Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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Highlights From The Comments On The 2020 Homicide Spike Jul 08, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-the-bb9

Thanks to the 750 of you who commented on the homicide spike post (as of last weekend when I collated these highlights). I don't have enough space here to address everything, but here are some general themes:

Was It Guns?

Artifex0 on the subreddit writes:

You mentioned that you haven't looked closely into the idea that increased gun sales were to blame. I haven't either, but that hypothesis immediately seems more plausible to me. Here's a graph of gun sales showing the pretty big spike around the same time as the homicide spike

Nobody Knows How Well Homework Works Jul 07, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/nobody-knows-how-well-homework-works

Yesterday I wrote about bottlenecks to learning. I wanted to discuss the effectiveness of homework. If it works well, that would suggest students are bottlenecked on examples and repetition. If it works poorly, it would have to be something else.

Unfortunately, all the research on this (showcased in eg Cooper 2006) is terrible.

Most studies cited by both sides use "time spent doing homework" as the independent variable, then correlate it with test scores or grades. If students who do more time on homework get better test scores, they conclude homework works; otherwise, that it doesn't.

Study: Ritalin Works, But School Isn't Worth Paying Attention To Jul 07, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/study-ritalin-works-but-school-isnt

Recent study, Pelham et al: The Effect Of Stimulant Medication On The Learning Of Academic Curricula In Children With ADHD.

It's gotten popular buzz as "scientists have found medication has no detectable impact on how much children with ADHD learn in the classroom" and "Medication alone has no impact on learning". This probably comes as a surprise if you've ever worked with stimulants, ADHD patients, or classrooms, so let's take a look.

Your Book Review: The Internationalists Jul 04, 2022

Show notes

Finalist #8 in the Book Review Contest

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-internationalists

[This is one of the finalists in the 2022 book review contest. It's not by me - it's by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done, to prevent their identity from influencing your decisions. I'll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you've read them all, I'll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked - SA]

In The Internationalists, Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro (H&S from now on) work to raise the profile of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, at the time the most-ratified treaty in history, in which 63 nations (unlike today, this was most of the world - 51 became founding members of the United Nations) came together to declare war illegal. Here is the Pact, in full.

Signatories shall renounce war as a national policy and;

Signatories shall settle disputes by peaceful means

Links For June Jul 03, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/links-for-june-1e7

[Remember, I haven't independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can't guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]

1: Did you know: seven countries in East Africa plan to merge into a single state sometime in the next few years (I bet it won't happen).

Highlights From The Comments On San Fransicko Jul 02, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-san

[Original post here]

Nifty775 writes:

This doesn't address allegations that many of California's homeless are from elsewhere, but deliberately moved to a few metro areas due to nice weather and generous social services. (Or, I've heard stories that their local town put them on a bus to SF). If .2% of the population everywhere is basically OK with a lifestyle of camping on the street and doing drugs, and then they all cluster in one area- that area will likely end up a mecca of homelessness.

Many comments made this point. Shellenberger did bring it up in the book, so its absence in the post is my fault and mine alone. He writes:

I asked experts and advocates, "How do we know that the homeless population won't replace itself if provided with housing?" Said Randy Shaw, the Tenderloin permanent supportive housing provider, "The question you're raising is one that never gets discussed. Somehow, there's this sense that San Francisco is under the obligation that anyone who comes here we have to suddenly house. There is an underlying logic that San Francisco doesn't really ever want to talk about."

What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike? Jul 02, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-caused-the-2020-homicide-spike

In my review of San Fransicko, I mentioned that it was hard to separate the effect of San Francisco's local policies from the general 2020 spike in homicides, which I attributed to the Black Lives Matter protests and subsequent police pullback.

The nationwide 2020 spike in homicides (source). The spike is small compared to the secular trend from the 1960s through 2000, but large by the standards of the past twenty years.

Several people in the comments questioned my attribution, saying that they'd read news articles saying the homicide spike was because of the pandemic, or that nobody knew what was causing the spike. I agree there are many articles like that, but I disagree with them. Here's why:

Model City Monday 6/27/22 Jul 01, 2022

Show notes

ZEDE update, Afropolitan, and we're going to Disney World!

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/model-city-monday-62722

Goodbye, ZEDE Law

The story so far: in the mid 2010s, Honduras passed a first-in-the-world law saying that private actors could apply to run charter cities / special economic zones (ZEDEs) on Honduran territory. Three groups took them up on the offer and designed various interesting projects.

In January, Honduras kicked out the right-wing government that passed the ZEDE law and replaced it with a socialist party led by Xiomara Castro, which had made opposition to the ZEDEs part of its platform. In April, the new government repealed the ZEDE law, with uncertain consequences.

Your Book Review: Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy Jun 29, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-public-choice-theory

Finalist #7 In The Book Review Contest

[update 6/26: at least one paragraph of this review appears to be plagiarized; see here for more information. I will be investigating this and possibly disqualifying it from the contest -SA]

Introduction

[In Public Choice Theory And The Illusion Of Grand Strategy], Richard Hanania details how a public choice model (imported from public choice theory in economics) can explain the United State's incoherent foreign policy much better than the unitary actor model (imported from rational choice theory in economics) that underlies the illusion of American grand strategy in international relations (IR), in particular the dominant school of realism. As the subtitle How Generals, Weapons Manufacturers, and Foreign Governments Shape American Foreign Policy suggests, American foreign policy is driven by special interest groups, which results in millions of deaths for no good reason.

Book Review: San Fransicko Jun 28, 2022

Show notes

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-san-fransicko

Last month I discussed the platforms of twenty-six candidates for California governor. One candidate, author and activist Michael Shellenberger, objected to my characterization of him, so I read his book San Fransicko to learn more and decide whether I owed him an apology.

San Fransicko is subtitled "Why Progressives Ruin Cities". It builds off the kind of stories familiar to most Bay Area residents:

In the spring of 2021 two colleagues and I went to San Francisco. We first went to check in on the open-air drug scenes in the Tenderloin and United Nations Plaza. It was the usual scenes of people sitting against buildings and injecting drug needles into their necks and feet. There was garbage, old food, and feces everywhere. After a couple of hours, we decided to go out to eat in the Mission. Work was over. We were all looking forward to a relaxing dinner. We were eating ice cream and walking along Valencia Street when a psychotic man, perhaps about thirty years old, began following us and screaming obscenities. When we turned around to look at him, he screamed at us, "What are you looking for, huh! WHAT. ARE. YOU. LOOKING. FOR!" and started walking faster toward us. We walked faster until the man found other people to verbally assault.

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