6 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2021
  2. Oct 2020
    1. Weber notes that according to any economic theory that posited man as a rational profit-maximizer, raising the piece-work rate should increase labor productivity. But in fact, in many traditional peasant communities, raising the piece-work rate actually had the opposite effect of lowering labor productivity: at the higher rate, a peasant accustomed to earning two and one-half marks per day found he could earn the same amount by working less, and did so because he valued leisure more than income. The choices of leisure over income, or of the militaristic life of the Spartan hoplite over the wealth of the Athenian trader, or even the ascetic life of the early capitalist entrepreneur over that of a traditional leisured aristocrat, cannot possibly be explained by the impersonal working of material forces,

      Science could learn something from this. Science is too far focused on the idealized positive outcomes that it isn't paying attention to the negative outcomes and using that to better define its outline or overall shape. We need to define a scientific opportunity cost and apply it to the negative side of research to better understand and define what we're searching for.

      Of course, how can we define a new scientific method (or amend/extend it) to better take into account negative results--particularly in an age when so many results aren't even reproducible?

  3. Aug 2020
  4. Jun 2020
  5. Mar 2016
    1. But there’s, I think there is a question of how you interpret the data, even ... ifthe experiments are very well designed. And, in terms of advice—not that I’mgoing to say that it’s shocking—but one of my mentors, whom I very muchrespect as a scientist—I think he’s extraordinarily good—advised me to alwaysput the most positive spin you can on your data. And if you try to present, like,present your data objectively, like in a job seminar, you’re guaranteed tonotgetthe job

      Importance of "spinning" data