scholarly journals LEARNING FROM CRISES? – SOME PHILOSOPHICAL AND POLITICO-ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Daumann ◽  
Florian Follert
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Economic Considerations

As Boettke et al. (2007, p. 363) emphasize “Disasters, whether man-made or natural, represent a ‘natural experiment’ for social scientists”. They refer to a very famous quote from John Stuart Mill (1849, pp. 74–75) concerning the value of free economics for the recovery after crises: “This perpetual consumption and reproduction of capital affords the explanation of what has so often excited wonder, the great rapidity with which countries recover from a state of devastation; the disappearance, in a short time, of all traces of the mischiefs done by earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and the ravages of war. An enemy lays waste a country by fire and sword, and destroys or carries away nearly all the moveable wealth existing in it; all the inhabitants are ruined, and yet, in a few years after, everything is much as it was before.”

Getting the Measure of Twins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Viney
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Effects ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Identical Twin ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Modern Biology ◽  
Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould, the biologist and author, once joked that were he an identical twin raised separately from his brother they could ‘hire ourselves out to a host of social scientists and practically name our fee’. In order to monetise Gould’s fantasy, one would want a form of twinship that could operate according to evidential, experimental, somatic and circumstantial ideals. And Gould admits that he and his brother would need to be viewed as ‘the only really adequate natural experiment for separating genetic from environmental effects in humans’. This chapter seeks to interrogate the evidential and experimental circumstances that may underpin the comic quips that guide modern biology. In human genetics, twins are used as experimental bodies that are made to matter in particular ways and for particular people; they become newly ‘animate’ for being enrolled into scientific research. Raised in cultures assumed to be alike or dissimilar, isolated by researchers for being valuable in the measured disentanglement of assembled molecular agents (which are sometimes distinguished from an assemblage referred to as an ‘environment’), twins achieve a status of experimental significance not just for what they do but also for what they are taken to be.

Prison Versus Western Australia: Which Worked Best, the Australian Penal Colony or the English Convict Prison System?

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 1139-1160
Author(s):  
Barry Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Western Australia ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
New South ◽  
New South Wales ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Penal Colony ◽  
South Wales

Abstract Between 1850 and 1868, a natural experiment in punishment took place. Men convicted of similar crimes could serve their sentence of penal servitude either in Britain or in Australia. For historians and social scientists, this offers the prospect of addressing a key question posed over 200 years ago by the philosopher, penal theorist and reformer Jeremy Bentham when he authored a lengthy letter entitled ‘Panopticon versus New South Wales: Or, the Panopticon Penitentiary System, and the Penal Colonization System, Compared’. This article answers the underlying tenet of Bentham’s question, ‘Which was best prison or transportation?’ by applying two efficiency tests. The first tests whether UK convicts or Australian convicts had higher rates of reconviction, and the second explores the speed to reconviction.

On Comparative History

1957 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert F. Hoselitz
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Comparative Method ◽  
A Priori ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Social Event ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Social Events ◽  
The Social

When John Stuart Mill composed his System of Logic, he maintained that valid application of the comparative method to problems in the moral or social sciences is impossible, or, at best, inadmissible, since it must be based on a priori judgments. Mill founded his objection to the use of this method in social science on two essentially interrelated propositions: the uniqueness of each social event, and the multiplicity and variety of causal factors which may be considered as having a determining influence on these events. Although this conception of the special nature of social events has, on the whole, remained unchanged, social scientists have freely applied the comparative method to the analysis of social problems. History has been outstanding among the social sciences in rejecting longest the application of this method. The main argument against its use was derived from the description of history formulated by Ranke and his school, a description which was endowed with a philosophical underpinning by Windelband and Rickert, who classified sciences according to method into a nomothetic and an ideographic group. History was the ideographic science par excellence, and with the strong historical emphasis that was placed in Germany upon other social sciences as well, there was a tendency to return to the viewpoint of Mill and to regard as scientifically suspect generalizations in social science based on the application of the comparative method.

A Pound of Flesh

2015 ◽  
pp. 631-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florencia Torche ◽  
Dalton Conley
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Educational Achievement ◽  
Neonatal Health ◽  
Outcome Predictor ◽  
Family Resources ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Moderating Factors ◽  
Fetal Nutrition

Birthweight is increasingly being used by economists and other social scientists to measure health endowment at birth. Research in this tradition has evolved from regression analysis to twin difference models to natural experiment approaches that use such events as natural disasters to capture the effects of fetal nutrition and stress on this measure of neonatal health. Furthermore, causal inference approaches have been used to show that birthweight affects health, cognitive and noncognitive development, and educational achievement and attainment, as well as adult wages. An important recent line of literature investigates the heterogeneous impact of birthweight within and between families, examining such moderating factors as family resources, parental investment, and even genotype. This chapter discusses various methods (and their limitations) to incorporating birthweight into economic models as an outcome predictor or moderator.

