Month: January 2020

Categories Daily Posts, Health

Saturday, 18.01.2020 – Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics

Link of the day: SSC Journal Club – Relaxed beliefs under psychedelics and the anarchic brain

Psychedelics are increasingly tested for therapeutic use. There are trials to get LSD approved for the treatment of depression and MDMA for treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One reason this might work is that psychedelics may be able to temporarily relax internal beliefs we strongly hold and replace them with new (better) experiences and beliefs. Scott Alexander reviews a paper arguing this. It … more

Categories R, Statistics

R – Two histograms in One Plot

Recently I was doing Bayesian analysis and wanted to visualize the prior and the posterior distribution of one of my parameters in one plot to see whether I had a strong mismatch between prior and posterior. I searched around a bit and find a useful solution here that I adapted and improved.

I was working with a normal(0.5, 0.5) prior and had posterior draws generated by Stan. However, the plots of course works for every type of histogram that you … more

Categories Uncategorized

Thursday, 16.11.2020 – Is Inequality Inevitable?

Link of the day: Is Inequality Inevitable?

This is a very interesting piece. The authors model different wealth distributions as the result of countless single transactions between two individuals. They start off with symmetric transactions, where none of the participants has an advantage over the other. Nevertheless, they always end up with a wealth distribution that becomes increasingly unequal over time. After adjusting for some parameters like wealth redistribution, they are able to model the development of the US American … more

Categories Daily Posts

Tuesday, 14.01.2020 – Informing The Public by Withholding Information

Link of the day: Coarse Grades: Informing the Public by Withholding Information (paper)

Certificates and test results e.g. for safety, environmental or ethical standards often follow a very simple pass/fail system. Instead of saying “Company X has a sustainability score of 73.9” we usually just see that company X has passed the test or has an environmentally friendly label. This might seem a bit odd, considering that the people who do the certification want to provide as much information as … more

Categories Daily Posts, Society, Politics and History

Monday, 13.01.2020 – A positive Account of Property Rights

Link of the day: A positive Account of Property Rights

In this essay, Anarchocapitalist David Friedman derives property rights in a Hobbesian state not as the result of legal or moral considerations, but as resulting from natural Schelling points (natural landmarks for agreement, e.g. a 50-50 divide. The concept is explained in the text). A very interesting read if you have some free minutes. If you enjoy debating, you can use the text to generate nice arguments.

Categories Daily Posts, Health

Sunday, 12.01.2020 – Human Body Temperature Has Decreased in the Last 150 Years

Link of the day: Decreasing human body temperature in the United States since the industrial revolution (scientific paper)

Average body temperature may be declining compared to the temperatures observed a couple of decades ago (it seems now 1.6% lower than in pre-industrial times). This is quite interesting, as lower body temperature is linked to a lower metabolic rate of the body (and maybe also to increased longevity). The authors believe that population-wide decreases in inflammation (antibiotics, less tuberculosis) as well … more

Categories Daily Posts, Environment

Saturday, 11.01.2020 – Air Filters May Have Large Educational Gains

Link of the day: Installing air filters in classrooms has surprisingly large educational benefits

In 2015, Los Angeles suffered from the Aliso Canyon gas leak, where gas leaked out of a well near LA. The carbon footprint may have been larger than that of the Deepwater Horizon Leak. In reaction to the leak, many schools invested in air filters (for about $700 to $1000). This provided a very nice natural experiment. Michael Gilraine found in a working paper that these … more

Categories Environment

Is Planting Trees the Best Way to Fight Climate Change?

Why does everything have to be some complicated? One thing seemed so sure: If you plant trees, you take CO2 out of the atmosphere and reduce global warming. Trees are currently planted everywhere on a massive scale by governments and private donors. That is good. But apparently, the effect on climate change is not so easy to assess. Trees don’t only reduce global warming, they also contribute to it through several mechanisms:

  • Tree leaves are dark and therefore absorb more
… more