Its now one week after the official hardback release date, and five weeks after the ebook release, of Elephant in the Brain. So I guess its time to respond to the text reviews that have appeared so far. Reviews have appeared at Amazon (9), Goodreads (8), and on individual blogs (5). Most comments expressed are quite positive. But there’s a big selection effect whereby people with negative opinions say nothing, and so readers rationally attend more to explicitly negative comments. And thus so will I. This post is
“Isn’t it really obvious that overall people pay a lot of attention to how others will interpret their clothing choices?”
Well, as in your response to Zvi: individuals vary. Perhaps the people most likely to read and review your book are also those that are most likely to not be described by such generalizations, to such an extent that they do not even recognize that many people indeed interpret their clothing choices.
The stereotypically disheveled looking professor just doesn’t think to think about his clothing choices and even upon reflection doesn’t think it should matter?
It is my understanding that Google no longer makes it's PR data public. So, any numbers are old and becoming increasingly stale:https://www.searchenginejou...
If journals wanted to evaluate potential for long term useful progress, and if the reviewers they now ask know nothing about that, well then those current reviewers could be trained more in that topic, or they could ask other people who know more about that key topic.
It sounded to me like the bit about "technical mastery is relatively objective" wasn't saying anything about "a complex clever plan to maximize long term research progress." It was saying that referees know their limitations (and/or the limitations of objectivity), so they don't judge based on things that are beyond them.
Of course the whole job of the referees and the reason they exist is, ideally, to aid in long-term research progress. It was just claiming that acknowledging and respecting these limitations may be the best way to accomplish that job. Nothing "complex" or "clever" about it.
“Isn’t it really obvious that overall people pay a lot of attention to how others will interpret their clothing choices?”
Well, as in your response to Zvi: individuals vary. Perhaps the people most likely to read and review your book are also those that are most likely to not be described by such generalizations, to such an extent that they do not even recognize that many people indeed interpret their clothing choices.
The stereotypically disheveled looking professor just doesn’t think to think about his clothing choices and even upon reflection doesn’t think it should matter?
It is my understanding that Google no longer makes it's PR data public. So, any numbers are old and becoming increasingly stale:https://www.searchenginejou...
Maybe they could... I don't see how it could be so straightforward, but that's just my ignorance.
I was just saying you'd misinterpreted the claim.
If journals wanted to evaluate potential for long term useful progress, and if the reviewers they now ask know nothing about that, well then those current reviewers could be trained more in that topic, or they could ask other people who know more about that key topic.
It sounded to me like the bit about "technical mastery is relatively objective" wasn't saying anything about "a complex clever plan to maximize long term research progress." It was saying that referees know their limitations (and/or the limitations of objectivity), so they don't judge based on things that are beyond them.
Of course the whole job of the referees and the reason they exist is, ideally, to aid in long-term research progress. It was just claiming that acknowledging and respecting these limitations may be the best way to accomplish that job. Nothing "complex" or "clever" about it.
Numbers always tempt economists.
Ah, I didn't realize these rank checker sites were so unreliable!
Thanks for your response Robin. I replied here.
By the way, not to be petty or anything, but it looks like my page-rank score of 0 on the prchecker.info website you link to is a mistake (it gives a zero to anything it doesn't have good data on). In fact, blog.jessriedel.com ranks as a 3 on checkpagerank.net, pr.domaineye.com and smallseotools.com/google-pagerank-checker (and overcomingbias.com gets a 7, 6, and 6, respectively).