In the last chapters of the book Calling Bullshit, the authors Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West outline how they think bullshit and general nonsense should be refuted effectively. I found this part of the book to be quite novel and I have since been trying to implement their...
Currently, hundreds of millions of people face the choice to (1) get vaccinated against Covid-19 (maybe choosing between different vaccines) or (2) do nothing Given the fact that both the vaccines and contracting Covid-19 pose risks (in a sense that they may lead to significant reduction of quality of life),...
No, I would not say that. I wanted to present an example that many people can relate to. I suppose that many readers have heard others express concern over vaccines before.
If someone said that „Jews are drinking the blood of Christian babies“, I do not think that I should argue with this person (as outlined in the article - not worth the effort). I believe that this claim is not to be compared with concern over vaccines, even if the latter is not well-founded in evidence.
In the last chapters of the book Calling Bullshit, the authors Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West outline how they think bullshit and general nonsense should be refuted effectively. I found this part of the book to be quite novel and I have since been trying to implement their advice. However, I found that it is difficult to go from "reading about how to call bullshit" to actually "calling bullshit" well in practice. In order to memorize their workflow, I made a flowchart out of it:
I recommend to check out the book to get more background info on the reasons why the authors believe that this constitutes a good strategy for... (read 375 more words →)
Macroeconomics: Olivier Blanchards Macroeconomics is a concise, yet in-depth tour of standard macroeconomic theory. I recommend it as a starting point for studying topics such as monetary policy and international trade.
Amazing post. But I am stuck at the "prediction market does not reflect probability" point. Currently Trump futures sell for 0.36$ and Metaculus predicts a 22% winning chance of Trump winning in 2024. This difference is what one would observe if many people are used these futures contracts for hedging. However, couldn't I just issue lots of futures contracts to bring the price down? Assuming that my assets are not meaningfully linked to Trump winning, that means 0.36$-0.22$=0.12$ expected return per issued contract.
I have read several textbooks on game theory (there are quite a lot of books out there). I found all of them okay but none outstanding. What I did find very useful was the YouTube-Playlist Game Theory 101 by William Spaniel. He also has published a book with the same title on amazon.
Subject: Econometrics
Recommendation: Mastering 'Metrics by Josh Angrist and J.S. Pischke
Reason: The book uniquely explains the intuitive ideas behind econometric methods. There is also a video series by MRU on the book. Other books that I have read on the subject:
- Mostly Harmless Econometrics, by the same authors. Kind of an earlier version of Mastering Metrics, more in depth, less fun and engaging.
- Introductory Econometrics A Modern Approach, by Wooldridge. Excellent for hands-on projects, very detailed, not as intuitive and easy to read as the others, packed with supplementary math, strong focus on different data structures (cross-section data vs. timeline and panel)
- Ökonometrie Eine Einführung (German) , similar to the above but way... (read more)
Thank you very much for your educated inputs. This definitely nudged me much closer to getting vaccinated.
Since I (or for that matter most people) do not understand the working mechanisms of the vaccines completely, I can not rule out the chance of significant long-term effects.
Currently, hundreds of millions of people face the choice to
(1) get vaccinated against Covid-19 (maybe choosing between different vaccines)
or
(2) do nothing
Given the fact that both the vaccines and contracting Covid-19 pose risks (in a sense that they may lead to significant reduction of quality of life), it is natural to approach the question whether to go with (1) or (2) from a decision-theoretic perspective. In other words, it is not obvious which of the two (or more) options listed above is the best option considering only self-interest.
Take e.g. me, I expect to live for at least 50 more years (likely much longer). I am almost exclusively interested in irreversible long-term effects or... (read 183 more words →)
Not quite, but it's sad that many here seem to read it that way.