Simon Columbus

A screenshot of a Zeit article saying Irankrieg

Zeit does.

Cooperation Colloquium coming up in a couple hours!

If you drew an arrow ... you have a causal model.
If you are calling some variables IV and others DV ... you have a causal model.

Haha, I am quite sure you have enough of a spine to desk reject methodologically flawed papers. But I have had experiences with editors who clearly just wanted my stamp of approval for a decision they could and should have made themselves.

I so, so dislike editors like this. Make me waste my time because they can't grow a spine.

The gist of it is that departments have to submit a number of outputs every so many years which are (rather unpredictably) graded for quality; this determines funding. In principle, REF rewards quality over quantity; in practice, it eats up resources as depts hire admin just to prep for REF.

"more expert assessment of quality" -- isn't that exactly what we have with REF? And REF does reward quality over quantity -- and it's the best argument for why "expert assessment of quality" is a overly bureaucratic waste of resources.

People doing entire PhDs now on the hottakes of yore.

When I read a paper, I skip right to the regression tables, so clearly it's LaTeX formatting where true creativity resides.

Definitely an early frontrunner for most absurd rejection letter of the year.

Even if somebody mixed up registered reports and pre-registrations, under what rock does one have to live to not know what a pre-registration is in 2026?

Abstract: Human societies are characterized by large-scale cooperative behavior, even among unrelated strangers. Why? One plausible answer is indirect reciprocity: If I help a stranger, I might gain a good reputation, increasing the likelihood that others will help me in turn. But under what circumstances can indirect reciprocity facilitate a stable, cooperative status quo? Can these circumstances—for example, a high level of agreement about reputations—evolve in the first place? For that matter, what rules for assigning reputations can evolve? I use adaptive dynamics to attain simple, intuitive answers to these questions. Specifically, I study the evolution of cooperative strategies, gossiping behavior, and even moral assessment rules themselves by parametrizing them as continuous traits. I confirm some classical results in the theory of indirect reciprocity but challenge others. Cooperation is easily sustainable, provided reputational views are sufficiently correlated. But when reputations are a matter of private judgment, there are no stable cooperative equilibria at all. Gossip can facilitate a high level of agreement, but echo chambers are difficult to overcome. Crucially, while many assessment rules can facilitate cooperation, almost none of them can actually evolve. The main exception is Stern Judging, which mandates that bad individuals be punished––a rule that is, sadly, highly intolerant of disagreement. I conclude by discussing implications for polarization, moral philosophy, and the discourse. Adaptive dynamics provides a mathematical framework not only for establishing a baseline theory of indirect reciprocity but also for incorporating the foibles and peculiarities of real human societies.

Cooperation Colloquium this week:

Taylor Kessinger (U Penn):
Adaptive dynamics of reputation, social norms, and gossip

Date: Feb 27
Time: 15:00 UTC+1 / 9 am ET

Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

They say GOLD_07 made an error. I say GOLD_07 took her sweet time cruising around the hedge. Days get monotonous, always heading straight for the flowers and right back to the hive. GOLD_07 would like a more adventurous life, but the oscillations is all she can get away with.

I've also found obviously fraudulent papers in this journal. I see no reason to believe that they perform serious peer review at all.

And some fun for the end:

My sister, about 4yo, at a petting zoo: after intently watching the little goat kids, she turns around and says, "mum, mum, do you remember how tasty they are?"

Ostmann, actually. Damn.

Don't tell me that Ostwald is related to the spice manufacturer

📢 Call for papers!

We are organizing the 6th Early Career Workshop in Quantitative Political Economy on 14-15 May 2026 at King’s College London!

Keynote: Shanker Satyanath (NYU)

No fee, travel grants might become available!

Submit at: tinyurl.com/qpe2026

I bet 88% don't even open the email, already making you an outlier for having read it

Ja aber ich bin doch Theoretiker. Mit den Experimenten können sich andere die Hände dreckig machen.

Yes.

Die Psychologen streiten sich, ob psychische Erkrankungen Kategorien, Netzwerke, oder hierarchische latente Variablen sind und am Ende baut einer ein noch besseres Mikroskop und schwupps erscheint der Homunkulus, der irgendwo im Hippocampus die Strippen zieht. Das wär doch mal was.

Angesichts der Tatsache, dass das bestehende Paradigma der Psychologie (wenn man's so nennen will) auch irgendwann ersetzt werden wird, wäre es doch lustig, wenn einer der Crackpots am Ende recht hat.

This person has logged 137 'activities' on PURE. I am surprised that 'logging 137 activities on PURE' isn't one of them -- but I guess then she'd never get done updating.

Perhaps you received a mysterious noreply email asking you to evaluate some publications 'for novelty'. Looked kinda dubious? Yup, that's the one.

So what's up with this 'metascience novelty indicators challenge'? 🧵

Those two are fairly simple, though my B.Sc. diploma came with several appendices (but the one that says "language of instruction: English" was not sufficient for UKVI -- they wanted a separate letter from the university to confirm that I do, in fact, speak English).

Yikes.

Abstract: What motivates people to contribute to Wikipedia? Have you heard of Nupedia? Why do software engineers contribute code to open source projects? Why do technology companies release their large language models as "open weight"? Why has participation declined on Stack Overflow since the release of ChatGPT, but not on the programming subreddit? Why do some crowdfunding sites succeed while others fail? Underlying each of these questions is a more fundamental one: how can social scientists, computer and information scientists and practitioners use social science theories combined with information technology to increase contributions to public goods? To explore this question, my book, "Digital Public Goods", introduces (1) case studies from the technology sector to set up the problems; (2) social science theories of motivation, production, informational nudges, identity and teams, goal setting, and reputation, together with their field implementations using information technologies, as solutions; and (3) experimental evaluations of these theories and solutions. The goal of this book is to merge the latest research in the scholarly literature with successful practices used by digital platforms to provide scholars, students and practitioners with the intellectual tools they need to develop an understanding of digital public goods provision.

Cooperation Colloquium this week:

Yan Chen @yanchenl.bsky.social

Digital public goods: Crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and user-generated content

Date: February 13
Time: 15:00 UTC+1 (Vienna) / 9 ET (NYC)

Sign up: list.ku.dk/postorius/li...

Also, €200 for a print-out? My diploma is some fancy parchment with a wax seal and all, and I got that for free.

(I did actually collect my official diploma only four years after defending; it'd been with the beadle's office the entire time. Can't say I particularly missed it during those years.)