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Noahpinion's profile
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
Noah Smith
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@Noahpinion

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Noah SmithVerified account

@Noahpinion

Bloomberg Opinion writer. Elected "top neoliberal shill" of 2018. Occasionally posts anime gifs.

San Francisco, CA
bloomberg.com/view/contribut…
Joined April 2011

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    1. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13

      Noah Smith Retweeted Jeffrey Sachs

      This thread demonstrates that a lot of academic writing that *looks* like utter nonsense is merely scholars dressing up a useful but mundane point with a ton of unnecessary jargon.https://twitter.com/JeffreyASachs/status/1051097280030396417 …

      Noah Smith added,

      Jeffrey Sachs @JeffreyASachs
      Imagine for a moment the most obscurantist, jargon-filled, po-mo article the politically correct academy might produce. Pure SJW nonsense. Got it? Chances are you're imagining something like the infamous "Feminist Glaciology" article from a few years back. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368 … pic.twitter.com/qtSFBYY80S
      Show this thread
      21 replies 69 retweets 286 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13

      My theory is that the jargon creates an artificial barrier to entry. http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/academic-bs-as-artificial-barriers-to.html … If one must spend years marinating one's brain in jargon to be perceived as an expert on a topic, it protects the status and earning power of people who study relatively easy topics.

      20 replies 42 retweets 218 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13

      In econ, a similar thing is accomplished by what recent Nobel prize winner Paul Romer calls "mathiness": https://paulromer.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Mathiness.pdf … But mathiness and jargon are not quite the same...

      4 replies 7 retweets 48 likes
      Show this thread
      Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13

      Jargon usually doesn't force you to change the substance of your central point. Mathiness often does. By forcing you to write your model in a way that's mathematically tractable (easy to work with), mathiness often impoverishes your understanding of how the world really works.

      11:11 AM - 13 Oct 2018
      • 11 Retweets
      • 64 Likes
      • random facts girl. Dr Lilly Goren Lance Cameron Conor Duffy Joshua Howard Ray Hsu Michael Griffiths Christopher Cole Lei Gong
      10 replies 11 retweets 64 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13

          @Undercoverhist has written about this problem:https://beatricecherrier.wordpress.com/2018/04/20/what-price-did-economists-pay-for-tractability/ …

          1 reply 8 retweets 27 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13

          Jargon sounds sillier than mathiness. It looks worse to the public, because most of the public thinks they should be able to understand English but doesn't assume they can understand math. But mathiness, ultimately, is probably more pernicious. (end)

          18 replies 18 retweets 76 likes
          Show this thread
        4. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. Lei Gong‏ @gonglei89 Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          I learned more Econ by ditching the math, then working backwards to fit math into the descriptive mechanics of the concepts...which is how every other science is taught. No one teaches physics by force feeding math before building a physical understanding of what’s happening.

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        3. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13
          Replying to @gonglei89

          Well, some people do teach physics that way. But yeah, you're right.

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        4. Lei Gong‏ @gonglei89 Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          Those are the bad physics teachers :P. The whole point of science is to distill the inscrutable complexity of the world into as simply comprehensible and understandable pieces and terms as possible. If you’re making things even more inscrutable you’re doing it wrong.

          0 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
        5. End of conversation
        1. New conversation
        2. the aeroplane‏ @toaeroplano Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          That's a good point but if jargon leads to people misunderstanding and misconstruing your point, the effect is similar, no?

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        3. Noah Smith‏Verified account @Noahpinion Oct 13
          Replying to @toaeroplano

          Mathiness leads to *you* miscontruing your point. ;-)

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. the aeroplane‏ @toaeroplano Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          Yeah, i get it. Btw, this might be literally a case for some game theory. One of the best arguments for game theory is that by putting your arguments into boxes and showing the causal relationship between them with arrows and such, it helps make your argument clear & explicit.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        5. End of conversation
        1. Alan Levinovitz‏Verified account @AlanLevinovitz Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          I like Romer's point that mathiness creates barriers against critique even in your own discipline. More labor to check other people's work.

          0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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        1. Lance Cameron‏ @lcameron4435 Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          But mathiness is a barrier to reading and understanding. Not just the validity of the thesis directly but in larger sense, the unstated aspects: is this a problem that the expert community recognizes immediately ("cold fusion"); is the mathematics accepted as mainstream or weird

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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        1. New conversation
        2. Joel K. LaPinta‏ @jklapinta Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          For me the study of James Clerk Maxwell's field equations that lead to the discovery of electromagnetic waves made me a believer in how mathematical models are a key to understanding the true nature of things.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Joel K. LaPinta‏ @jklapinta Oct 13
          Replying to @jklapinta @Noahpinion

          Maxwell's math with its multiple partial integral equations is too dense and complicated for most students to invest the time to learn it: the modern shortcuts of the using Curl & Nabla functions I believe wouldn't affect accuracy.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. End of conversation
        1. LM‏ @LorenzoMenna1 Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          No, maths obliges you to change the substance, sometimes, not just mathiness. But that's a trade off with logical consistency, which maths enhances

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. Joel K. LaPinta‏ @jklapinta Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          Claudius Ptolemy's geocentric model accurately predicted the of the visible stars and planets. Copernicus solar centric model reduced the number of postulates which eliminated the need for the complex calculations of the motion of epicycles for each planet: and was more accurate.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. Chris (Robotbeat) 🗽 🖖🏾‏ @Robotbeat Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          I think the opposite could be true if done right. It is in physics. (Of course, I know this is a trope...)

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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        1. Halfcocked Law‏ @Halfcockedlaw Oct 13
          Replying to @Noahpinion

          I think that's a nice way of saying we generally suck at math and are even worse at applying it.

          0 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
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