientist, NPC at the Hertie School in Berlin 🇩🇪 via Princeton, Mannheim, Edinburgh and a bunch of other ivory towers that will probably be billiard balls and decorative boxes by the end of the decade.
Rome Statute appreciator.
Computer science
32%
Political science
28%
Pinned
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· Apr 15
For Monty Hall problem aficionados: a #causal DAG, with explanation in the alt text.
Who knew that the M in M-bias stood for Monty?
Who knew that the M in M-bias stood for Monty?
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 10h
skypes
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 10h
posts in the streets and tweets in the sheets, as it were...
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 13h
Indeed. Though that was always going to depend on whose weapons the Europeans rearmed with. I imagine the assumption (that wouldn't have survived a quick peek down the game tree either) was that it would all be American kit, with all the ownership rights and guarantees of a book bought on Kindle.
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 14h
Reassuring, as that was very much my reasoning. For a little while I did play with formulating what 'fairness' in a grade curving function might amount to and characterizing the function class, but the regrettable, though salutary necessity of doing the job I am actually paid for intervened.
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 17h
It was Mungojerrie – or Rumpelteazer – and most of the time they left it at that.
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 17h
My modern solution is a little R package that takes a 0-100 mark and reverse-engineers shared difficulty & slope parameters in an imaginary IRT model such that new grades fulfill the institution's three quantile demands. When raw marks allow it's a smooth reasonably fairness-preserving grade curver.
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 17h
"...in Times of Crisis" is the go to panel title around here, regardless of topic. One of the panelists must claim that something is "a wake-up call" and that something else is "not a panacea". An audience member will ask something about the "global south" and everyone will politely ignore them.
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 19h
It's somehow appropriate that actual black holes, which famously swallow everything nearby and from which no light or information escapes, have the very much the same effect as talking about "black holes" does in public finance discussions.
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
· 19h
Tariff-brain (US National Parks edition)
Note to Americans: These things start with foreigners but don't stop with them.
Note to Americans: These things start with foreigners but don't stop with them.
This one, because not only is it self-describing but it's the respectable aftermath of the immediately previous holiday that you can't quite remember the details of, and that's ok.
(Outside of Scotland, ymmv)
(Outside of Scotland, ymmv)
Without wanting to defend foolish parochialism (or the sophisticated kind, for that matter) this passage does really invite a Ryle 'category error' response.
Sometimes Harvey enters and participants see him from the left. Sometimes Harvey enters and participants see him from the right.
Attenuation, heterogenous treatment effect, or plain old SUTVA violation?
Attenuation, heterogenous treatment effect, or plain old SUTVA violation?
and still others will turn out to be simply out of scope for psychological theory altogether, like phlogiston as an explanation of colour.
So bring it on. We'll see what's standing when the dust settles.
3/3
So bring it on. We'll see what's standing when the dust settles.
3/3
Others think they show explanatory causes up close, like phlogiston or caloric.
But if thermodynamics is a guide, we should expect (hope, even) that in a truly mechanical theory, many will turn out distinct only because of our interests, like burning; others will just drop out, like caloric;
2/3
But if thermodynamics is a guide, we should expect (hope, even) that in a truly mechanical theory, many will turn out distinct only because of our interests, like burning; others will just drop out, like caloric;
2/3
And this. Cognitive dissonance can no longer be regarded as established.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
A Multilab Replication of the Induced-Compliance Paradigm of Cognitive Dissonance - David C. Vaidis, Willem W. A. Sleegers, Florian van Leeuwen, Kenneth G. DeMarree, Bjørn Sætrevik, Robert M. Ross, Ka...
According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by...
journals.sagepub.com
Whether or not you think replication failures show that cognitive dissonance (or dunning-kruger or grit or...) is not a thing, the big question is: where do 'effects' belong in psychology?
Some think they're just practically-derived motivating phenomena, like fire and rusting for thermodynamics
1/2
Some think they're just practically-derived motivating phenomena, like fire and rusting for thermodynamics
1/2
imho, as a long time computer person, it should feel like using with a vacuum cleaner. Maybe a clothes dryer. That it's occasionally like handling a firearm is horrible, but still not as bad as realizing it's like negotiating with a hostile bureaucracy somehow taken over by an advertising agency.
Reposted by David Papineau, Will Lowe
A Multilab Replication of the Induced-Compliance Paradigm of Cognitive Dissonance - David C. Vaidis, Willem W. A. Sleegers, Florian van Leeuwen, Kenneth G. DeMarree, Bjørn Sætrevik, Robert M. Ross, Ka...
According to cognitive-dissonance theory, performing counterattitudinal behavior produces a state of dissonance that people are motivated to resolve, usually by...
journals.sagepub.com
And this. Cognitive dissonance can no longer be regarded as established.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Ooh, this page has the English mnemonics on it too. My favourite, which you have to pronounce in Garamond with contextual ligatures, is
My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines
My Very Elegant Mother Just Sat Upon Nine Porcupines
"Talk to the gas giant"
Yeah, research infrastructure and academic software development are, looking back on twenty plus years of it, one of my regrets. Doing things that need doing, without asking why they're not already being done, and pursuing what you enjoy & are good at are basically bad ways to make career choices.
Voice training
How'd they get away with that, I wonder.
I can't even remember the top five Generals, to be honest. One of them must have been Monty in shorts.
Oooh, I forgot General Studies (still love that name though). They'd just brought AS-levels in and I think they had us take GS as one of them, just kind of because they could, with no obvious preparation. Or that's how I remember it. Though it was quite a long time ago, so I could be misremembering.
It is still boggling to my wife that I have never, at any age, thought it would be cool to be an astronaut and that the only really interesting bit of physics is thermodynamics.
At the time you had to choose 3 subjects (4 at a push) at 16 to take to A-level at 18. No STEM subject made the cut – to the very obvious relief of a lot of my high school teachers.
Cool. There's probably an English one, but who gave up physical sciences at 16 and never looked back? 🙋