Marine Coal-Fired Boilers—State of the Art

1983 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 26-34
Author(s):  
Robert B. Hedges
Keyword(s):  
System Design ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Design Philosophy ◽  
Marine Boiler ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Economic Considerations

Owing to economic considerations, there has been renewed interest in the use of coal as a shipboard fuel. To utilize coal aboard ship again required only the application of technology developed and proven ashore over the past 30 years since coal was last used extensively at sea. The development of a modern coal-fired marine boiler was thus possible in a relatively short time. The paper discusses the state of the art of marine coal-fired boilers, including economics, alternative firing systems, boiler performance, design philosophy, and system design.

scholarly journals Energy Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Aileen McHarg
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Regulatory Systems ◽  
Energy Justice ◽  
Energy Law ◽  
Economic Considerations

The explosion of interest in energy justice as a guiding principle for energy law and policy is a highly significant development with potentially radical implications. This ‘ethical turn’ is associated with increased attention to energy matters by social scientists, driven by disillusionment with neo-liberal energy policies and the challenges of the energy transition. Energy justice scholars seek a more holistic, human-centred approach to energy decision-making, which understands the fundamental importance of energy and energy systems to human flourishing, and the complexity of energy decision-making as a socially-embedded phenomenon involving more than merely technical and economic considerations. However, review of the literature reveals a range of different conceptual and theoretical understandings of energy justice in play, which are not always fully developed or mutually consistent. More attention is also required to questions of implementation, particularly what implications energy justice might have for legal and regulatory systems, as well as judicial decision-making.

The Political Responses of Virtual Assistants

2019 ◽  
pp. 089443931988684
Author(s):  
Christopher Ojeda
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Software Engineers ◽  
Political Responses ◽  
Economic Considerations

What would a machine say about politics if it could speak? Because of virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri, social scientists are now equipped to answer this question. Yet little is known about what these machines say about politics or why they say it, even though their political responses are potentially consequential given their widespread usage. In this article, I survey six virtual assistants and find that they typically have an above average knowledge of politics, an elementary understanding of important political concepts, and only a handful of opinions on important political issues. In follow-up interviews with tech workers, ranging from software engineers to executives, I use grounded theory to generate hypotheses about how companies craft responses to political questions. I find that tech companies are motivated in large part by economic considerations and that the future responses of the virtual assistants will likely create political echo chambers in which responses are highly customized to individual users. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for political polarization, democratic citizenship, and the growing prevalence of artificial intelligence in politics.

scholarly journals Characterizing public perceptions of social and cultural impacts in policy decisions

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (24) ◽  
pp. e2020491118
Author(s):  
Nathan F. Dieckmann ◽  
Robin Gregory ◽  
Terre Satterfield ◽  
Marcus Mayorga ◽  
Paul Slovic
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Impacts ◽  
Single Category ◽  
Economic Considerations

Social scientists and community advocates have expressed concerns that many social and cultural impacts important to citizens are given insufficient weight by decision makers in public policy decision-making. In two large cross-sectional surveys, we examined public perceptions of a range of social, cultural, health, economic, and environmental impacts. Findings suggest that valued impacts are perceived through an initial lens that highlights both tangibility (how difficult it is to understand, observe, and make changes to an impact) and scope (how broadly an impact applies). Valued impacts thought to be less tangible and narrower in scope were perceived to have less support by both decision makers and the public. Nearly every valued impact was perceived to have more support from the public than from decision makers, with the exception of three economic considerations (revenues, profits, and costs). The results also demonstrate that many valued impacts do not fit neatly into the single-category distinctions typically used as part of impact assessments and cost–benefit analyses. We provide recommendations for practitioners and suggest ways that these results can foster improvements to the quality and defensibility of risk and impact assessments.

What the replication reformation wrought

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara A. Spellman ◽  
Daniel Kahneman
Keyword(s):  
Reform Movement ◽  
Short Time

AbstractReplication failures were among the triggers of a reform movement which, in a very short time, has been enormously useful in raising standards and improving methods. As a result, the massive multilab multi-experiment replication projects have served their purpose and will die out. We describe other types of replications – both friendly and adversarial – that should continue to be beneficial.

Periodic Variations in the Coronal Green Line Intensity and their Connection with the White-light Coronal Structures

2000 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 197-200
Author(s):  
Milan Minarovjech ◽  
Milan Rybanský ◽  
Vojtech Rušin
Keyword(s):  
Time Resolution ◽  
White Light ◽  
Short Time Scale ◽  
High Time Resolution ◽  
Green Line ◽  
Periodic Intensity ◽  
Coronal Green Line ◽  
Significant Intensity ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Coronal Structures

AbstractWe present an analysis of short time-scale intensity variations in the coronal green line as obtained with high time resolution observations. The observed data can be divided into two groups. The first one shows periodic intensity variations with a period of 5 min. the second one does not show any significant intensity variations. We studied the relation between regions of coronal intensity oscillations and the shape of white-light coronal structures. We found that the coronal green-line oscillations occur mainly in regions where open white-light coronal structures are located.

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