Links this week: Some economist bashing - first from Mark Buchanan, who wonders why economists wheel out “whacky” versions of what they know in public debate, and second, from Tim Harford, on an astonishing record of complete failure. Herb Gintis reviews Complexity and the Art of Public Policy: Solving Society’s Problems from the Bottom Up (HT: Arnold Kling) We can’t ignore the evidence: genes affect social mobility.

Links this week: A conversation with Rory Sutherland. Many good pieces, but my favourite line: Certainly there’s a problem with numbers in that there are sophisticated things in life that we all understand perfectly well when verbally described. Should psychology be constrained by math? I mean, who has the better understanding of human behavior—Shakespeare or Eugene Fama? If you make mathematical expression a barrier to entry, to any kind of theory, you are undoubtedly limiting yourselves.

First, from Andrew Leigh, discussing Gregory Clark’s work showing that low social mobility persists across countries and policy environments: How do we break the pattern? Part of the answer must lie in a fair tax system, a targeted social welfare system, effective early childhood programs, and getting great teachers in front of disadvantaged classrooms. We need banks willing to take a chance on funding an outsider, and it doesn’t hurt to maintain a healthy Aussie scepticism about inherited privilege.

Links this week: There are plenty of reviews of Nicholas Wade’s new book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. Robert VerBruggen’s is one of the more interesting. We’ll be throwing a lot of social science under the bus if we apply Andrew Gelman’s filter more generally. Gelman again, this time on poor research in evolutionary psychology. I agree with both him and Pinker here.

Gary Becker was one of the first economists to seriously contemplate the role that evolutionary biology could play in economics. In 1976, he wrote: I have argued that both economics and sociobiology would gain from combining the analytical techniques of economists with the techniques in population genetics, entomology, and other biological foundations of sociobiology. The preferences taken as given by economists and vaguely attributed to “human nature” or something similar – the emphasis on self-interest, altruism toward kin, social distinction, and other enduring aspects of preferences – may be largely explained by the selection over time of traits having greater genetic fitness and survival value.

Links this week: This piece on big data is one of the best I have read. No surprise here - single CEOs take bigger risks. A conference on hype in science. Cameron Murray on post-crash economics and the Lucas critique.

Links this week: It’s from late last year, but this piece on the biological origins of morality is worth reading. A new journal, Economic Anthropology, with the debut issue on greed and excess (and sorry, gated for those without academic access). Diane Coyle points to some older work on wealth and inheritance. She also pointed me to this good interview with E.O Wilson. Another good bash of p-values.

I have just read Cass Sunstein’s short collection of essays How to Humble a Wingnut and Other Lessons from Behavioral Economics. It is a decent summary of the behavioural science literature on political bias, although there are few surprises and not a lot of fresh opinion. The one piece new to me concerned the moderation of people’s views after they are forced to explain their understanding of an issue. The basic story is as follows:

A re-read of The Malay Archipelago reminded me of Alfred Russel Wallace’s occasional bleeding-heart libertarian leanings. From his time in remote Dobo in the Aru Islands of Eastern Indonesia: I daresay there are now near five hundred people in Dobbo of various races, all met in this remote corner of the East, as they express it, "to look for their fortune;" to get money any way they can. They are most of them people who have the very worst reputation for honesty as well as every other form of morality,—Chinese, Bugis, Ceramese, and half-caste Javanese, with a sprinkling of half-wild Papuans from Timor, Babber, and other islands, yet all goes on as yet very quietly.

Edge has a great set of short notes by various authors on how Daniel Kahneman has influenced them. It is worth flicking through them all, but excerpts from my two favourites are below. First, some excellent advice via Jason Zweig: Anyone who has ever collaborated with him tells a version of this story: You go to sleep feeling that Danny and you had done important and incontestably good work that day.