Hopefully Anonymous

GMU Econ Ph.D. Class of 2015?

TGGP, Michael Vassar, Carl Shulman, Eliezer Yudkowsky: would you all be interested in doing an Econ Ph.D. with me at GMU with Robin Hanson as our thesis advisor? Starting around Fall 2011 (should give us all enough time to get our affairs in order and get prepared). I suspect we'd all get admitted, and that we could all use the education that would come with an econ Ph.D. Don't know about the prestige that comes with a GMU econ Ph.D. (I imagine it's less than Harvard, MIT, etc.) but I think it would be a lot of fun. We'd get an academic credential basically for doing more rigorously what we're all doing on these blogs and these comment threads already.

If Robin was at a more prestigious university, and particularly if he was an applied math professor, I'd probably have no doubts about doing this solo. But what would make it interesting is if I had classmates like the 4 of you all, instead of the less interesting, less creative, and less ambitious thinkers that I imagine typify most econ grad students at GMU (or anywhere). If I'm wrong, where are their incredibly interesting blogs and blog comments?

Meta-self-aware-transparency

What's the difference between these words? What are correct and incorrect ways to use them? To what degree do the definitions and useful usages overlap? To what degree do they not overlap? meta, awareness, transparency, meta-awareness, meta-transparency, self-awareness, meta-self.

What I've been looking at: free online textbooks and elite curriculums

Been surfing the net, looking at free online textbooks for:

1. Neuroscience
2. Game Theory
3. Economics
4. Statistics
5. Behavorial Economics
6. Evolutionary Psychology

and perusing the required courses for elite graduate professional institutions (business schools, law schools, engineering schools).

The Evolutionary Psychology of Tom McCabe

I see that Tom McCabe preceded me in expressing an interest in evolutionary psychology:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2007/06/how-can-i-contribute-to-the-transhumanist-movement/#comment-57399

It's rare that I see an interest so exactly mirrored in advance, so I checked out his blog and it's quite good:

http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/tom/

It's generally reassuring for me to run into what I consider to be a more intelligent version of myself. Because I doubt I'm smart enough to solve the problems Tom and I both face in the next few decades and beyond. Hopefully Tom can solve them and I can free ride (or failing that, contribute according to my abilities).

Microsociology: An aptonym?

social psychology >>> microsociology >>> sociology

That's the ascending order of scope of study of humans as a social entity, at least according to this wikipedia entry on microsociology (which seems to be an aptonym given the size of the wikipedia entry and the field).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsociology

I stumbled upon this in searching for the currently active heirs to Goffman's theories and observations of humans in social interactions (status, performance, covering). The search continues.

Update: Here microsociology is called "one of the main branches of sociology":

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Microsociology

Cultural anthropology, the empiricism based seduction community, the study of poker as a model for strategic interaction (like Prof. Nesson is doing through the Global Poke Strategy Society) much of the ork of Erving Goffman; all of these seem to me to fall naturally under microsociology. And a huge swath of my interests do too.

who are the intellectual heirs of Erving Goffman?

who are the intellectual heirs of Erving Goffman?

Who were his grad students and junior collaborators that went on and added to his contributions? When talking about performing identities, or covering stigma, it seems silly to cite writings from the '50s and '60s by a guy dead more than 20 years. So who is doing cutting edge work in his fields of interest and innovation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erving_Goffman

The Silent Superminority: Thinkers who don't make "repugnance" arguments

I recognize that nearly no one is making the argument for us to overcome repugnance (for example, by engaging in noncensensual human medical experimentation), but I've notice that some thinkers carefully avoid using repugnance as the basis for any of their arguments or policy positions. I'm going to try to create a list of such thinkers. Readers, I encourage you to help me in this. I think repugnance/eww bias is one of the biggest warpers of our collective decision making, resulting in greater risk of repugnant outcomes for many (if not all of us). At the least, consequentialists should be more concerned about that than I've seen expressed in the social discourse.

Interesting article on behavioral economics from Harvard Mag

The article is a couple of years old, but it's well-written. I ran into it searching on "behavorial economist" and "procrastination".

http://www.povertyactionlab.com/news/HarvardMagazine05.01.06.pdf

Fun comment war in early Woit blog post

Fun to read blog comment war in one of Woit's earliest posts:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3#comments

I wish Terry Tao's blog attracted this level of debate and controversy.

Woit's Fantastic Blog

Woit's fantastic blog:

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

A sample of his humor: "Perhaps the LHC will revive the subject of particle theory, by producing a wormhole that will take the world back to its other end, opened up in 1985 by a DeLorean in the movie, from there setting us off into a more promising part of the multiverse."

The man writes superb prose, dishes plenty of ubergenius gossip, it's just a great blog. I just discovered it, but I'm already thinking it may be the mindhacks of mathematical physics blogs.