Digressions&Impressions

Philo of Economics: Scientific Integrity in Econometrics.

In the past 20 years, researchers have begun to embrace the idea that identification is not an all-or-nothing matter and that a set of plausible assumptions that does not deliver point identification can still contain useful information about parameters of interest.

This partial identification view has been motivated by the fact that point identification is not the objective by itself and in essence takes us back to Koopmans & Reiersol’s (1950) dictum whereby the specification of a model ought to be based on [A] the underlying economics, [B] prior knowledge (such as the linearity of variable cost that people have established for this industry), or [C] other assumptions with universal or [C*] almost universal acceptance, but [D] should not be geared primarily toward point identifying the parameters. “Scientific honesty demands that the specification of a model be based [B] on prior knowledge of the phenomenon studied and [E] possibly on criteria of simplicity, but not [D] on the desire for identifiability of characteristics that the researcher happens to be interested in” (Koopmans & Reiersol 1950, pp. 169–70). Once the structure is specified, the model can either have no information about the parameter of interest, restrict the parameter of interest to a nontrivial set, or point identify the parameter of interest. This is exactly the domain of identification analysis, with partial identification taking the view that identification is not only about verifying whether the third case holds, but also determining the extent of information contained in the second and linking this to the type of assumptions that the researcher proposes in the model.--Elie Tamer (2010). [Emphasis and Letters added to facilitate discussion. --ES]*

In quoting Koopmans, who won a Nobel in 1975, and Reiersol (hereafter K&R), Tamer calls attention -- en passant -- to the significance of the role of virtue in ordinary scientific practice. It goes beyond general rules of integrity, by appealing to an explicit rule ('do x or y, but not z') in model specification that prevents abuse of a scientific method. The need to articulate the rule suggests that already back in 1950 K&R  were aware of the danger of (what we might label) fishing expeditions. While reflecting on the fact that K&R, focus exclusively on individual virtue (and ignore incentives, institutions, and detecting mechanism), I noticed something curious about Tamer's passage.

 

Criteria [A] through [C*] are neither obviously identical to each other nor identical with [E]. Moreover, criteria [C] and [C*] are together with criteria [B] essentially conservative: appealing to them prevents exploring unusual, unpopular, or wacky ideas. Now, these criteria prevent researcher's personal idiosyncrasies from generating (ad hoc) results, and (useful when computer power was expensive and scarce) focuses the search space. But it also makes it hard for adventurous and speculative research. Now, I was not surprised by this because I had already claimed that Koopmans should be credited for promoting mathematical econometric techniques and tools – and more generally inferential technologies that produce univocal and stable figures in calculating the implications of policy alternatives – within economics and, of course, to policymakers; this made economists attractive as policy experts (as opposed to say, sociologists, lawyers, anthropologists, and historians).

On Hindsight bias in the writing of History

It is common and tempting fallacy to view the later steps in a mathematical evolution as much more obvious and cogent after the fact than they were beforehand.--Von Neumann (1953) [HT Hülya Eraslan]

In the midst of a priority dispute over the theory of games, Von Neumann states an important truth that generalizes to the writing of history tout court. When one tries to understand what the past looked like to agents, one must guard against hindsight bias.

Even so, we should pause at Von Neumann's "much more obvious and cogent." This implies that the path ahead may well be somewhat obvious and cogent. Obviousness and cogency are terms that convey epistemic states of agents more than ontological states of the (mathematical) target system. Unfortunately, not even all expert, epistemic agents are equal in skill. (From Von Neumann's perspective this is so obvious that he rests his priority claim, in part, on it.) To put the nub in chess-playing terms: sometimes the international grand master really sees the path ahead where the national master just sees vague contours.

The problem in writing the history of intellectually challenging disciplines, is that generally the agents we write about are more skilled than we are in the topic; so it is likely that while we are correctly guarding against hindsight bias, we may miss implications, mathematical and conceptual, that may well have been more obvious and cogent to them. For sometimes they only write down the obvious, when there is a need to make the case (say, in order to establish priority).

On a Joke, in an Educated Age

The world needs philosophy more than philosophy thinks. Philosophy is ill, it might be dying, but I am sure that the world (the world, neither a God nor a prophet, but the world) is saying to philosophy: ‘Get up and walk!’ (Alain Badiou 2003a)

I must purify myself. Now for those whose offense lies in telling false stories about matters divine, there is an ancient rite of purification--Homer did not know it, but Stesichorus did. When he lost his sight for speaking ill of Helen, he did not, like Homer, remain in the dark about the reason why. On the contrary, true follower of  the Muses that he was, he understood it and immediately composed these lines:

There is no truth to that story,

You never sailed that lovely ship,

You never reached the tower of Troy

As soon as he completed the poem we call the Palinode ["the recantation,"] he immediately regained his sight. Now I will prove to be wiser than Homer and Stesichorus to this small extent.--Plato, Phaedrus (243a-b). [Translated by Nehemas & Woodruff as reprinted in the Cooper (ed) Plato: Complete Works.]

