As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ll occasionally be posting old things I’ve found in the dark corners of my hard drives. Here is another thing I excavated. About two years ago, philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris announced an essay contest based on his book The Moral Landscape, in which he argues that science… Continue reading Excavation 2: Sam Harris’ moral landscape challenge
Excavation: What is good political science?
I was going through some backup folders on my old computer and found a few pieces of text that I figured I’d dispose of here. This first one is an assignment I wrote for a course many years ago. The assignment was to write a “manifesto” on what constitutes good political science. Some of the… Continue reading Excavation: What is good political science?
Don’t blame mathematics for the dismal state of the dismal science
Ridiculing the state of economics has been in vogue for quite some time, especially since the last crisis hit. Even before that, we have seen attempts to reform the discipline from students as well as from vocal minorities in the profession. This is a necessary and healthy discussion, and a little bit of new fuel… Continue reading Don’t blame mathematics for the dismal state of the dismal science
Non-linear effects and multiplicative interaction terms? A word of caution.
TL;DR-version: if you’re using multiplicative interaction models and the interacted independent variables are correlated, you have to be extra careful to identify even minor non-linearity in main effects. Interaction effects in various kinds of regression analyses are very common across both the social sciences as well as in, for example, medicine, when we are trying… Continue reading Non-linear effects and multiplicative interaction terms? A word of caution.
Some failed replications: should we blame motivation crowding theory or MTurk?
I wrote last week about motivation crowding theory and in that post I hinted that I’d get back to the subject of replications of this phenomenon. A quick recap: motivation crowding is a phenomenon that can occur if someone, for example, acts in a certain way motivated by pro-social sentiments (other-regard, altruism or the like) and… Continue reading Some failed replications: should we blame motivation crowding theory or MTurk?
What does money do to us? Motivation crowding vs. money priming
Money is everywhere. Our societies are run by it and the pursuit of money is to many people an integral part of life. An interesting question, given the great dependence modern societies have on this particular form of exchange, is, what does money actually do to us? There are two related literatures that connect… Continue reading What does money do to us? Motivation crowding vs. money priming
Alors…
So, I figured I need somewhere to dump stuff that I write or fiddle about with, rather than just littering various hard drives. As a way of getting them off my mind perhaps, or to invite discussion. Maybe something could even be of use or interest to someone, but that remains to be seen. The… Continue reading Alors…