Tag Archives: Academia

Schools Are For War

By Robin Hanson · May 13, 2012 11:00 am · Comments (27)

The main reason we had rules to force kids to attend primary school was to make obedient soldier citizens to support their nation in time of war. This effect was even stronger for democracies:

Using data from the last 150 years in a small set of countries, and from the postwar period in a large set of countries, we show that large investments in state primary education systems tend to occur when countries face military rivals or threats from their neighbors. By contrast, we find that democratic transitions are negatively associated with education investments, while the presence of democratic political institutions magnifies the positive effect of military rivalries. …

We study historical panel data on education spending and enrollment – for Europe since the 19th century and a larger set of countries in the postwar period – to assess the correlation between military rivalry (or war risk) and primary education enrollment (or the occurrence of educational reforms). … [Our models] show a positive and significant effect of rivalry on primary enrollment, a negative direct effect of democracy, and a positive and significant interaction term between the two. Overall, our empirical results indicate a causal relationship from rivalry to primary educational enrollment. …

An economic literature … finds robust correlations between past wars and current state capacity in international panel data. … [A study] shows that military rivalry raises fiscal capacity in postcolonial developing states. … [Others] find that democracy does seem to have a systematic influence on top rates of estate taxation, whereas wars with mass mobilizations do significantly raise those rates. …

[Prussia pushed schools] to arouse a moral, religious, and patriotic spirit in the nation, to instill into it again courage, confidence, readiness for every sacrifice. …

[France pushed schools to] teach Frenchmen to be confident of their nation’s superiority … It should … eliminate disruptive conflicts and promote the unity of the classes. … The new teaching program … was … designed to teach the child that it was his duty to defend the fatherland, to shed his blood or die for the commonwealth, to obey the government, to perform military service, to work, learn, pay taxes, and so on.

In Prussia, France and Japan … military defeats and/or perceived military threats appear to have prompted an otherwise reluctant ruling class to invest in mass primary education. …In most countries of the sample a war preceded the educational reform, while a democratic transition rarely occurs before the education rise … Most often, the democratic transition instead takes place *after the education reform period. (more)

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Tagged as: Academia, History, Regulation, War

Taming The Wild Idea

By Robin Hanson · May 10, 2012 1:50 pm · Comments (16)

Foragers distinguish between camp and the wild. In camp, things are safe and comfortable, and people should be pleasant. The wild, in contrast, is dangerous and uncontrolled. In camp, some of us must watch out for intrusions from wild, such as storms, wild animals, or hostile tribes.

Some of us must also periodically venture into the wild, to bring back food and other useful materials. But it is important that whatever we bring back be tamed before it gets here. Don’t bring back live dangerous animals, don’t leave poison berries around camp where people might think they are safe, and leave violent aggressive hunt habits out there in the wild. What happens in the wild, should stay in the wild.

Ideas and concepts can be dangerous and disruptive. Ideas influence the status and attractiveness of people and activities, and who is blamed and credited for what outcomes. For a society vulnerable to social disruption, ideas can be wild.

Today, most of the ideas and concepts that we come across have been tamed. They have long been integrated into our ways of thinking, and we have worked out attitudes and opinions to help us avoid being cut by their sharp edges.

But today we must also deal with a steady stream of new untamed ideas. Some of these are the side effect of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Others come from intellectual explorers, who purposely venture into the wild in search of new ideas. How do we tame such ideas?

We celebrate our intellectual explorers, both those who come back with useful ideas, and those whose useless ideas show off their impressive explorer abilities. But we are also wary of their trophies, just as foragers would be way of a hunter bringing a strange live animal into camp. We want people we trust and respect to tame those ideas before let them flow free in our camp of easily discussed ideas. Wild explorers, who may have “gone native”, can be useful in expeditions, but must remain under the control of more civilized explorers.

I think this helps us understand why universities, some of the most conservative institutions we have, are home to our most celebrated intellectuals. Academic institutions such as universities, academic journals, peer review, etc. seem far from ideal ways to encourage innovative ideas. But they seem like better ways to ensure outsiders that ideas have been safely tamed. The new ideas that academics endorse can be safely quoted and an applied with minimal risk of wild uncontrolled disruption. So when ideas originate among wild untamed academic-outsiders, we prefer to attribute them to the safe academic insiders who tame them.

