#AcademicRunPlaylist - 7/11/25

We finally had a cool day in Tokyo, and I took the opportunity to go for a good run up into Saitama and listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a thought-provoking talk by Dominik Moritz on the importance for HCI researchers to build more interoperable, focused systems at Stanford University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DIIkX19ihs

Next was the first day of the National Bureau of Economic Research's economic growth symposium. I particularly liked the talks by Jaedo Choi (dynamics of technology transfer) and Marta Prato (geography of innovative firms) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcKjuYSK474

Next was "How Emotions are Made" by Lisa Barrett. This is best thought of two books - the first, up to chapter 8, is a revelatory look at the category error we've made around understanding emotions, revealing through a wide variety of experiments and research how emotions are constructed in real time as an act of categorization - they don't "exist" anywhere in the body. The second, comprising most of the rest of the book, is a combined self-help book/pontification about topics that Barrett is demonstrably unqualified for (there are so many sections that essentially begin "I don't know anything about this area, but let me shoot from the hip and tell entire fields why they're wrong and how to do it better"). Citing misleading, racist stereotypes in the final chapter doesn't help. I would highly recommend picking up this book from your library and putting it down after chapter 8. https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/books/how-emotions-are-made/

Last was "The Measure of Progress" by Diane Coyle. Coyle absolutely knocks it out of the park in this expanded follow up to her can't miss book on the history of the GDP metric. Here she more fully interrogates how we currently measure GDP, its gaps, recent trends in constituent metrics, and how to improve societal welfare metrics more broadly. Starting with the concerning declining productivity growth trend since ~1980 in pretty much every developed economy, Coyle methodically works through different explanations of that trend from mismeasurement of new innovations, problems with measuring improvements in products, movement of production outside of firms, declining actual innovation, and more, with implications for how we measure GDP and regulate firms. Personally I think the contribution of the basket neoliberal policies is the flashing red light in all of this, and Coyle does somewhat consider this but partially dismisses it with less focus than I'd like. That, however, is a minor quibble in what is an essential book - there are even multiple sections on the inherent subjective nature of metrics and algorithmic bias, and the entire book contains copious citations! Highly recommend https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179025/the-measure-of-progress