14 Comments

College is efficient at helping those who are intellectually comfortable with abstract thought to organize their thinking, and their critical faculties so as to better discern what is true.

Only about 25% of the people are of the MB Type abstract (N-iNtuitive) rather than concrete (S-Sensory). Except for signaling a work ethic and as a high IQ proxy, college has much less education value for the majority 75% who are not abstract iNtuitives.

It might well have lots of network effect benefits; but that's not the usual justification for huge gov't support of hedge funds attached to a non-profit/low taxed college - like Harvard.

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IRB's are a pox. I've never seen any evidence they deliver better outcomes. Yet they are so burdensome that I know scientists that will pass on good research ideas to avoid them.

I'm excited about Chertman's idea for lawfare against IRB's. Who's working on that? I'd be happy to support them.

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“Scientists should be neither faithful nor cynical. Scientists are skeptics. Scientists do not accept what authorities say simply because the authorities have said it…. etc.”

Except in public health, environmentalism, and climate (so-called) science, which are now a matter of ideology, not science.

As someone put it, no longer science based policy, but policy based science.

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Scott Alexander has a maddening story about trying to do a benign study and being stymied by an IRB. It is well worth reading.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/29/my-irb-nightmare/

He collects some of the more interesting comments:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/31/highlights-from-the-comments-on-my-irb-nightmare/

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Doing your own research is difficult, and even then you can only do so much. In practice, we always have to decide whom to trust.

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Leaving aside Cochrane’s eliding of the role of the Fed in controlling inflation, what is the argument about Federal Debt being a good investment? Is he saying that there has been a change in people’s judgement of the riskiness of Federal debt? Or is this a backdoor way of saying that interest rates on Federal debt, and generally, have been too low so too much was “spent” rather than “held,” so the Fed gets back into the picture after all?

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