Category Archives: Uncategorized

Earlier this year, it turned out that humans socially evolved cooperation through group competition and conflict. And now, it seems that biased evidence assimilation can happen through bounded rationality. Hooray.

Since blogging is hard, but reading is easy, lately I’ve taken to bookmarking interesting articles I’m reading, with the plan of blogging about them later. This follow-through has happened a few times, but not that often. In an amazing moment … Continue reading →

These are both useful summaries. Slate has a chart of relationships between Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, and Lebanon, versus a number of different actors in the region. NYTimes has something similar on a map, also showing the sizes of ethnic/religious groups. … Continue reading →

I previously posted two neuroeconomics reviews. Here’s a new one from this year in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. It’s interesting because not only does it look at using psychological knowledge to inform economics, but it also reviews work in the … Continue reading →

Extremely interesting — a generalization of Arrow-Debreu equilibrium in which interactions are restricted along a social network. Kakade et al 2005. (Found through NIPS 2004 (which looks like a great conference)). Also a longer and more detailed related version: Kakade … Continue reading →

Pure game theory is debatably social science, so here goes. Inspired by various 5-, 7-, and even 25-move extensions to Rock, Paper, Scissors, my friends and I were wondering whether it’s possible to have an even-move version. It doesn’t seem … Continue reading →

Here are two great reviews, from 2003 then 2005. 1) PLoS Biology: Economy of the Mind nicely reviews the field and many interesting experiments. One annoyance: They need to say “Banburismus” is more commonly known as Bayesian learning. (Banbury, England … Continue reading →

Continuing our previous story: they’ve won! Check out the interview at the end of the semifinals here. NYT reports: ATHENS, May 20 (AP) — In what some fans called a stunning upset, a Finnish heavy metal band with monster masks … Continue reading →

Monkeys drink more alcohol when housed alone, and some like to end a long day in the lab with a boozy cocktail, according to a new analysis of alcohol consumption among members of a rhesus macaque social group.…“It was not … Continue reading →

I started reading Jeffrey Sachs’ new book The End of Poverty. The first 30 pages are excellent, but it starts getting arrogant and annoying quick. Substantively, I’m uncertain whether a big new development aid push will solve things. Since I … Continue reading →