Three Research Links

Important School Info:

kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. ...  the effects of kindergarten class quality fade out on test scores in later grades but gains in non-cognitive measures persist. We conclude that early childhood education has substantial long-term impacts, potentially through non-cognitive channels.

That was from a randomized assignment to classes.  When looking at things like this, it it is important to remember that 'statistically significant' does not necessarily mean 'life-changing'.  You need to dig up the magnitudes to get a feel for what the effect is.  Here are dollar details from the text of the paper:

Students randomly assigned to a class that is one standard deviation higher in quality score 6.27 percentile points higher on end-of-year tests and earn $483 (3.0%) more at age 27.

The difference between a really good class and a really bad class is going to be about four standard deviations, which implies that the kindergarten class your child is assigned to can make a difference of up to $2000 on average in yearly earnings at the start of their career.  That is actually pretty big, when you consider that this in the same school.  The effects from moving to a better school and a better neighborhood could be quite a bit bigger.

It really is kind of scary how much your life is affected by your teachers and peers at such an early age.  Parents are right to be paranoid about this kind of thing.  The habits and attitudes formed in childhood, mainly from exposure to other people, have a big impact on your future.

Important Attitude Info

A randomly chosen subset of employees of the University of California was informed about a new website listing the pay of all University employees. All employees were then surveyed about their job satisfaction and job search intentions. ... workers with salaries below the median for their pay unit and occupation report lower pay and job satisfaction, while those earning above the median report no higher satisfaction. Likewise, below-median earners report a significant increase in the likelihood of looking for a new job, while above-median earners are unaffected.

This relates to my previous post about money attitudes.  The wording of the abstract implies that people are unhappier or worse off after learning salary information, but it may be that the information is better for them in the long run.  If they succeed in finding a new job or renegotiating salary, their life will be better.  This is clear evidence that employers gain when salary info is hidden.  Whether or not people deserve the low pay they are getting, they are happier and easier to control when kept ignorant.

And finally, research about Robot Dogs and Real Dogs that is not important at all:

Results were mixed, depending on a number of factors, including the age of the real dog and the social situation in which the interactions occurred. There were, however, very strong responses from dogs in scenarios in which they felt that the AIBO might be about to indulge in some cyber food-pilfering.

 

Scary Fact

Even the children of wealthier families suffer surprisingly high rates of malnutrition. Government data show that a third of children from the wealthiest fifth of India's population are malnourished. This is because poor feeding practices—foremost among them a failure exclusively to breastfeed in the first six months—play as big a role in India's malnutrition rates as food shortages. 

from The Economist

It really is amazing how much damage people can do to themselves and their families through ignorance.  Bad habits get embedded in a culture, and people accept the consequences of these bad habits as a fact of nature.

Anti-Elitism

People often try to score political points by complaining about 'elites'.  This might have made sense in the old days when the 'elites' were aristocrats, the beneficiaries of hereditary privilege, but in today's mostly meritocratic society it makes very little sense.

Being an elite in anything requires the successful application of some kind of skill.  That skill might be making money, writing books, being  telegenic, winning votes, bureaucratic infighting, or any number of other things, but anyone who can be described as 'elite' got their position by doing something, and doing it skillfully.

In many cases, the skills that enable people to be elites do not add value to society.  People who complain about 'elites' are most often complaining about people with these kinds of skills.

But if you got rid of all the existing elites without changing the incentives inherent in the system, then nothing would change.  The people at the top got there because a certain set of skills were rewarded.  As long as the system is set up to reward those skills, then people with those skills will always be at the top.  

The more competitive the system, the more likely it is that the people who win the contest will have those skills, and no others.  Developing character traits that are socially good, useful, and productive takes time and effort, and this means that you are less likely to be the best at the skills that let you rise to the top.

The quality of the people who rise to the top of a system should be seen as a symptom, not a cause.  If bad people are at the top, that is a sign that the incentives of the system reward people who act badly.  Getting rid of the current crop of bad people will change nothing.

In a democracy, the political elites are those who are best at winning votes in their state or district.  A successful politician is one who devotes his or her entire existence to winning votes, and is skillful at this.  If you have a complaint about politicians, then you are really complaining about the identity, attitudes, and preferences of the people who vote for those politicians.

