I haven't psychologically come to terms yet with the fact that we are approaching Christmas, so will continue with regular blog service for a few days. Very interesting time to be in Ireland. One of the most talked-about economic plunges in history and the most dramatic winter since at least before I was born, which means the country has largely ground to a halt again for a few days. If nothing else, the phrase "the luck of the Irish" means something a lot different than it used to mean. Though, considering the turbulent nature of Irish history, I'm not entirely sure how that phrase gained positive connotations.
1. Stanford's edu page on youtube has some really nice lectures. There are a number of lectures by Zimbardo. His lecture on evil and heroism is delivered in his usual absorbing style. Its really great to watch these lectures - most of the material is familiar to me but still absorbing. The phrase "Heroism is the antidote to evil" sounds trite but the depth of the argument is very profound, building on 40 years of research.
2. Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330, 932.
3. Einstein for the Masses on the Yale channel. Funny and engaging lecture on relativity. Nice model for how to treat alumni.
4. Via Economix, "austerity" is the most searched-for word this year on the Webster online dictionary.
5. Nicholas Barberis's talk on Yale's channel on behavioural finance and the financial crisis is a nice overview of the cognitive and social psychology of financial crises. Nice set of notes here on applications of prospect theory in finance.
6. Richard Tol on ranking business schools in Ireland.
7. Via Philip Lane, the Central Bank has a new data series on the foreign claims on domestic Irish banks. Hopefully, this will stop the habit in some papers of including the foreign claims on international IFSC banks in calculations of Irish external debt. Things are bad enough!
8. Tyler Cowen on twitter asks "On what grounds can Fianna Fail possibly campaign for reelection? Marketing challenge". Ken McKenzie and I solved this recently. "Fianna Fail: The Government You Deserve".
2 comments:
Link to mind wandering.pdf
The conclusion of the article in Science is "In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.
The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost." The second sentence is a non-sequitur. Has nobody told these scientists that correlation is not causation? D'oh.
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