iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Sorry to "piggyback", but hi - I'd really like to get back in contact now I'm doing my DPhil! I can't find your contact details online (and apparently you can't be DMed on here). If you could send me a quick email at oliver.haythorne@new.ox.ac.uk so I have your contact, that'd be great. Thank you!

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Just to say I'm starting my DPhil in Economic and Social History at New College, Oxford this term! Very excited to get into it. Anyone else working on early modern Germany/the Holy Roman Empire here?

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Reposted by Oliver Haythorne

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

from "Classical Studies memes for Hellenistic teens" on FB

Plato's Cave allegory, illustrated. the shadows on the cave wall are captioned "increasingly insane and extreme positions", the prisoners labeled "internet users", the figures holding the shadow's shapes labeled "algorithms", the fire labeled "random internet users expressing their idiosyncratic beliefs". the space above the cave is labeled "literally just outside" and the philosopher freed from the chains of the physical world labeled "guy who logs off"

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Reposted by Oliver Haythorne

The Non-Select Committee @nonselectcommittee.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Social media is predominantly a world of illusion 🪄 ✨ But our latest analysis of Starmer and Sunak’s (largely) unsuccessful attempts to self-fashion via Twitter in the run up to the 2024 election 🗳️ finds that no filter can manufacture charisma... tinyurl.com/5y6p2mvy #twitter #socialmediastrategy

tinyurl.com

Posting Through It: Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak’s Social Media Strategy on Twitter in the 2024 General Election

Oliver Haythorne analyses Starmer and Sunak's attempts at self-fashioning via Twitter before the 2024 election, and why they failed.

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Reposted by Oliver Haythorne

Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

my only question about people who get on X or tiktok and post that gpt helped them solve the reimann hypothesis is whether they are in their heart of hearts aware that they have no idea what's going on at any level, or if they're like true believers in their own shit

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

How Does Culture Impact Economic Growth? bsky.app/profile/jose...

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Summing up: 1) Culture matters economically 2) In Qing China, higher densities of sage temples were associated with lower rates of firm foundations in the 19th and 20th centuries 3) This holds when using sage birthplaces instead 4) This might be persistently impactful on cultural dynamism 9/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

I'm not sure about that last set of results. I think it's more likely that the low rates of intellectual dynamism in areas that also had low rates of firm foundation had more to do with poverty and a lack of employment than culture by that point. Some of his controls are also questionable. 8/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Ma argues that this association between traditionalism and low economic growth continues to hold today. He finds that sage temples and birthplaces are also associated with low rates of journal publications and intellectual activity in modern history, perhaps showing cultural backwardness. 7/

A table of results showing what is described

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

However, it's possible that there's reverse causation. As such, Ma looked at the link between firm foundations and the birthplaces of the sages, centuries or millennia earlier. That should be unrelated with characteristics of the area later when the shrines were built. The association holds. 6/

A map showing the distribution of sage birthplaces and their temples

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

He found initially that there was a negative association between the density of sage temples in an area and the rate of business foundations later in the 19th and 20th centuries. This might show that areas which worshipped ancient wisdom were less likely to take up on modern economic ideas. 5/

A graph of results showing what is described

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

He put together a pretty detailed dataset of all the "sage temples" across China in the Qing period, plus a few other types of temples and some important socioeconomic correlates. This work alone is very valuable! It also allows him to track differences across space in China over a long period. 4/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Ma Chicheng set out to investigate this in a recent paper in the Journal of Economic History. He suggested that we might be able to use temples to the "sages", the founts of ancient knowledge, as proxies for more traditional forms of culture in Qing Chinese history. 3/

A map of sage temples against industrial firms

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

Economists are extremely interested in the question of culture for a few reasons. It might help explain some puzzling discrepancies in growth rates between areas that are similar in all other observable respects. It's also important for how economists theorize growth and change generally. 2/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

THREAD: How Does Culture Impact Economic Growth? Economists are not famous for their discussions of culture and religion. However, increasingly they have come to recognize that culture might play a role in influencing long-term economic growth. China might provide an interesting case study. 1/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Unbelievably excited to own this now…

The title page of Alexander Pope’s collected works, 1780 edition, volume IV

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

What Do Cross-Gender Social Networks Look Like Across the World? bsky.app/profile/jose...

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

A link to this exciting new paper: Cross-Gender Social Ties Around the World: www.nber.org/papers/w33480 9/9

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

To sum up: 1) Facebook friending data can be used to construct the Cross-Gender Friending Ratio 2) The CGFR varies across regions of the world 3) It correlates strongly with feminist attitudes and female labour force participation 4) In the US, it is somewhat demographically polarized 8/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

This is a very exciting new measure, and I'm sure it'll be used for lots of great research. The authors' regression results are preliminary, as they admit. It's worth saying there may be selection biases: in very poor areas, only wealthier or better-educated people may have Facebook access. 7/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Looking more specifically at the US, there are some interesting socioeconomic and demographic correlations. For example, it comes out that white people and rich people tend to have lower Cross-Gender Friending Ratios than poor, black, or Hispanic people. Religion's role is a bit more ambiguous. 6/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

The authors also did a few correlational analyses. These aren't super rigorous, but they're indicative. For instance, having a higher Cross-Gender Friending Ratio usually means a country is more accepting of basic feminist ideas, and is likely to have higher female labour force participation. 5/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Looking broadly across the globe, interesting patterns appear. Rates are lowest in traditionally Muslim areas like the Middle East and north Africa, and highest in Latin America and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, Europe and the US are somewhere in the middle - perhaps surprisingly! 4/

