by John Q on February 13, 2004
I thought I’d repost this piece from my old blog, because a multidisciplinary audience is just what it needs. The starting point is as follows:
Data mining’ is an interesting term. It’s used very positively in some academic circles, such as departments of marketing, and very negatively in others, most notably departments of economics. The term refers to the use of clever automated search techniques to discover putatively significant relationships in large data sets, and is widely used in a positive context. For economists, however, the term is invariably used with the implication that the relationships discovered are spurious, or at least that the procedure yields no warrant for believing that they are real. The classic article is Lovell, M. (1983), ‘Data mining’, Review of Economics and Statistics 45(1), 1–12, which long predates the rise to popularity of data mining in many other fields
So my first question is whether the economists are isolated on this, as on so much else? My second question is how such a situation can persist without any apparent awareness or concern on either side of the divide.
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by Kieran Healy on February 13, 2004
Until this afternoon, a “Google search”:http://www.google.com/search?q=valentine+poem&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 for the phrase “‘Valentine Poem'”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000281.html promptly returned “this elegaic masterpiece”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/000281.html high on the first page of results. (I know this because its been the most popular search referrer to my “website”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/blog for each of the past ten days.) Written last year by one of the leading poetic talents of his generation, I think it’s a lot better than the crap that appears to have displaced it — but whoever said “democracy”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001306.html makes the best choices?
by Ted on February 13, 2004
(UPDATE: Glenn has taken down the link to the post in question. We all make mistakes. Original post below the fold, edited somewhat.)
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by Chris Bertram on February 12, 2004
“Today is the 200th anniversary of Immanuel Kant’s death”:http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1441_A_1112709_1_A,00.html , a day that shouldn’t pass unremarked on a site whose title is drawn from his writings. For comment elsewhere see “Normblog”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2004/02/categorically_n.html and “The Virtual Stoa”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2004_02_01_archive.html#107659111717193752 (where Chris Brooke has assembled some of Kant’s choicest footnotes).
by Brian on February 12, 2004
I hadn’t noticed this before, but Mark Kleiman has on his website a fun collection of aphorisms he co-collated with David Chu-wen Hsia. I normally stay away from aphorisms because they remind me of Wittgenstein and anything that reminds me of Wittgenstein makes me irritated, but there’s some good stuff here. What I really wanted to comment on though was the following.
bq. Masculine pronouns, and “man” for “human being,” occur throughout. English needs neuter personal pronouns, but currently lacks them. We can’t do much about that now without great loss of force. (Those who doubt this sad fact are urged to try their hands at gender-neutralizing “Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”) Our apologies to those offended.
That’s not the hardest challenge I’ve seen today. This isn’t a perfect translation into gender-neutral language, but it’s pretty close.
bq. No person has greater love than to lay down their life for their friends.
People who think ‘they’ is invariably a plural pronoun won’t like this, but they’re wrong for both etymological and ordinary language reasons.
by Jon Mandle on February 12, 2004
The New York Times reports that “The Justice Department is demanding that at least six hospitals … turn over hundreds of patient medical records on certain abortions performed there.” This is necessary, they claim, in order to defend the new prohibition on “partial birth” abortions. This is bad enough, since as David Seldin, a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice America, puts it: “This notion of John Ashcroft poring over medical records in a fairly unprecedented type of fishing expedition is exactly the type of privacy invasion that worries people.”
But the real news comes in paragraph 15, where we learn that the Justice Department argued that in light of “modern medical practice” and the growth of third party insurers, “individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential.”
by Harry on February 12, 2004
Laura has two interesting posts, the first on the desirability of equal-split houseworking and parenting, and how difficult it is to achieve (prompted by reading Naomi Wolf’s self indulgent whinings about the issue); the second a collection of vignettes from her readers about how they try to manage equal-split houseworking and parenting (and, in some cases, fail). Generally, it seems, the women do more than half. Laura’s response to Wolf is interesting, and less daring from her than it would be from me:
bq. My first thoughts were to advise all my single friends to stay away from careerist husbands. Girls, go for the slackers. They might not make senior partner, but they’ll make your dinner and play with the kids. You might not be able to afford a house in a town with a good school district, but so what. He’s made lasagna for dinner.
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by Chris Bertram on February 12, 2004
Scott Martens at a Fistful of Euros has some “useful thoughts on the passing of the anti-headscarf law”:http://fistfulofeuros.net/archives/000349.php by the French National Assembly. See also Chris Brooke on this. “Chris is pessimistic”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2004_02_01_archive.html#107650364893294090 about the law being struck down by the Conseil d’Etat but “its record hitherto”:http://perso.wanadoo.fr/felina/doc/laic/conseil_etat.htm on this issue has been quite liberal and tolerant — so I’m not so sure.
by Eszter Hargittai on February 12, 2004
by Henry Farrell on February 11, 2004
“Ed Felten”:http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000509.html has a nice post on Google from a few days ago, suggesting that laments for the halycon days before people tried to manipulate Google are misconceived. His rejoinder: Google results don’t represent some Platonic ideal of the truth – they’re the product of collective choice.
bq. Google is a voting scheme. Google is not a mysterious Oracle of Truth but a numerical scheme for aggregating the preferences expressed by web authors.
