iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

This skeet is in celebration of 75 years of Nash equilibrium.

140

At least, we can make the following interesting statement about zero-sum games but not about general games: “if there are two players, then there is a Nash equilibrium in minimax strategies.”

130

Yes, and I have difficulty reconciling the (strong) reading of Itai’s statement with the intuition that the class of all zero-sum games includes the class of two-player zero-sum games, and those are special.

240

Michael Clemens @mclem.org · 27/06/2025

Reminder that N player zero-sum games can represent arbitrary (N-1) player games, by the use of a dummy player.

5495

Reposted by Shengwu Li

With rent control in the news, it’s a good moment to recall the research of @rebeccadiamond.bsky.social and co-authors. They show that strict rent control in San Francisco reduced the availability of rental housing, eventually *raising* rental costs. doi.org/10.1257/aer....

211436

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Al Roth @alroth.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Evicting NSF from their building in Washington is pretty revealing. But if they auction off its History Wall, I know which tile I’d bid on. Here’s the list to choose from… marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/06/evic...

marketdesigner.blogspot.com

Evicting Science from D.C.: the NSF building and it's History Wall

0112

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Jennifer Ouellette @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

A New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands the Same Side Up. A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture. www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-pyrami...

quantamagazine.org

A New Pyramid-Like Shape Always Lands the Same Side Up | Quanta Magazine

A tetrahedron is the simplest Platonic solid. Mathematicians have now made one that’s stable only on one side, confirming a decades-old conjecture.

1259

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Joshua Gans @joshgans.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

If AI can't kill radiologists' careers, can it really kill anyone's? www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/t...

nytimes.com

Your A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be With You Soon

284

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? If two people have the same priors, and their posteriors for an event A are common knowledge, then those posteriors are equal.

0110

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · 11/06/2025

Re-upping my advice about how to write a good title and abstract for an academic paper, appropriately called: "How to Write a Title and Abstract" Feel free to share this thread, which will focus on titles. #EconSky #AcademicSky

1022172

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Jason Hartline likes cocktails with lemon juice.

230

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

I have exactly one paper that uses “unique”, and every use is in the mathematical sense. Probably I overuse semicolons.

010

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Joel van der Weele @joelvdweele.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

New working paper alert: we provide a model of post-hoc rationalizations, driven by motives of (self-)esteem. We show how this can lead to groupthink, polarization, and a preference for echo chambers. www.ifo.de/sites/defaul...

1438

Look, if the WSJ could cluster their standard errors then all would be right in the world.

040

While we’re at it, can we have a ruling that the press can’t take a correlational study and assert causation by innuendo?

120

For what it’s worth, as a reader I’d really appreciate knowing how much was disclosed to the editorial team. And it would give authors incentives to push for more transparency where feasible.

1100

AEA Data Editor @aeadata.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Thank you for shedding light on this! Is there any way to know, by reading the published paper, whether the identity of the data source was available to the editors?

130

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Our policy is already too long to cover all possible scenarios, I am told (repeatedly...), but it is very clear "access to the data and code is nonexclusive to the authors" in line 1 ... www.aeaweb.org/journals/dat... Need an exception? See line 3, and a discussion w/ editor + me ensues.

aeaweb.org

Data and Code Availability Policy

1114

Thank you for doing this! (Is this policy public? It would be great if it were common knowledge.)

140

A sensible implementation would involve the editor contacting the company directly.

120

I have one suggestion for reform: bsky.app/profile/shen...

080

And this is good for honest authors with anonymous data! It helps differentiate them from fraudsters.

1100

Letting the journal know the firm’s identity strikes a balance between the firm’s privacy concerns and the journal’s interest in preventing fraud.

181

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Maybe journals should have a policy that data from anonymous sources will be verified by the journal before publication. The editor could contact the firm, to verify that it exists and that the study was conducted as stated. @aeadata.bsky.social is this feasible or am I missing something?

3699

I say this with the bias of hindsight.

2491

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

In hindsight, if a major material science firm had found a way to make its best material scientists 80% better, there’s no way it would stay anonymous. It would shout it from the rooftops, and put it in its earnings call. This is an argument that should have occurred to economists.

321513

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

It was bad and audacious. But it wasn’t audacious qua research. It challenged none of the viewer’s strongly held beliefs, and rigidly mimicked the current fashionable methods.

180

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Wow, nothing beats making that one conjecture that turns the idea into a paper, and then proving it. Never gets old.

1690

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Maia @maiamindel.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

The Chicago Pope implies the existence of a New Keynesian Pope and a Behavioral Pope

501929314

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Adam Kapor @adamkapor.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Modeling the conclave? You’ll need cardinal utilities

79612

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Singapore ministers defend meals taken with money launderer. The perils of zero accountability.

26518

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Yannai A. Gonczarowski @yannaigonch.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Congrats to Sergiu Hart, perhaps the quickest thinker I know, and a wonderful mentor, coauthor, and person, for being elected as an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences! www.nasonline.org/news/2025-na...

nasonline.org

National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members - NAS

WASHINGTON — The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 120 members and 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original res...

2215

Reposted by Shengwu Li

Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n

Four images to illustrate some prominent single-gene myths. Top left shows a photograph of a person deftly rolling their tongue into a U-shape. Top right shows a photograph of a person’s ear, highlighting the shape and features of the earlobe and cartilage. Bottom left shows a close-up photograph of a person’s eye, with a vivid blue colouration. Bottom right shows a photograph of a person poised to write with their left hand on the blank white page of a spiral-bound notebook.

521343621

Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

It’s a little-known fact that economists are indifferent between 2 AER pubs and gaining an extra thumb.

180

Statement and proof of Theorem 1.

160

Deviations from read-aloud and private-questions would be methodological innovations requiring separate justification.

000

I did post a link, but it was in the middle of the thread. It bears emphasis that both read-aloud and private-questions are part of standard lab experiment protocol. So I see this replication as investigating whether the anomaly persists under the lab standard.

200