#AcademicRunPlaylist - 11/8/24

Author

Ben Waber
November 08, 2024

A selfie of me on a leaf covered path through a pine tree forest on a bright, sunny day. I'm a bald, middle-aged, white man with a red beard flecked with white. I'm wearing black sunglasses and a dark blue New Balance running t-shirt. The sun is casting long shadows on the ground

We had lovely weather today, so I was able to burn off some energy on a nice long run and listen to a bunch of talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a short talk by by Jacob O. Wobbrock on user interfaces that make possible things easy at the ACM UIST Conference https://youtu.be/xr3HeByQptU?si=mybPQPRCvBRKNRU8&t=2328

Next was an interesting talk by Biju Varkkey and Novel Ansari on the decent work framework and jewelry production management at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbga_QsuxNg

Next was an intriguing talk by Aaron Johnson on methods for helping robots effectively touch the world at Stanford University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHXko5-CorQ

Next was a nice talk by Manav Kulshrestha on concept learning for interpretable and efficient robots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4eF9zHXHTs

Next was the fantastic National Bureau of Economic Research conference on place-based policies. The first day is not to be missed, with particularly noteworthy talks by Maggie R Jones (place-based economic development and tribal casinos) and Dimitria Freitas (public employment reallocation as a place-based policy)

Last was "Fatal Invention" by Dorothy Roberts. Attempts to identify biological roots of race, an inherently socially defined phenomena, goes back centuries. Roberts traces those roots here, leading to modern genetic science and fundamentally flawed attempts to use quantitative methods to claim objectivity. This book systematically deconstructs those attempts, identifying the real harms that they cause and charts paths forward for genetic science that leaves the concept of race to the social sciences.

Unfortunately this book still resonates deeply, despite the fact that it was written in the middle of the Obama administration. Roberts is incredibly prescient here, hypothesizing that the current framework of race-driven genetics will further deepen existing systematically racist systems. This work is important not just for those in the biological sciences, but folks in management and technology that use analogous methods. Highly recommend https://thenewpress.com/books/fatal-invention