This means, as Felten suggests, that Google isn’t perfect, and can’t be. Indeed, the point is underlined by “Arrow’s possibility theorem”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A520372 which says, more or less, that any form of aggregate decision making is going to be flawed under certain reasonable assumptions. Felten’s insight is an important one – it opens the door for the application of a plethora of interesting results from the theory of collective choice to Google and other aggregators/search engines. There are some eminently publishable academic papers in there for anyone who’s familiar both with this literature, and with public choice theory. There’s a more general point too. Much of the early rhetoric about the Internet suggested that it somehow managed to escape from politics. Some people (Declan McCullagh for example) are still trying to peddle this line. It’s ridiculous. The Internet and other communications technologies involve real collective choices, with real political consequences, and the sooner we all realize this, the better.
by Chris Bertram on February 11, 2004
I’ve been following a “debate that’s been going on (and off) at Butterflies and Wheels”:http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/notesarchive.php?id=342 over the past few weeks and wondering about a move that my fellow atheist Ophelia Benson makes there. Ophelia quotes Michael Ruse thus:
bq. People like Dawkins, and the Creationists for that matter, make a mistake about the purposes of science and religion. Science tries to tell us about the physical world and how it works. Religion aims at giving a meaning to the world and to our place in it. Science asks immediate questions. Religion asks ultimate questions. There is no conflict here, except when people mistakenly think that questions from one domain demand answers from the other. Science and religion, evolution and Christianity, need not conflict, but only if each knows its place in human affairs — and stays within these boundaries.
To which she replies:
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by Kieran Healy on February 11, 2004
I’ve never found the argument that conservatives are discriminated against in academia terribly compelling. But it does seem like an interesting case, if only because in making it common or garden conservatives are forced to admit the existence of institutionalized inequality, something they are usually loath to acknowledge. Andrew Sullivan “just bumped into this question.”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_02_08_dish_archive.html#107643316018754888 (Via “Pandagon”:http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/001047.html.) He raises and then dismisses the most parsimonious explanation for this inequality, namely that conservatives are just not as clever as liberals and so don’t get hired. He quotes a tongue-in-cheek line from a Duke Prof, who says “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire. Mill’s analysis may go some way towards explaining the power of the Republican party in our society and the relative scarcity of Republicans in academia.”[1] Andy is not persuaded, of course. But why not?
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by Chris Bertram on February 10, 2004
Two hundred years after the foundation of the world’s first black republic, “Ian Thomson, writing in the Guardian, hails Toussaint L’Ouverture”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1134518,00.html . For those who don’t know his story, C.L.R. James’s “The Black Jacobins”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679724672/junius-20 is the place to look. And here is Wordsworth’s poem in full:
bq. Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men!
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den; —
O miserable Chieftain! where and when
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow:
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again,
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies;
There’s not a breathing of the common wind
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.
by Harry on February 10, 2004
Kevin Drum’s seemingly innocent question about why kids don’t walk to school anymore has prompted some interesting discussions about what makes for a good childhood. This is a discussion liberals often like to avoid because they don’t want to appear to be judgmental about other people’s parenting practices, and especially fear accusations of being racist, elitist, or culturally imperialist. For example, the claim that so-called ‘middle-class parenting practices’ (which include talking to your kids, reasoning with them rather than demanding blind obedience, ensuring, if one is divorced, that they maintain contact with their other initial parent) are responsible for success in school is often criticized not for being untrue but for blaming the parents (or the poor, or racial minorities).
But this is one of those areas where we have to make value judgments. We make them personally in our own decisions about how to raise our own kids, because we want to give them better rather than worse childhoods. And we have to make judgments about what makes for a better rather than worse childhoods for policy purposes. One comment in Keiran’s thread noted that new housing developments frequently have no sidewalks. The zoning board, in those cases, has assumed either that it is ok for children to be entirely restricted to private spaces, or that they will be so restricted anyway so why force developers to waste money on sidewalks? It is right to criticize the zoning board (not the developer) for failing properly to incorporate quality-of-childhood issues into their decisions.
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by Chris Bertram on February 10, 2004
In partial reply to “Brian Leiter’s (statisticallly supported) claim”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/000797.html that people are better off living in social democratic nations (Western Europe, Canada …) than in the United States, “David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy writes”:http://volokh.com/2004_02_08_volokh_archive.html#107635122273206108 :
bq. I don’t recall any American I’ve met in my entire life permanently settling in Europe….
Well those I know aren’t dead yet — so it may depend on what you mean by “permanently” — but it wasn’t hard for me to get into double figures from people I know reasonably well here in the UK, some of whom have been resident for over thirty years.