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Thread: The Harvard Implicit Association Project

  1. #1

    Default The Harvard Implicit Association Project

    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    Link is broke for me, so I got this: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/
    "In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."

  3. #3
    oops, my bad... it was the race study
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  4. #4
    Race study? I ran into an ageism study that told me I liked children and hated teenagers. Pretty much a sophisticated personality test, if by sophisticated I mean convoluted.

  5. #5
    The Weapons ('Weapons - Harmless Objects' IAT) is really the most provocative one there I took.

    These are interesting.

  6. #6
    I encountered this in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. It's not as satisfying or as persuasive as eg. Outliers, but contains references to a lot of interesting (if somewhat contested) studies in sociology and psychology.

    Another very interesting concept is that of "priming", of which a very provocative example is presented in the book involving the effect of race-priming on performance. In that experiment, black students tended to do worse on tests when they were asked to identify their race prior to taking the test. Naturally none of them could explain why they performed the way they did. When asked, many resorted to the obvious explanations: they just weren't smart enough, the test was too hard, etc. Scary stuff.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  7. #7
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    The Weapons ('Weapons - Harmless Objects' IAT) is really the most provocative one there I took.

    These are interesting.
    Enh. Maybe, they could be potentially interesting and revealing if they weren't so fundamentally flawed. I just did the black folks are weapons one, and while I was disappointed to find out that I have "little or no association ..." between blacks and weapons, I don't think it's actually reflective or probative of my thoughts, conscious or otherwise.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  8. #8
    Their findings are interesting for the general trends they've found from testing large numbers of people over a long time.

    I myself tend to associate weapons with white people aka. rednecks I rarely associate anything with black Americans, perhaps because they don't feature prominently in my day to day life.
    "One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."

  9. #9
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
    Their findings are interesting for the general trends they've found from testing large numbers of people over a long time.
    I guess, but I've long held the belief that most people are stupid and prone to irrationality, so nothing new for me in that light either.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by CitizenCain View Post
    I guess, but I've long held the belief that most people are stupid and prone to irrationality, so nothing new for me in that light either.
    I

    I just felt a great disturbance in the Force

    As if a millions of economists had cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced!
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  11. #11
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Whyzat?

    Economics is about aggregate behavior, not whether or not individual choices are rational... and my economics profs were usually quick to point out that individual choices often aren't rational. Doesn't change the applicability (or existence) of the laws of economics, though.
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  12. #12
    It's a bit like with car drivers and congestion, I guess. Aggregate behaviour benefits no one past a certain point due to irrational and/or selfish behaviour by some of the individuals. I have no idea whether that holds for the markets, but if I had to guess...

    Like, right now the US would benefit from some inflation so all the capital owners would have an incentive to release some of their funds to the wild. Of course the inflation would serve as a pragmatic reason for said investing/buying/anti-hoarding, but looking at it from a tree, a majority of the populace (and thus the 'economy') would prefer that spending either way.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  13. #13
    That didn't really make sense. Maybe the problem is that ultimately people can't agree on the definition of "rational". Bluuugh.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  14. #14
    Unlike biology, economics isn't very good at reductionism. What makes sense at the aggregate level doesn't necessarily make sense at the individual level. Yet the data is often there in aggregate.

    Also, economics makes a big to-do about incentives. Doesn't mean those incentives work better when they are explained clearly.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by CitizenCain View Post
    Whyzat?

    Economics is about aggregate behavior, not whether or not individual choices are rational... and my economics profs were usually quick to point out that individual choices often aren't rational. Doesn't change the applicability (or existence) of the laws of economics, though.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    Unlike biology, economics isn't very good at reductionism. What makes sense at the aggregate level doesn't necessarily make sense at the individual level. Yet the data is often there in aggregate.

    Also, economics makes a big to-do about incentives. Doesn't mean those incentives work better when they are explained clearly.
    Econ makes a big to-do about numbers and stats, too. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

    But those soft "laws" of behavioral economics and individual choices aren't comparable to the hard "laws" of gravity, physics or biology. The apple doesn't ask for any human permission to mature, ripen, or fall from the tree. There's no seeking human help from falling to the ground or becoming bird and worm food, decaying and decomposing back into the ground and feeding the tree's roots. The process is "perfect" on its own, without any human intervention. Biology and gravity and chemistry just does its own things, left to their own devices.

    Academic Economics, though, requires humans as part of the process. It's far from "perfect", and there aren't any Natural Laws, because human beings use more than animal instinct in their interactions. We make conscious choices, we can try to defy biology, gravity, and chemistry. We think of ourselves as not just part of any landscape or environment, but as leaders and commanders of everything that touches our lives.

    Too bad our superiority attitudes didn't come with equal measures of stewardship and responsibility.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    Unlike biology, economics isn't very good at reductionism. What makes sense at the aggregate level doesn't necessarily make sense at the individual level. Yet the data is often there in aggregate.
    I guess, but once the system is composed of a sufficiently large number of particles, things tend to become easier to handle. The system is just rather counter-intuitive to me since the high-energy outliers have such a huge impact on the entire ensemble at all times. And all those hidden variables, oy vey!

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
    Also, economics makes a big to-do about incentives. Doesn't mean those incentives work better when they are explained clearly.
    Right, which is why it'd be nice if people were "rational" enough to be predictable. This needn't coincide with what "common sense" finds rational, natch.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  17. #17
    What kinds of high-energy outliers do you have in mind?

  18. #18
    This such a fucked metaphor, but obviously the ones with investing power (giving kinetic energy to the rest of the particle population); the almighty job-creators, dontcha kno'
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  19. #19
    De Oppresso Liber CitizenCain's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nessus View Post
    the almighty job-creators
    Like johns?
    "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

    -- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.

  20. #20
    I'm afraid it is you who is the receptacle in that exchange.
    In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
    The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

  21. #21
    Interesting, but useless. At least from a personal viewpoint.

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