Jason Collins
jasoncollins.blog · Personal blog · on HN since 2018
Jason Collins writes about behavioural science, economics and decision-making, including ergodicity economics and reviews of Kahneman's work.
What HN saysHN links it for ergodicity economics and Kahneman. Commenters raise the replication crisis and doubt that zero-sum trade arguments fit real positive-sum trades.
26HN people shared it
15linked it in comments
14stories submitted
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Most-shared posts
- 1Ergodicity Economics: A Primer3 people · 20 points · first shared 2020 · 2 comments on HN
- 2Ergodicity Economics: A Primer (2020)3 people · 2 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 3Humans 1, Chimps 0: Correcting the Record2 people · 138 points · first shared 2024 · 83 comments on HN
- 4Aren’t we smart, fellow behavioural scientists – Jason Collins blog2 people · 4 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 5Re-Reading Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow2 people · 2 points · first shared 2022 · 1 comments on HN
- 6The marshmallow test held up ok2 people · first shared 2018
- 7Re reading kahnemans thinking fast and slow2 people · first shared 2019
- 8The human benchmark is typically unimpressive1 people · 3 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 9Psychological and Genes' Eye View of Ergodicity Economics1 people · 2 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 10How I focus (and live)1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 11Behavioral science policy recommendations early in the pandemic1 people · 1 points · first shared 2024 · discussion on HN
- 12Bad Behavioural Science: Failures, bias and fairy tales1 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 13The case against loss aversion1 people · 1 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 14Ergodicity Economics: A Primer1 people · 1 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 15Explaining the hoACt hand fallacy fallacy1 people · first shared 2019
What HN people wrote when they linked it
0xBDB · 2022-12-01
Thinking, Fast and Slow is still worth it, but anyone thinking of reading it should probably be aware that it's taken a pretty hard hit in the psychology replication crisis. A lot (the majority, at least at one point) of its cited studies have failed to replicate. They may still be true (I think Kahneman has said that he believes most of them will bear out eventually) but worst case there may be entire chapters that are basically no good.
https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/re-reading-kahnemans-thinking-fast…
sombremesa · 2021-01-22
Here are two other blogs I found through the same (now unknown) source:
- https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/
- https://jasoncollins.blog/
Though they've gotten a bit more topical and/or political in recent times.
Anderkent · 2020-02-22
I guess what I always find unconvincing about these kind of arguments is that they require 0-sum trades, and real world trades are positive sum.
I think this is more of a gambling simulation than an economic one.
However, even with positive-sum games, the nature of the transaction can have big impact on the wealth inequality. There's a great writeup on that in https://jasoncollins.blog/2020/01/22/ergodicity-economics-a-primer/
scottlocklin · 2020-01-14
And you're well served with this response, as the actual work he did is basically not reproducible. No matter how many best selling books made into movies; it's still bullshit.
https://replicationindex.com/category/thinking-fast-and-slow/
https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/kahneman-and-tversky-researched-t…
https://jasoncollins.blog/2016/06/29/re-reading-kahnemans-thinking-fas…
I read it on advice of a good pal, and it sure seemed like bullshit to me.
danShumway · 2019-08-11
This is somewhat eye opening to me, in the same way that Miller and Sunurjo's work was.
> In other words, selecting which part of the data to analyze based on information regarding where streaks are located within the data, restricts your choice, and changes the odds.[0]
I'm not particularly great at statistics, so I fall trap to a lot of these kinds of misconceptions. I appreciate articles like this getting shared, it's incredibly interesting.
[0]: https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/06/28/explaining-the-hoACt-hand-fallacy…
yathaid · 2024-09-06
What you are getting at is that for a single person, the chance of going bankrupt is high but for a population ensemble, the average wealth increases.
This is absolutely true. All it takes is to understand that for the single person, the model isn't ergodic but all expected value based models assume ergodicity.
See [section 4 here](https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/ergodicity-economics-a-primer#losi… on losing wealth on a positive value bet.
jumploops · 2024-08-31
There was a bunch of hype around superior memory in chimpanzees for certain tasks[0].
However, this has subsequently been debunked[1].
Still impressive on the part of chimps!
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNrWUS13th8
[1]https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/humans-1-chimps-0-correcting-the-r…
d4rkp4ttern · 2024-06-14
Reminds me of the book “The Mind Is Flat” by Nick Chater, discussed in this blog :
https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/nick-chaters-the-mind-is-flat-the-…
totetsu · 2023-08-04
is this a related problem to the how many times to flip a coin with a chance to increase your wealth by 50% ?
https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/ergodicity-economics-a-primer
spekcular · 2023-01-02
The experiment is part of a larger research program to study delayed gratification. It was never intended to help parents raise their children. Asking for immediate applications is an odd standard for basic science research. (Unless you reject the value of basic science research entirely.)
Further, the result in a recent replication [1] was a correlation of .28 between the time to ring the bell (to get the marshmallow) and academic achievement. That's not exactly the trivial "4% less likely" effect in your caricature.
(You may also wish to double check your spelling of "marshmallow.")
[1]: https://www.jasoncollins.blog/posts/the-marshmallow-test-held-up-ok
smt88 · 2020-11-30
I have read the paper[1], and its discussion section supports the conclusions drawn by other readers, who are smarter than I am[2][3][4].
Here's one excerpt from the discussion:
> "When considering how our results might inform intervention development, recall that models with con-trols for concurrent measures of cognitive skills and behavior reduced the association between delay of gratification and age-15 achievement to nearly zero."
To put it another way, when controls for education and socioeconomic status are added, there is no significant effect.
1. https://sci-hub.se/10.1177/0956797618761661
2. https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-held-up-ok/
3. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/56…
4. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/6/17413000/marshmallow-t…
lern_too_spel · 2019-08-28
Here are a few examples: https://jasoncollins.blog/2016/06/29/re-reading-kahnemans-thinking-fas…
I would just avoid factoids from psychology altogether for the next few years while the researchers in that field sort everything out. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/psychologys-replic…
Worse, some of the famous studies aren't merely underpowered or based on nonrepresentative samples (like college kids) or sloppily executed — some famous studies are outright fraudulent. https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-frau…
murkle · 2019-08-11
toasterlovin · 2018-10-21
Evolution will take care of falling fertility. Probably won’t take that long, either:
https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/10/11/an-evolutionary-projection-of-glo…
joosteto · 2018-06-03
Response by one of the original authors:
https://jasoncollins.blog/2018/05/31/the-marshmallow-test-held-up-ok/