There is a medical condition, informally known as 'hysterical blindness;'* somebody's physiology and neurology works well, but the patient reports blindness. The syndrome is often induced by stress or an accident (see here on Wikipedia). It's a tricky syndrome to treat for the attending physician because, as Wikipedia,puts it, "attributing physical symptoms to a psychological cause is not accepted by many educated people in western cultures." 

Out of Tune

The World Is Too Much with Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.-- William Wordsworth.

This afternoon I attended a chamber music recital outside of Amsterdam. In Spring and Summer, Oudekerk aan de Amstel is a charming river village; but on a damp and dreary Winter day the sounds of two highways intersecting in the distance pierce through the valley. After a desultory walk around the village, we entered the neo-classical, Amstelkerk (from 1775). Inside, we came to hear the Uriel ensemble, which is comprised of Concertgebouw musicians, play works by Schumann and Brahms.

Unfortunately, the cello, played by the very experienced Yke Viersen (my whole life the Concertgebouw's cellist--and father of the great Quirine Viersen), repeatedly goes completely out of tune in the first piece, Schumann's Adagio and Allego for piano and cello. Nothing can salvage flat playing.

John Searle does not like the Extended Mind

I think there’s no question that we’re getting an impoverished sensibility as a result of overexposure to electronic media. I don’t read much philosophy, it upsets me when I read the nonsense written by my contemporaries, the theory of extended mind makes me want to throw up…so mostly I read works of fiction and history. I love reading history books and I love reading works of fiction, there’s just an enormous amount of great stuff written.

Faulkner, the great American modernists, I can’t tell you the influence they’ve had on me. No philosopher has influenced me as much as Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald – they’ve had an enormous influence on my whole sensibility – and the whole American modernist tradition. There are so many great history books and great novels, not to mention poetry and other forms of literature, that I spend much more time on literature than I do on philosophy. I’m not boasting about that, I’m complaining, I probably should read more philosophy than I do. But I think a lot of works of philosophy are like root-canal work, you just think you’ve got to get through that damn thing.--John Searle in NewPhilosopher [HT: Lucas Thorpe on FB]

There is no doubt that in old age (Searle is "past 80") some mechanisms can reduce our normal social inhibitions. I wouldn't be surprised if the reduced presence of ordinary routines of external, social control -- work, friends, spouses, etc. -- plays some role in the process. The impartial spectator within can do her job more forcefully in the presence of the right sort of real spectators, after all. And, if we can distribute some of our memories into our environment (computers, diaries, pictures, emails, etc.), why not some of our socially relevant monitoring? This idea is a kind of corollary to the idea of an 'extended mind,' which Searle -- once one of the most important professional philosophers around -- finds so upsetting.

Please give us new human beings

Today I received a call for papers in my email inbox. At first I thought it was satire. But in following the links, I ended up on the EU funded European Network for Social Intelligence.  As we know, European bureaucrats would not risk the ire of the increasingly skeptical public and openly fund satire (of itself). So, what to make of this call for papers? (As an aside, I note that parts of the call are plagiarized from this paper's abstract; I don't mean to suggest that this is anyway an ethical lapse; it's just amusing given the high minded tone.) I quote first, then comment:

Argument and debate form cornerstones of civilized society and of intellectual life. As online interaction usurps many traditional forms of interaction and communication, we would hope to see these processes alive and well on the web. But we do not. In spite of the ever-growing volume of online interaction,  its current mechanisms hamper and discourage serious debate; they facilitate poor quality argument; and they allow fuzzy thinking to go unchecked. Meanwhile, these same online resources are increasingly being trusted and adopted with little critical reflection. The problem needs to be addressed from two different but converging perspectives:

• We need better understanding and widespread awareness in the use of current and future ICT, to enable people to profit from new opportunities for argumentative interaction, instead of being mislead and thwarted by lack of familiarity with the emerging socio-technical systems. Several research areas are critical to this purpose, but their contributions need to be integrated in a concerted effort: among others, philosophy of information, critical thinking, digital literacy, e-inclusion, persuasive technologies, CMC.
• We need new tools, new systems and new standards engineered into the heart of the internet to encourage debate, to facilitate good argument, and to promote a new online critical literacy. This is the vision of the Argument Web, a web platform that brings together different domains and interaction styles (e.g. argument analysis, real-time debate, blogging) by combining linked argument data with software tools that make online debate intuitive for various audiences, including mediators, students, academics, broadcasters and bloggers.