Restaurants

Last week, a professor took some of us out to dinner to discuss a paper.  This week, a different professor took a different group out to discuss our papers.  The first dinner was at a nice local restaurant, the kind of place with a decent wine list and meals that averaged $20.  I ordered some kind of lamb cut that came with veggies and mashed potatoes.  It was really good.  The main problem with that restaurant is that the acoustics are terrible, so it was hard to hear people talking.

This week we went to a Ruby Tuesday's, a chain where dinners are usually about $15.  The environment was much better for conversation but the food was fairly bad.  I have had better at buffets and cafeterias.  I ordered a steak 'medium well' and it came out completely brown and as dry as charcoal.  The asparagus was burnt, and the rice had some kind of crusty solidified sauce on top.  The lobster tails were okay, though.

I have noticed, in general, that the marginal value of spending a few more dollars on food is huge.  There is a huge difference between a $10 meal and a $15 meal (usually) and an even greater difference between a $15 meal and a $20 meal.

This is related to the cost structure of restaurants.  A third of their costs are labor, another third are rents and utilities, and the last third is on the food.  But those are just averages; if labor and rent is $5 each, a $20 meal will mean that the restaurant spent twice as much on the food, and that typically means a huge jump in quality.

I will only pay for restaurant food when it is unavoidable, like on vacation or trips.  And in that situation, when I have to pay the money anyway, I might as well pay a little extra for something that is actually better than, or different from, the stuff that I and my family cook on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, there are an increasingly limited number of places that meet that standard.

WEIRD People Part 2

Earlier I discussed a paper talking about how unusual the people in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies are compared to the human average.  Here's a new angle of analysis:

In their main article the authors don't speculate on why WEIRD folks act so differently, but when pressed by comments they suggest:

[Consider] the relative strangeness, in a broad global and historical context, of modern middle-and upper-class American beliefs, values, cultural models, and practices vis-a`-vis childrearing. … These practices impact cognitive, linguistic, and motor development, including long-term cognitive outcomes. …  We speculate that in the context of mobile, meritocratic societies, … cultural evolutionary processes rooted in our evolved tendencies to imitate successful and prestigious individuals will favor the spread of child-rearing traits that speed up and enhance the development of those particular cognitive and social skills that eventually translate into social and economic success in these populations. This kind of cultural evolutionary process may be part of what is driving the dramatic increases in IQ observed in many industrialized nations over the last century, along with increases in biases toward analytical reasoning and individualism. It would also explain the obsession with active instruction of all kinds shown by middle- and upper-class Americans.

It sure seems that these Canadian authors are suggesting that the US (which on a world scale is almost like Canada) is different mainly because the US is better: stronger US competition has more quickly selected for kid-raising norms that make more successful kids, and work norms that are more productive. Seems a remarkably self-centered interpretation for an article claiming that US psychologists are too self-centered.  Doesn't make it wrong of course, but it is noteworthy that they didn't even notice its self-centeredness.

 

Green Burials

One of the more useful and promising features of the environmental movement is that it gives ammunition to change old and inefficient practices that remain in place due to cultural inertia.

Both [cremation and burial] tend to make extravagant use of coffins made from valuable hardwoods such as oak and mahogany. In America the coffin may then go into a cumbersome and expensive burial vault. Unpleasant chemicals abound. A paper published in the Journal of Environmental Health in 2008, entitled "Drinking Grandma", warned about the public-health risks of formaldehyde leaking from cemeteries into groundwater. Cremations are dirty too. Dental fillings mean that they account for as much as a fifth of Britain's mercury emissions: regulations require crematoria to cut mercury emissions by half by 2012.

If economists complain about the money and resources wasted on coffins and other funeral nonsense, we are seen as cold-hearted and inhuman.  But if you greenwash those objections you can get people to listen.  I like the idea of alkaline hydrolysis, also called tissue digestion and resomation; hopefully mass production and legal and cultural acceptance will make it a cost-effective option in the near future.

Scope Sensitivity

Wired Science Article

 

The researchers also examined 133 jury cases between 2000 and 2009 involving exposure to toxic chemicals. They found as the number of people that were effected by the toxic chemicals increased, the amount of total damages the person responsible was asked to pay decreased.

Now those are some perverse incentives.  If you know that you have harmed a few people, and you know that you will be caught eventually and involved in a lawsuit, then you should try to harm as many other people as possible.  After all, a jury will punish you more for poisoning 5 people than for poisoning 500.

Our instincts and emotions simply do not know how to think about any number of people greater than 150.  Our brains only know how to operate in the context of a small tribe, unless we properly train ourselves to avoid these kinds of cognitive biases.