When we are willing to risk being exposed to wild untamed ideas, we turn less to academics, and more to startup companies, passionate writers, activists, etc. And in our youth, many of us are eager for such exposure, to show that we are no longer children who must stay safely in camp – we are strong and brave enough to venture into the wild.

But when we get children of our own, and feel less a need to show off our derring-do, we prefer tamed idea sources. We prefer to hire kids who got their ideas from universities, not startups or activists. And most prefer their news to come from similarly tamed journalists. We applaud wild ideas, but prefer them tamed.

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Tagged as: Academia, Disagreement, Forager

Academic Blog Credit?

By Robin Hanson · May 1, 2012 6:30 pm · Comments (26)

Martin Weller considers academic credit for blogs:

The answer to … whether new approaches such as blogging constitute scholarly activity, is an emphatic yes. Which leads us to a more problematic question: How should we recognize it? …

Tenure committees have increasingly come to rely upon journal-impact factors to act as a proxy for research quality. In short, we know what a good publication record looks like. But these criteria begin to creak and groan when we apply them to blogs and other online media. Simple metrics are subject to gaming, and because of the removal of the peer-review filter, may be meaningless anyway. I may have a YouTube clip of a skateboarding octopus with two million hits, but that doesn’t make it scholarly work.

It’s a difficult problem, but one that many institutions are beginning to come to terms with. Combining the rich data available online that can reveal a scholar’s impact with forms of peer assessment gives an indication of reputation. Universities know this is a game they need to play—that having a good online reputation is more important in recruiting students than a glossy prospectus. And groups that sponsor research are after good online impact as well as presentations at conferences and journal papers.

… I’ve found that since becoming a blogger, I publish fewer journal articles, so it has had a “negative” impact on that aspect of my academic life. However, it has led to so many other unpredictable benefits—such as the establishment of a global peer network that helps me stay up to date with my topic, increased research collaboration, and more invitations to give talks—that it’s been worth the trade-off. (more)

Yes universities care about getting good and much “press”, but they are not willing to tenure professors merely for getting good press. The self-concept of professors only lets them give at most a minor weight to press, and sometimes the weight is negative.

The key difference is between getting attention vs. making impressive original intellectual contributions. Being cited by major news media, or having so many blog readers, can credential you as getting attention. But so far only journal articles, Ph.D. theses, and certain books and conference papers are accepted as credentials for impressive original intellectual contributions. For these, high quality experts are seen to judge the intellectual contribution.

Yes blog posts can contain impressive original intellectual contributions. Newspaper columns can contain them as well. So can speeches. Even spontaneous party conversations can contain them. The problem is, we don’t have systems set up for experts to evaluate these things in such terms. And if an intellectual contribution isn’t credentialed as such by academic experts, then it basically doesn’t exist as far as academia is concerned.

So either blogs will be continue to be seen mainly as a way to get “press” attention, or some folks will develop a system of expert evaluation of the intellectual contribution of blog posts. And as with academic journals, the main obstacle to doing that is: getting sufficiently prestigious academies to spend enough time doing their evaluations.

Now it turns out that many prestigious academic already read a lot of blog posts. So one approach would be to create a special “review” section where only prestigious academics can enter quick reviews of blog posts they read. Perhaps these reviews would be anonymous to the blog author and readers, and a more centralized part of the system would weigh their prestige, and degree of topical expertise, to compute a post evaluation.

But even with lots of new whizzy software support, it isn’t obvious you’d get enough reviews to make it work. People write reviews of journal articles in part because they hope doing so will favorably dispose editors toward their later submissions. People who write reviews of blog posts couldn’t have that motivation.

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Tagged as: Academia, Project

Who Wants Unbiased Journals?