A pair of maps showing what is described

A set of four maps showing what is described, plus the scale

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

In essence, they construct a measure based on Facebook friendships. They use over a trillion friendship relations based on around 1.8 billion users to construct a measure, the Cross-Gender Friending Ratio: the ratio of female friends in men's networks to female friends in women's networks. 3/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

A hot-off-the-press NBER Working Paper released today looks to answer this question. It's important to social scientists, and has been for a very long time, because gross-gender social networks often control for social attitudes towards gender. Though they're important, measuring them is hard. 2/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

THREAD: What Do Cross-Gender Social Networks Look Like Across the World? Gender often defines or colours our social networks and interactions. We might be more or less likely to make friends with someone because of their gender. How does this look on the global scale, and how do we measure it? 1/

An image of a Facebook network, visualized as a graph

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

How Much Do We Really Want Equality? bsky.app/profile/jose...

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

As ever, the paper under discussion: Measuring Preferences for Income Equality and Income Mobility: direct.mit.edu/rest/article... 10/10

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

So, to sum up: 1) On average, people would sacrifice c. $2,750 of average income to raise the income of the bottom 10% 2) They would only sacrifice c. $1,200 to raise the bottom 20%'s income mobility 3) Ideology shapes (or is shaped by) people's preferences on inequality 9/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

These results are pretty interesting, though for me they do have a gap. While we have a weak indication that middle-income people are willing to sacrifice average income, I think it would've been good to ask people directly about their willingness to pay x amount more in tax - make it concrete. 8/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of this is mediated by party politics. It should surprise nobody that Democrats and Independents are more willing to give up income that others may have more money or mobility, and Republicans less (unless they personally benefitted from socioeconomic mobility). 7/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Their preferences for income mobility are a bit weaker. The average sacrifice to raise income mobility was only around $1,200. While people are happy to suffer a bit that others should suffer less, it seems they're less willing to risk it all in what they perceive as a zero-sum game. 6/

A set of graphs showing what is described

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

It turns out, most US adults would be willing to sacrifice about $2,750 from the average US income in order to raise the income of the bottom 10%. This seems to hold even when you specify you're talking about middle income people - that is, the people from whom the money would be coming! 5/

A set of graphs illustrating what is described

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

They collected about 1,250 survey observations of people from across the US, also taking information about their socioeconomic background and partisanship. After some training, they asked these people how much money they'd sacrifice for greater income equality or socioeconomic mobility. 4/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

That's the task Bernardo Lara Escalona and Kenneth Shores set out for themselves in a recent paper in the Review of Economics and Statistics, one of the best journals in economics. Their idea is simply to survey people directly and see what they say, but measuring preferences quantitatively. 3/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Understanding people's preferences about social (in)equality is pretty important, but most understandings we currently have are either vague and theoretical or largely qualitative. That's ok, but it'd be better to have something we can really measure to use as a parameter in policymaking. 2/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

THREAD: How Much Do We Really Want Equality? Most people are, in principle, in favour of equality. Generally, we like the idea that people at the very least have the same opportunities - and sometimes that people's outcomes aren't too extremely different. But how far does this principle go? 1/

Georges Seurat, Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte/A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

How Did Classic Maya Political Networks Work? bsky.app/profile/jose...

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

And finally, a link to the paper under discussion: Sociopolitical network interactions: A case study of the Classic Maya: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 10/10

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

So, to sum up: 1) Classic Maya politics was quite decentralized 2) A few elite families ruled most of the main states 3) Centralization decreased over time, though it went up again at the end of the Classic era 4) The biggest blow to centralization was the Petexbatun wars of the 950s and 960s 9/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I personally find this stuff pretty fascinating. It really shows how useful quantitative tools like Social Network Analysis can be, even in pretty unusual cases like this one! Even so, I'd feel more secure in the results if the authors had used a slightly bigger database than the one they did. 8/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Centralization decreased over time. It was highest in the Early Classic (ca. 250-550), and least in the period 751-771 - though it seems to have gone up again in the Terminal Classic (ca. 830-950). The greatest decrease, from 751 onwards, was likely due to the destructive Petexbatun wars. 7/

A network map of results showing the different political networks

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

While politics was pretty divided, it's worth saying that marriages were more centralized. It seems that only a few families ruled most of the major centres of the Classic period, even if they then went to war with each other and forged new alliances with smaller states and lesser families. 6/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Against what some archaeologists thought, but in line with others' views, they find that Maya politics was quite decentralized in the Classic period. There were many major centres of power and politics which directed wars and marriages, not just the two some people thought (Tikal and Calakmul). 5/

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Munson and Macri used a dataset of hieroglyphic texts from Classic (ca. 250-950) Maya sites in Guatemala, Mexico, and Honduras. These texts are pretty well-preserved and numerous, and they contain information about wars, marriages, alliances, and so on. They let us see connexions between places. 4/

A Maya stela; I'm afraid I don't actually know off the top of my head what period it's from

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

So what's Social Network Analysis? It's a of combination of two fields of mathematics - graph theory and statistics - intended to help us understand networks between people, places, and things a bit better. In essence, it's seeing how individuals in groups connect to each other - or don't. 3/

A social network graph used in Social Network Analysis

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Oliver Haythorne @josephrohrbach.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

One 2009 study in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, by Jessica Munson and Martha Macri, tried to understand it better. Their paper was aimed at two things: to understand how centralized (or not) Classic Maya politics was, and to test out Social Network Analysis for archaeologists. 2/

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