uni. prof, ask me anything

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: several threads on DCUM reveal an appalling ignorance of ... business aircraft, and the basic operations of cell phones. what kind of "critical thinking," as the professor describes it, has led them to such beliefs.

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses reported many colleges fail to improve critical thinking. I don't see why humanities teach "critical thinking" better than other areas.

Some people consider themselves cultured if they know about ancient Greeks or Renaissance literature. Many public intellectuals misunderstand basic economics from the 1800's. They don't understand how public key cryptography can be secure. They don't understand the 2022 Nobel Physics experiment that shows reality is not local. They don't know how banks, hedge funds, and futures markets work. There has been more change in science and culture in the past 100-200 years than in previous history.

critical thinking and the way many of today’s academics define it can be traced back to the post-structuralist critical theories that invaded our English departments ... . [D]econstruction ... has been profoundly influential, not only on English faculty but also on their colleagues in the other humanities and even the social sciences. (Consider, for example, the current popularity of ethnography, a form of social science “research” that combines fieldwork with subjective story-telling.)

Unfortunately, those disciplines are also where most critical thinking instruction supposedly occurs in our universities. (Actually, other fields, such as the hard sciences and engineering, probably do a better job of teaching true thinking skills—compiling and evaluating evidence, formulating hypotheses based on that evidence, testing those hypotheses for accuracy before arriving at firm conclusions. They just don’t brag about it as much.)

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2017/03/college-graduates-still-cant-think/

Isn’t this article an example of the humanities? so you probably shouldn’t listen to it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Historian here, and you might be interested in knowing that we don't "write down history."

Economist here. History has a strong empirical component, and analyzes evidence. My favorite example is showing that Homer's "Odyssey" originated in oral tradition.

Historians are experts at documenting what happened, but not at explaining why it happened, because they do not observe counterfactuals. Economics has developed statistical methods that address this.

"if railroads did not exist in 1890, then they probably do not exist now, for there is no record of them being invented in the last ninety-two years."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1816570

The main reason historians aren't good at explaining why things happened is not because they don't use counterfactuals (some do) but because all explanations of "why" are based on finding evidence to fit a pre-existing mental model. Economists are by no means immune to this syndrome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
historians aren't good at explaining why things happened ... because all explanations of "why" are based on ... a pre-existing mental model. Economists are by no means immune to this syndrome.

Yes, but economists have many fully articulated quantitative models, and statistical techniques for distinguishing them: double sorts, multiple regression, natural experiments, discontinuity measures, and instrumental variables.

I recall one disagreement where historians claimed that slave punishment was more severe on deep-South plantations than East Coast plantations, and attributed this difference to a meaner Southern culture. Economists instead suggested that the Eastern climate produced more valuable long-fiber cotton that required skill and care to harvest. In that case, carrots work better than sticks to make slaves productive. The data are inadequate to decisively settle this, but it illustrates economists thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
historians aren't good at explaining why things happened ... because all explanations of "why" are based on ... a pre-existing mental model. Economists are by no means immune to this syndrome.

Yes, but economists have many fully articulated quantitative models, and statistical techniques for distinguishing them: double sorts, multiple regression, natural experiments, discontinuity measures, and instrumental variables.

Meh. Many of those models are "garbage in, garbage out". Economics models don't have a great record of explaining the past, let alone predicting the future.

And oh yeah there's that replication problem - "two Federal Reserve economists came to the alarming conclusion that economics research is usually not replicable."

https://theconversation.com/the-replication-crisis-has-engulfed-economics-49202

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2015083pap.pdf

[Anonymous]

Do you remember “transitory inflation” prediction?

[Anonymous]

Do attractive students flirt with you for better grades?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Historian here, and you might be interested in knowing that we don't "write down history."

Economist here. History has a strong empirical component, and analyzes evidence. My favorite example is showing that Homer's "Odyssey" originated in oral tradition.

Historians are experts at documenting what happened, but not at explaining why it happened, because they do not observe counterfactuals. Economics has developed statistical methods that address this.

"if railroads did not exist in 1890, then they probably do not exist now, for there is no record of them being invented in the last ninety-two years."
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1816570

This is a weird comment. I was a history major and we were definitely talk to focus on why things happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
historians aren't good at explaining why things happened ... because all explanations of "why" are based on ... a pre-existing mental model. Economists are by no means immune to this syndrome.

Yes, but economists have many fully articulated quantitative models, and statistical techniques for distinguishing them: double sorts, multiple regression, natural experiments, discontinuity measures, and instrumental variables.

I recall one disagreement where historians claimed that slave punishment was more severe on deep-South plantations than East Coast plantations, and attributed this difference to a meaner Southern culture. Economists instead suggested that the Eastern climate produced more valuable long-fiber cotton that required skill and care to harvest. In that case, carrots work better than sticks to make slaves productive. The data are inadequate to decisively settle this, but it illustrates economists thinking.