By Robin Hanson · April 27, 2012 11:00 pm · Comments (17)

Five years ago I proposed result-blind peer review, and I revised it later. Brendan Nyham just posted a nice long review of many such proposals, including a recent test at the journal Archives of Internal Medicine:

The … alternate review process was applied to the editorial review that occurred prior to outside peer review. … Of the 46 articles examined, 28 were positive, and 18 were negative. … Ultimately, 36 of the 46 articles (>77%) were rejected. … Editors were consistent in their assessment of a manuscript in both steps of the review process in over 77% of cases. … Over 7% of positive articles benefited from editors changing their minds between steps 1 and 2 of the alternate review process, deciding to push forward with peer review after reading the results. By contrast, … this never occurred with the negative studies. Indeed, 1 negative study, which was originally queued for peer review after an editor’s examination of the introduction and “Methods” section, was removed from such consideration after the results were made available. (more)

So even with two stage review, journal editors are tempted to publish papers with weak methods but positive results. And why not – unless important customers insisted, why would a journal handicap itself by committing itself to not publish such papers, which bring more fame and prestige to the journal.

Journal customers include universities who tenure professors who publish in prestigious journals, and grant givers who prefer grantees who publish similarly. But why should these customers handicap themselves – they also win by affiliating with those who publish papers with weak methods but positive results.

I’ve suggested that academia functions primarily to credential people as impressive and interesting in certain ways, so outsiders, like students and patron, can gain prestige by affiliating with them. If so, and if those who publish weak-method positive-results are in fact more impressive and interesting than those who publish stronger-method negative-results, there is little prospect to get rid of this publication bias.

What is possible is to augment publications with betting market prices estimating the chance each result will be upheld by future research. This would let readers get unbiased estimates on the reliability of research results. Alas, it seems there is no customer willing to pay extra to get such reliability estimates. Most everyone involved in the process mainly cares about signals of impressiveness; few care much about which research results are actually true.

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Tagged as: Academia, Prediction Markets

How Social Are Signals?

By Robin Hanson · February 19, 2012 9:55 pm · Comments (12)

We are aware that do many things for show, and I often suggest that we do such “signaling” more often than we realize. But while I’m eager to see writings on signaling theories and their empirical support, I’ve come to suspect that most tend to be unrealistically asocial. Let me explain.

In the iconic signaling story, one person has a hidden feature, which they choose to show to one other person, via some visible action. For example, on Valentine’s day a man traditionally buys a gift, writes a poem, etc. to show a women the strength of his feelings for her. The bigger the gift, the bigger his feelings, supposedly.

In this iconic situation, only these two parties matters. And this allows for simple sharp predictions. For example, if the person watching can’t see the signal, or already knows about the feature, there is no point in signaling. And there is no point in taking an action A to show feature F if that feature is unrelated to willingness to do A.

In realistic signaling, however, third parties typically matter a lot more. For example, the man might want to signal that other women want him, or that he knows that other men want her. The woman might care less about what she infers from his signal, and more about being able to let slip details to her friends, to show them the kind of man she has. This inclusion of a wider social circle makes it harder to find simple sharp tests.

I’ve talked about how schooling could be such a more social signal, and how that could complicate empirical testing:

Firms want to impress customers, suppliers, investors, etc. with the quality of their employees, and hiring graduates from prestigious schools helps them signal such quality. Hiring such graduates can also help a manager to impress his bosses, potential employees, and sister divisions about the quality of his employees. … The fact that attending school seem to cause changes in students that employers are willing to pay for does not show that school isn’t all about signaling. (more)

Similarly, people often respond to my suggestion that medical care functions in large part to “show that you care” with the example of people buying medicine for themselves. “Surely that can’t be signaling,” they suggest. But consider that unattached women often buy themselves flowers or chocolates on Valentines day. As signals become more social, and involve wider circles, it gets harder to isolate situations where no signaling should happen.

By the way, one way to think about “status” is as the limit of very social signals. The more that an action or sign is generally seen as positive, without being very specific about what good features it indicates or who exactly cares about such features, the more that this action or sign looks like a signal of general social status.

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Tagged as: Academia, Medicine, Signaling

What Is Econ Advice?

