Do Fewer Toys make Better Play?

With fewer toys, participants had fewer incidences of toy play, longer durations of toy play, and played with toys in a greater variety of ways.

From Infant Behavior and Development

Me and my wife are working on a rotating toy system. This week the kids get cars, next week blocks, etc. The idea was inspired by the research above, but fewer toys at a time will help manage the mess anyway.

Why would Women Lie about Al Franken?

It's an open call for anyone to accuse Al Franken of sexual harassment. If you want to garner some victim status, feel like you're a part of something important (#metoo), or if you just hate Al Franken or his politics, now is the time to do it. Everyone will believe you. Nobody will doubt you. Apply now and gain victim status for free!

Just kidding.

I don't know if Al Franken is innocent, but I see perverse incentives to accuse him. To some, the more women accuse him the guiltier he looks. But I'm very aware of the bandwagon effect. The more women accuse him the less likely it is that he has gotten away with it all these years.

Another reason to accuse him is because he actually did it. He was a celebrity so he thought he could get away with it. I don't think it's clear, unfortunately many others do.

SlateStar is against Dog Whistles

Both political sides think they've decoded the secret coded prejudices behind the masks and dog whistles of the other side.

SlateStar has an excellent post about this in his blog history:

In the same way, although dog whistles do exist, the dog whistle narrative has gone so far that it’s become detached from any meaningful referent. It went from people saying racist things, to people saying things that implied they were racist, to people saying the kind of things that sound like things that could imply they are racist even though nobody believes that they are actually implying that. Saying things that sound like dog whistles has itself become the crime worthy of condemnation, with little interest in whether they imply anything about the speaker or not. 

Against this narrative, I propose a different one – politicians’ beliefs and plans are best predicted by what they say their beliefs and plans are, or possibly what beliefs and plans they’ve supported in the past, or by anything other than treating their words as a secret code and trying to use them to infer that their real beliefs and plans are diametrically opposite the beliefs and plans they keep insisting that they hold and have practiced for their entire lives.

Should You Believe all Women?

Should we "believe all women" and take the burden of proof away from sexual crimes?

Even though there's incentive to lie because it makes you feel like you're a part of something (#metoo), gain status as a victim (Victimhood culture), and have the ability to destroy any man you might not like?

I believe that it’s condescending to think that women and their claims can’t stand up to interrogation and can’t handle skepticism. I believe that facts serve feminists far better than faith. That due process is better than mob rule.

Agreed.

What do Economists think of the Trump Tax Plan?

Top Economists have a consensus on the matter:

Note that there is a lot of uncertainty over whether the tax plan will "substantially" raise GDP. If you listen to Tyler Cowen, raising GDP might be so important that it crushes any tradeoffs that come along with it.

Clearly, even with a higher GDP the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise. Obviously because these lower taxes will not raise tax revenue.

The survey comes from the IGM Forum, which polls economists on a ton of issues. I think you should care since it seems pretty likely that if you disagree with all the experts, and don't even know what the experts believe, you might be irrational.

Is WalMart Good for Consumers?

Oh how WalMart is underrated:

In this paper we estimate consumer benefits from supercenter entry and expansion into markets for food. We estimate a discrete choice model for household shopping choice of supercenters and traditional outlets for food. We have panel data for households so we can follow their shopping patterns over time and allow for a fixed effect in their shopping behavior. Most households shop at both supercenters and traditional outlets during the period. Given a model of shopping behavior we estimate the compensating variation of household from the presence of supercenters. We find the benefits to be substantial. Thus, while we do not estimate the costs to workers who may receive lower wages and benefits, we find the effects of supercenter entry and expansion to be sufficiently large so that overall we find it to be extremely unlikely that the expansion of supercenters does not confer a significant overall benefit to consumers...

Wal-Mart offers many identical food items at an average price about 15%-25% lower than traditional supermarkets...

We estimate the average effect of the total the compensating variation to be 25% of food expenditure, a sizeable estimate...

Since we find that lower income households tend to shop more at these low priced outlets and their compensating variation is higher from supercenters than higher income households, a significant decrease in consumer surplus arises from zoning regulations and pressure group tactics that restrict the entry and expansion of supercenters into particular geographic markets.

From MIT's economics department of Agriculture

Pro-torture Sometimes

Is torture useful?

I actually think it probably is useful. People respond to incentives, if you give people an incentive through torture to give up information, they're more likely to give it up. Torture makes the cost of not talking high. This is not too complicated, when governments don't want people to do something they tax it, when they want someone to do something they subsidize it. Torture is a tax on keeping your mouth shut.

What if they still don't talk? Raise the tax; turn the torture up a notch.

If they still don't talk? Repeat

And if they still don't talk after you've maxed out the torture? Well I said that torture works, not that it always works. Give up this time.

What if they lie? Make the credible promise of more torture if they're found out to have lied about it.

That doesn't mean torture is just. It only means torture is useful. It could be that despite its usefulness we still shouldn't do it because it's wrong.

But commonsense morality says otherwise. When I ask people whether they will kill a baby to save the world, they always save the baby. People are mild deontologists. They wouldn't kill to save 2 lives, but they would to save 100. And you're telling me that they wouldn't torture a terrorist to save the world? To save a country? To save 100 innocent people?

On this issue, one side has taken the torture the never-ever torture position, but the other side hasn't taken the always torture position, that's absurd! The other side is a sometimes torture position. They simply believe that there are times when torture is permissible. We can debate when that may be the case, but that's variance within the pro-torture position.

I had a similar epiphany regarding the pro-life position. Pro-life believe that life begins at conception and not a moment later. Pro-choice captures all the differences outside of that.

When your side holds one sliver of the possible right answers, and the other side holds everything outside of that, your side isn't set up for success.