Your description of history as a discipline is simply not true. Historians would definitely make an argument like the above you attribute to economists. There are many different kinds of history – intellectual, social, cultural, economic. College students study all of those if they major in history

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
two Federal Reserve economists came to the alarming conclusion that economics research is usually not replicable.

Chang-Li got published this year in Critical Finance Review, not a top journal. It has had little impact, no citations on Google scholar. A better source (cited 1,000+ times) finds 88%+ replicability: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43869094.

"a total of 85 (97 – 12) or 88% of the predictor’s produce t-statistics that are greater than 1.50. With respect to the 12 predictors that did not reach this significance level, in some cases, [daily] abnormal returns ... did not survive in monthly [results], ... [or] we do not have the exact same data ... . Lastly, [we] focus on long-short quintile returns, while some the original papers ... use Fama-MacBeth slope coefficients."

Industry routinely uses Markowitz portfolio theory and the Black-Scholes formula to measure and manage risk. Alvin Roth improved the efficiency and fairness of kidney allocation. This stuff works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious question: do most humanities profs (a) not realize that covid vacc mandates are not supported by data and are unethical, (b) are afraid to say anything to the contrary for fear of retribution/ostracization, and/or (c) have no pull whatsoever where college administrative decisions are concerned?

I feel fairly certain that (c) is true, but it's much harder to discern (a) or (b). Guessing (a) is true (they just don't realize) (no personal offense intended if this includes yourself). Perhaps you might offer observations on this issue, considering the anonymity of your thread.

The data clearly demonstrate the COVID-19 vaccines prevent serious illness and death. Do you disagree with that? If so, based on what?

(a) Mandates are unethical without transmission prevention (or at the very least, durable and significant reduction). The vacc does not prevent transmission. Short duration increase in antibody levels, combined with the lack of any antibody level correlate of protection, do not support mandates.
(b) College students are not at significant risk of severe disease and death. Seroprevalence is very high (>90%) nationally. There is no age-stratified clinical trial data proving a marginal benefit to previously-infected college students against severe disease.
(c) There are risks. Studies on such risks have not even finished and been released (more are due at the end of this month).
(d) All available products in the US are still under EUA only, which prohibits coercion.

See e.g. COVID-19 vaccine boosters for young adults: a risk benefit assessment and ethical analysis of mandate policies at universities, https://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2022/12/05/jme-2022-108449

You are a humanities professor. Please stay in your lane. Vaccines don't prevent transmission, but they DO prevent acquisition, which in turn means no transmission needs to be prevented.

Op here: you are misreading if you think this is me spouting this. I addressed it early on, and this person continues to post false information about vaccines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you remember “transitory inflation” prediction?

That was political appointee/attorney Jerome Powell. Don't blame economists for mistakes of lawyers and politicians! Academic economists were skeptical:

Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane has been reminding us all along, long-term inflation expectations are notoriously poor predictors of inflation. Sadly, few listened, and team "transitory" was born. ...

A few economists did get it right. One is former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who warned a year ago that President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan could "set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation." A day later, former International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard tweeted: "I agree with Summers. The 1.9 trillion program could overheat the economy so badly as to be counterproductive."

There were others, too. They were mocked and the legislation passed.

https://reason.com/2022/02/17/how-did-the-fed-not-anticipate-the-inflation-surge/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
historians aren't good at explaining why things happened ... because all explanations of "why" are based on ... a pre-existing mental model. Economists are by no means immune to this syndrome.

Yes, but economists have many fully articulated quantitative models, and statistical techniques for distinguishing them: double sorts, multiple regression, natural experiments, discontinuity measures, and instrumental variables.

I recall one disagreement where historians claimed that slave punishment was more severe on deep-South plantations than East Coast plantations, and attributed this difference to a meaner Southern culture. Economists instead suggested that the Eastern climate produced more valuable long-fiber cotton that required skill and care to harvest. In that case, carrots work better than sticks to make slaves productive. The data are inadequate to decisively settle this, but it illustrates economists thinking.

Your description of history as a discipline is simply not true. Historians would definitely make an argument like the above you attribute to economists. There are many different kinds of history – intellectual, social, cultural, economic. College students study all of those if they major in history

Economists have a reputation in other social sciences for insisting they do the work of those other disciplines better while clearly not having more than a surface level understanding of how those disciplines work. (No, the one course you took as an undergrad or one book you read does not represent the methods or viewpoints of the entire field.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Economists have a reputation in other social sciences for insisting they do the work of those other disciplines better.

The obnoxious economists are often correct. Historians traditionally did not emphasize scientific empirical testing and make out-of-sample predictions. Economists routinely do this to establish causality. Fogel and North won the Nobel prize for this type of work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliometrics

[Anonymous]

Are you one of those social sciences professors that doesn’t understand why your students are working their way through school or constantly states that “college isn’t trade school” (yes, it is now, considering how much student loan money is on the line)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you one of those social sciences professors that doesn’t understand why your students are working their way through school or constantly states that “college isn’t trade school” (yes, it is now, considering how much student loan money is on the line)?

Seems like it. For 99% of college students, college IS trade school. Full stop.