On Joining the Club

It used, I think, to happen a great deal, when one didn’t get called on however often one’s hand went up in a question period until finally at the end one could say something and it was completely misunderstood and dismissed.--Anne J Jacobson "Am I Dead"

I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.--G. Marx.

Variants on the phenomenon that Prof. Jacobson describes above have happened to me, too, quite a bit before April 10, 2005. I say this not to deny that there is no sexism (and racism, etc.), but rather to reflect on the fact that among men there are also huge status differences within professional philosophy. As I have recounted elsewhere (here and here), while I have always had privileged jobs (by academic and non-academic standards), I had a slow start publishing and found it hard to land my first tenure track position. In addition to the phenomenon described above, once I left the safety of my own PhD program,  I have been invisible at the so-called APA Smoker (if you don't know what that is, be grateful for small mercies) to my own placement director; I have had graveyard shift sessions (i.e., the last one on the final day) at the APA clear out of the whole audience after the talk ahead of me; I had an audience laugh after I get introduced as an Adam Smith expert at my job-talk (they invited me to laugh at me?), etc. 

This all changed when my then-colleague, Prof. Dennis Des Chene, asked me to give a talk at a fantastic workshop he hosted in St. Louis. I really didn't want to be at his workshop (I was very upset about being passed over for a position), but Dennis gently prevailed on me. As it happens, by the time of the conference, I had two post-doc offers in hand, and a tenure-track offer at a fantastic department at Syracuse (and a few more offers to come). Dennis made a point of mentioning all of this in the introduction to my talk. The effect was uncanny; it was, as if, I was reborn. (Does that count as a transformative experience, Prof. Paul?)

On Being a Naked Baby

I am 11 years old and I realize I am like a "naked baby" and a total misfit. I must learn to fit into a normal society and I have no training for that, no education to speak of, no manners, such as table manners, hygienic training, etc.. When I speak it is a mixture of three languages, German, Dutch, and Yiddish.

I know how to survive and live in a camp. But that is all I know. I am not proud of some of the things that spell "survival". I am a camp-rat, and I am comfortable with it. I don't know or remember that there is an "outside" where things are different. I feel very angry, bitter and ashamed for being so different from others -- perhaps even for surviving, when so many others did not."--Betty Gerard "The Pain of Liberation."

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked--Genesis 3:7

A few days ago, my dad told me that a friend's mom had died. She had been a member of the Dutch resistance during WWII. Because Jews had no organized resistance in Holland, I asked, "a communist?" My dad nodded. "How did she survive the war?" My dad said, "I don't know." "You never asked or heard about it?" "No. It's not the kind of thing we spoke about." The commercial and political exploitation of collective memory is so familiar to us that we might easily overlook the possible existence of shared reticence.

When we got home from lunch, he handed me two typed written pages. Betty, who died this past year, was my dad's oldest surviving friend. (Below the fold a short interview with her.) Betty and my dad spoke of each other as siblings.  They met in Westerbork (around 1940).* Betty's text helped me grasp features of the "conspiracy of silence" among a community of survivors of persecution. 

Barbarism

Copper prices peaked in about 2010. The bubble seemed to have burst by the middle of 2011. The price did not collapse, but remained robust by historical standards--quantitative easing has worked its magic on commodity prices fueling revolutions and speculative profits (and busts). Amidst globoal turmoil, I cought increasingly frequent reported thefts of copper from the Dutch railroad and electricity companies.

A few weeks ago my dad fell and broke his hip. He is back home and recovering nicely, but I am around his house more often. I found the newspaper clip from 2012 reproduced below among his other papers. The picture shows a grave, some flowers, and a sculpture, sculpted by my dad. After my dad retired, he turned to his original passion, sculpture; he rented a studio, and set to work. Initially, he had modest success with exhibits, commissions, including nice sales. Even so, after about a decade, necessity seemed to ebb away, and when he was kicked out of the studio he did not look for a new one.

Why would a newspaper devote attention to my dad's work?

 

Unexpected comedy and vulgarity at the Recital

Fac me vere tecum flere--unknown poet.

On Sunday evening, my wife took me to Concertgebouw to attend a recital performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with Jaroussky and Julia Lezhneva (Юлия Михайловна Лежнева) as part of an extended birthday celebration. Jaroussky (a counter-tenor) is the star, but Lezhneva's singing stole the show.  Below the picture, two musings on what happens when comedy and vulgarity creep into high art.
as the hall was filling up.