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Excellent, thank you!
lack of having a way for doing controlled trials
That's not true. Economics (in particular, microeconomics) can and actually does do a lot of controlled trials. I don't think that's the problem. Consider psychology -- it does a LOT of controlled trials and generates a very impressive amount of garbage.
microeconomics) can and actually does do a lot of controlled trials.
Do you happen to know anywhere I can read simplified (layman-readable) results of some of these?
Psychology has recently been implicated in the "can't reproduce your results" scandal, suggesting that a lot of the garbage they generate is due, more or less, to pressure to publish, bias towards confirming expectations, and insufficient safeguards. Do microeconomics trials suffer the same problems?
if we want economics to be a science, we have to recognize that it is not ok for macroeconomists to hole up in separate camps, one that supports its version of the geocentric model of the solar system and another that supports the heliocentric model. As scientists, we have to hold ourselves to a standard that requires us to reach a consensus about which model is right, and then to move on to other questions.
The alternative to science is academic politics, where persistent disagreement is encouraged as a way to create distinctive sub-group identities.
--Paul Romer, NYU, "My Paper “Mathiness in the Theory of Economic Growth”
if we want economics to be a science
I've been wondering lately whether it is possible for economics to get a more empirical foundation. Clearly, a serious difficulty in the field is our lack of having a way for doing controlled trials. Does anyone know if anyone has tried bribing people to live in small-towns/enclaves (one to serve as control) for a time to see if we can isolate some effects at small levels that may or may not scale up? Or is this just too ridiculously impractical? (Or just too expensive?)
Impressive! Both of my parents came from huge households (7 and 8), but I had the more typical upbringing with only one sibling, who was only slightly older.
My mom was one of 11, my dad one of 4; I am one of 7 myself. It definitely makes having a big family feel more natural.
Welcome!
How many kids, and how old are they?
6... 7 if you count my adult step-daughter (who I didn't really help raise). Ages 12, 11, 9, 7, 5, and 7-months.
There are definitely a lot of parents on LessWrong. I'm sure there are at least a few stay-at-home moms.
In fact, 18.4% of the participants in the 2014 LW Survey have children, and 0.5% (8 people) describe themselves as 'homemakers.'
Thanks for the link! I made a (brief, low effort) attempt to find that post earlier, but only came across the census surveys, not the results.
Heck, there's even one survey respondent who has more kids than I do. Cool beans.
You'd think so, but office hours and TA sections without attendance grades are very sparsely attended.
When I was in college, I almost never went to office hours or TA hours... except for one particular class, where the professor was a probably-brilliant guy who was completely incapable of giving a straight explanation or answer to anything. TA hours were packed full; most of the class went, and the TA explained all the stuff the teacher hadn't.
Hi LWers.
My brothers got me into HPMOR, I started reading a couple sequences, switched over to reading the full Rationality: AI to Zombies, and recently finished that. The last few days, I've been browsing around LW semi-randomly, reading posts about starting to apply the concepts and about fighting akrasia.
I'm guessing I'm atypical for an LW reader: I'm a stay-at-home mom. Any others of those on here?
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A couple of links.
Found... Database for registering economic controlled trials and a (unpublished?) paper that suggests economic RCTs have more problems than medical trials.