#AcademicRunPlaylist - 1/10/25

It got a bit over freezing today, which made for nice weather while I went for a run and listened to some talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an interesting talk by Chenhao Tan on providing more useful explanations for human-algorithm decision making at the Carnegie Mellon University Software and Societal Systems Department (CSS) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7zujgmh3Mw

Next was a fascinating talk by Eizo Okada on analyzing Japanese society's evolution through the history of chairs at Kyushu University. The talk is in Japanese, but it's too awesome not to include (and hopefully the auto-translate subtitles are good). Prior to the Meiji restoration, chairs were an oddity in Japan. As the government embarked on an aggressive modernization push, the introduction of chairs (in schools first, of all places) heralded more widespread changes across Japanese society. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvu_rJtiVwA

Next was a nice talk by Marsha Chechik on the elicitation and formal reasoning about normative system requirements at CSS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KNY9JCIkfU

Next was an excellent talk by Gerald Cohen on today's US employment report and economic trends more broadly at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. I particularly liked how Cohen scoped out the potential impact of the various policies the next administration has been toying with (basically all negative), as well as the economic outlook for hurricane recovery in North Carolina. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEK8Mip5KeU&t=1s

Next was a fantastic talk by Dashun Wang on the state of the science of science field at CSS. This is some of the most important work going on right now, getting at the heart of what drives scientific progress. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GmmZr8NYAA

Next was a thought-provoking talk by Effy Vayena on the changing role and character of bioethics with the accelerating deployment of AI in medicine at Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6ZLHKH9ptE

Next was a great talk by Abdullah Almaatouq on integrative experiment design at CSS. Abdullah shows the problems when social scientists aren't extremely specific about under what conditions they're testing a hypothesis, then demonstrates a new method to make these conditions explicit, enabling a more systematic exploration of the space. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U48v7h2cVts

Last was "How China Escaped the Poverty Trap" by Yuen Yuen Ang, who delivers a government-focused history of Chinese economic policies and development since the founding of the PRC. The appendices in this book are amazing. Seriously. The first gets into the challenges and pitfalls with measuring economic development (and measurement more broadly), while the second gets deep into qualitative research methods. Highly recommend https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501764561/how-china-escaped-the-poverty-trap/