By Robin Hanson · February 6, 2012 2:35 pm · Comments (6)

Saturday I said:

I see two rather different ways to think about what economists do when we recommend policies:

Morals – We enter into a larger conversation about what actions are right. … While for our ancestors such discussion was often a prelude to concrete group action, today we more often argue about morals without such ways to coordinate in mind. …
Deals – … Conflicts … can be resolved at least in part via deals, both implicit and explicit. Finding and making such deals can be aided by neutral outside advisors, … Economists have a reputation for developing analytical tools useful for making suggestions about parts of deals. …

Academics who lean toward a sci/tech style tend to favor a deals view, while those who lean toward a humanities style tend to favor a morals view.

Bryan Caplan responded:

Fact #1: Robin has spent decades proposing unconventional policy deals. His track record is an abysmal failure. … Zero Hansonian deals have been embraced by any normal person. His proposals appeal almost exclusively to fans of economics, libertarianism, futurism, and science fiction. … Most human beings are far too conventional and stubborn to even consider Robin’s suggestions. And instead of trying to overcome this hurdle, Robin habitually raises the hurdle by criticizing conventional attitudes. …

Fact #2: People often have a very good reason to ignore deals: They have better ways to get what they want. Such as: persuasion, moralizing, trickery, and bullying.
Fact #3: The effectiveness of deal-making varies widely by person. …
Fact #4: The effectiveness of deal-making varies widely by situation.

I’m happy to admit that deal-making isn’t the only way we get what we want, and that its effectiveness varies by person and situation. Though I do think we make a lot of implicit deals. For example, asking “I’m in a hurry; would you mind if I cut in line” is offering supplication, and an owing of return favors, in trade for a favor.

I’m also happy to admit that much of what I do intellectually isn’t very directly targeted at promoting specific deals. Though neither is it very directly targeted at labeling specific acts as moral or immoral. To the extend that I do either of these things, I do them indirectly, which makes my acts harder to categorize. My work in prediction markets, however, has led to some voluntary mutually-beneficial changes in corporate practices, and I hope for lots more.

Imagine that economists were surveyed and had to choose how they’d best like to describe economic policy recommendations, as:

Morals – Arguing for the morality of actions,
Deals – Helping groups find and make deals, or
Showing Off – Academics do hard things in order to be certified by other academics as impressive, so that students, patrons, and readers can gain status by affiliating with them. Economic policy analysis is such a hard thing.

I’d bet that at least 25% would choose option #2, and even more among those whose style leans sci/tech. And #2 seems to me a better public face for economists to present to the world – economists will prosper more overall if they say this is what they are doing.

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Tagged as: Academia, Social Science

Deals Near, Morals Far?

By Robin Hanson · February 4, 2012 10:45 pm · Comments (8)

Unlike most social scientists, economists publish papers whose main conclusions are normative, not just positive. That is, we explicitly recommend policies, rather than just predict the consequences that follow from choices. Moral philosophers are the main other academics who explicitly focus on making recommendations. Compared to philosophers, economists are more standardized and structured, allowing more specific recommendations.

I see two rather different ways to think about what economists do when we recommend policies:

Morals – We enter into a larger conversation about what actions are right. As language let humans enforce social norms, we evolved strong moral feelings and a rich practice of arguing about forbidden and required actions. While for our ancestors such discussion was often a prelude to concrete group action, today we more often argue about morals without such ways to coordinate in mind. Economists mainly join this larger argument about what actions are right, and only incidentally induce specific people to take specific actions.
Deals – Groups of all sizes, from families to planets have conflicts that can be resolved at least in part via deals, both implicit and explicit. Finding and making such deals can be aided by neutral outside advisors, especially advisors who can suggest changes that might benefit all conflicting parties. Economists have a reputation for developing analytical tools useful for making suggestions about parts of deals. Economists mainly develop such suggestions for deal components, and only incidentally join larger conversations about morality.

