koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius
@koenfucius.bsky.social
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Accidental behavioural economist koenfucius.substack.com
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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 12d
Blogged: A change of opinion may not be what it seems

Our surprise at the ease with which people change opinion - even make U-turns - is misplaced, and based a failure to understand how opinions arise and what they (don't) mean:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 27m
Are stereotypes inaccurate? This has long been the prevailing narrative—without much data in support, and still maintained in the face of strong contradicting evidence, this chapter by Jussim et al argues:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 2h
Why would two ice cream vendors, having figured out the best location is right in the middle of the beach, start moving towards the extreme ends?

Not necessarily because that’s where the customers went.

A metaphor for centrifugal mainstream politics:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 5h
Blair en Cameron loodsten hun partijen naar het centrum; ook in andere westerse democratieën regeerden gematigde, centristische partijen.

Is het echt de kiezer die hen nu wegdrijft van het midden?

Mijn @apache.be stukje, Waar is het midden naartoe?

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 5h
Tonsils, HUH! What are they good for?

Certainly not absolutely nothing.

So why have they been removed for centuries? Why less so more recently? And why is a tonsillectomy still one of the most prevalent childhood surgeries?

@laurenleffer.bsky.social explains:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 13h
Whatever you believe about when, or even whether, we’ll have AGI—it’s worth hypothesizing what would happen to us the day after.

@louisrosenberg.bsky.social argues the impact of the philosophical identity crisis might overshadow all else:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 16h
Which do workers value more—pay or perks?

New research looks into how people trade-off money versus other job benefits:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 17h
Economic growth (∆GDP)—recent most strongly, and only after one’s formative years—predicts trust in government, esp in democracies, but not interpersonal trust, research by Besley et al (based on survey data—2.8M participants in 161 countries) suggests:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 18h
Not that long ago, Blair and Cameron headed the kind of moderate, centrist mainstream party that could be found governing in most western democracies at the time.

Have these parties followed the voter towards the extremes—or just abandoned the middle?

koenfucius.substack.com/p/what-happe...
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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 19h
Zijn de gematigde centrumpartijen de almaar meer extreme kiezer gevolgd, steeds verder van het midden, of hebben ze, gedreven door o.m. ideologisch purisme, de gemiddelde kiezer in de kou achtergelaten?

Mijn @apache.be stukje bekijkt het nader:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 22h
Thanks—glad to hear you liked it!
koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 22h
Want to see what?
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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 23h
Authoritarian repression and censorship is epistemically irrational as it requires an impossible combination of confidence about the present and clairvoyance about the future, argues Jimmy Alfonso Licon—it’s stupid.

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
If you want people to buy (something from) you or do something for you, don’t try to guess what they ought to be interested in, writes Dave Trott.

Answer the question they ask themselves—“what’s in it for me?”

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
TL;DR:🧵 by coauthor @ihaal.bsky.social : buff.ly/0eI3YSA
koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
Many news users demand politically aligned news, but the vast majority of users persistently prefer less opinionated and more fact-driven news, research using an AI-powered app to customize news by @felixchopra.bsky.social et al suggests:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
Eating and breathing keep us alive… but also slowly kill us.

Fortunately there’s a better way to delay the latter than stopping the former:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
One of the less talked about consequences of climate change is that it increases the incidence of eye conditions like cataract, pink eye and more, writes Sanket Jain:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
The Finns top the happiness chart, year after year. They also have by far the highest number of metal bands per capita.

That should tell you something—metal music, contrary to common wisdom, is good for you.
(With advice on safe headbanging):

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
“When rationalists dismiss human decision elements like biases, values, emotions, and social context, they risk recreating exactly what they fear: rigid dogma masquerading as objectivity.”

@docgrawitch has his doubts about rational decision making:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
John Rawls joins the three wise men, substituting for Balthazar:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
The risk-reward calculation for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was different for older vs younger people.

As we move towards more personalized medicine, an approach to regulation building on such ‘stratification’ is the way to go, argues Sir David Spiegelhalter:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
Research by Hall et al identifies 38 biases likely to impact talent judgments in sports, clustered in sequential (eg anchoring); presentation (eg framing); cognitive (eg confirmation bias); association (eg correlation bias); and egocentric (eg bandwagon):

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 1d
What might explain the mainstream, centrist parties’ moving ever further from the middle, swapping pragmatism for ideology and identity politics?

An economic perspective—Hotelling’s law—offers an alternative to the common narrative of voter polarization:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 2d
“Everybody has non-epistemic belief preferences—desires to believe something for reasons unrelated to truth or evidential justification.”

Michael Huemer shows how easy it is to be irrational:

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koenfucius.bsky.social
koenfucius @koenfucius.bsky.social · 2d
Research by Connolly & Goossen suggests there are significant gender differences in how personality and relationship outcomes are linked:

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