Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 15:27:03 JST jonny (good kind)

   They did WHAT
   https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02/05/no-data-no-problem-undisclosed-tinkering-in-excel-behind-economics-paper/

   • clacke likes this.
   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 15:27:45 JST jonny (good kind)

     in reply to

     Economics is a discipline where its only a matter of mild concern to just excel autocomplete your data until the GDP of New Zealand is Tuesday

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Chris Real (_chris_real@kolektiva.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 15:27:48 JST Chris Real

     in reply to

     @jonny

     Economics is astrology for the rich.

     This will explain all, in this matter of mild concern.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     publius (publius@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 15:28:00 JST publius

     in reply to

     • Chris Real

     @_chris_real @jonny

     I've been known to say that economists serve the same function in the modern world that soothsayers did in the ancient world, giving a veneer of divine sanction to the arbitrary choices of the powerful.

   • Embed this notice
     Ian Douglas Scott (ids1024@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 17:48:49 JST Ian Douglas Scott

     in reply to

     @jonny "New Zealand’s data had been copied from the Netherlands"

     Imagine a chemistry paper where they couldn't find data on a certain property of bismuth, so (without disclosing it in the paper) they used data about beryllium. Not because that's the closest element on the periodic table, or even anywhere near it, but because they're closest in alphabetical order.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 17:48:52 JST clacke

     in reply to
     @jonny Old school data science AI!
   • Embed this notice
     phiofx (phiofx@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 18:01:37 JST phiofx

     in reply to

     @jonny its wasn't me who did it. It was the invisible hand of the markets

   • Embed this notice
     Karthik Srinivasan (skarthik@neuromatch.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 21:54:16 JST Karthik Srinivasan

     in reply to

     • Nicole Rust

     @jonny @NicoleCRust

     Reminded me of this:

     https://theconversation.com/the-reinhart-rogoff-error-or-how-not-to-excel-at-economics-13646

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 21:54:17 JST jonny (good kind)

     in reply to

     • Nicole Rust

     @NicoleCRust
     They seemed to genuinely not know it was a bad idea to do that. Like they openly volunteered that was the method, and even demoed how to do it when this person asked. Usually im like "if you need to do imputation on something that isnt a well-behaved, oversampled timeseries then what you really need to do is change your analysis strategy" but this is like 5 levels beyond that

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Nicole Rust (nicolecrust@neuromatch.social)'s status on Sunday, 11-Feb-2024 21:54:18 JST Nicole Rust

     in reply to

     @jonny
     WHAT WHAT??

   • Embed this notice
     Voline (voline@kolektiva.social)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 18:21:16 JST Voline

     in reply to

     • nullagent

     @jonny @nullagent

     “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”

     — Joan Robinson. *Contributions to Modern Economics*. Oxford: Basil Blackford, 1978. 75.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Matthew Martin (mistersql@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 18:21:18 JST Matthew Martin

     in reply to

     @jonny Y'all think it took LLMs to get people to ask the machines to just make stuff up.

   • Embed this notice
     violetmadder (violetmadder@kolektiva.social)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 18:21:18 JST violetmadder

     in reply to

     • Matthew Martin

     @mistersql @jonny

     If people think THIS kind of outrageous bullshit is reasonable, you can BET they're going to automatically treat the "AI" wordsalad generators as magical fountains of truth. Without even stopping to think twice.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     WeiserAlterElf 🎃 (ceha@norden.social)'s status on Thursday, 15-Feb-2024 18:21:22 JST WeiserAlterElf 🎃

     in reply to

     • Matthew Martin
     • violetmadder

     @violetmadder @mistersql @jonny Is there already research which AIs use excel's autofill as its basis? Oh wait, excel is about to use AI for its autofill, right?

     clacke likes this.