My closest colleagues seem to mostly take a morals view, but many of my students like a deals view. I think I see a correlation whereby academics who lean toward a sci/tech style tend to favor a deals view, while those who lean toward a humanities style tend to favor a morals view. Sci/tech styles tend more toward math, precision, and local incremental contributions toward specific things and plans, while humanities styles tend more toward bigger pictures, wider-ranging applications, broader interpretations, and joining larger conversations.

In sum, how you think about economic recommendations may depend on whether your thinking leans near or far. It seems deals are near, while morals are far, and sci/tech folks lean near, while humanities folks lean far. Precise formal analysis is more near, while flexible more-metaphorical discussion is more far. Particular suggestions for particular conflicts of particular groups is more near, while general more accessible discussion about what choices tend to be good or bad is more far.

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Tagged as: Academia, NearFar, Social Science

On School’s Function

By Robin Hanson · December 16, 2011 10:30 pm · Comments (13)

Is school more for helping students learn about the world, or more for showing and encouraging good behavior? This NYT oped by Yoram Bauman gives a hint:

When students went online to register for classes each quarter, they were asked if they wanted to donate $3 to support WashPIRG, a left-leaning activist group. Students were also asked if they wanted to donate $3 to Affordable Tuition Now (ATN), a group that lobbied for “sensible tuition rates, quality financial aid and adequate funding.” …

About 5 percent of economics majors donated to WashPIRG in a given quarter, compared with 8 percent for other arts and sciences majors. A similar divide — 10 percent versus almost 15 percent — occurred with respect to donations to ATN. … Taking economics classes [had] a significant negative effect on later giving by students who did not become economics majors. …

Our research suggests that economics education could do a better job of providing balance. Learning about the shortcomings as well as the successes of free markets is at the heart of any good economics education, and students — especially those who are not destined to major in the field — deserve to hear both sides of the story. (more)

So econ teaching should be changed because after taking econ classes students donate less to leftist political groups? Bauman does not bother to argue that econ classes teach falsehoods. He probably accepts the usual econ analysis suggesting that selfish folks might rather keep their money and hope others donate to worthy causes. No, apparently Bauman thinks it sufficient that he disapproves of the net effect of teaching truths — fewer donations go to political groups he favors. That must be stopped!

(Free market shortcomings are beside the point here. Most econ classes talk plenty about those, and they aren’t very relevant to the private vs. social value of donations.)

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Tagged as: Academia, Politics

Literature Research

By Robin Hanson · December 6, 2011 9:00 am · Comments (14)

In my hand I have a hefty article on a canonical English poet, published 10 years ago in a distinguished journal. … The argument is dense, the analysis acute, on its face a worthy illustration of academic study deserving broad notice and integration into subsequent research in the field. That reception doesn’t seem to have happened. … After 5,000 studies of Melville since 1960, what can the 5,001st say that will have anything but a microscopic audience of interested readers? …

I devised a [small] study of literary research. … Of 13 research articles … in 2004, 11 of them received zero to two citations, one had five, one 12. Of 23 article … 16 received zero to two citations, four of them three to six, one eight, one 11, and one 16. … The unfortunate conclusion is that the overall impact of literary research doesn’t come close to justifying the money and effort that goes into it. …

The research identity is a powerful allure, flattering people that they have cutting-edge brilliance. Few of them readily trade the graduate seminar for the composition classroom. But we have reached the point at which the commitment to research at the current level actually damages the humanities, turning the human capital of the discipline toward ineffectual toil. More books and articles don’t expand the audience for literary studies. A spurt of publications in a department does not attract more sophomores to the major, nor does it make the dean add another tenure-track line, nor does it urge a curriculum committee to add another English course to the general requirements. All it does is “author-ize” the producers. Deep down, everybody knows this. (more)

This is pretty much the standard situation in academia – English is not much different. Academics talk as if academia is all about the research progress, but in fact it is more about “authorizing” the academics. That is, about credentialing their impressiveness, so that others can affiliate with credentialed impressive folks.

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Tagged as: Academia

Tag Archives: Academia

Schools Are For War

Taming The Wild Idea

Academic Blog Credit?

Who Wants Unbiased Journals?

How Social Are Signals?

On School’s Function

Literature Research

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