Most effective learning techniques

From BigThink, a great article and chart on how we learn best:

Not at all surprised that summarization and highlighting are not effective.  I am a bit surprised that self-explanation is only moderately effective.  Self-explanation was the main motive for this blog, but maybe I should just take more health policy practice tests instead.

Oregon Medicaid Study

Just wanted to link to Tyler Cowen's terrific post on the Oregon Medicaid Study and provide a few thoughts of my own:

The key question here is how we should marginally revise our beliefs, or perhaps should have revised them all along (the results of this study are not actually so surprising, given other work on the efficacy of health insurance).  For instance should we revise health care policy toward greater emphasis on catastrophic care, or how about toward public health measures, or maybe cash transfers?  (I would say all three.)  One might even use this study to revise our views on what should be included in the ACA mandate, yet I haven’t heard a peep on that topic.  I am instead seeing a lot of efforts to distract our attention toward other questions.

I agree with his suggestions that health care policy should focus more on catastrophic care and public health.  I'm not sure how cash transfers would work, and I would like to see a study on that as well if possible.

As for actual measures by which the Affordable Care Act and our health care system should be modified in response to this, I have a couple of initial suggestions:

1. A good first step might be to expand the catastrophic care provisions from young people (under ACA, only individuals 30 and under are allowed to buy catastrophic care plans) to a broader segment of the population.  
2. We also might consider paring down the essential health benefits (EHBs), which require insurance companies to cover of a very large number of benefits.  If having more health insurance does not improve health outcomes, then it seems reasonable that our health insurance cover fewer benefits at the margins.  Substance abuse services and then preventive and wellness services would likely be the first EHBs on the chopping block.  

The Roman Catholic Church: Progressive force?

This took place back in the early 17th century, but credit where credit is due: 

Hunt managed to sell only a few of his captives before local Roman Catholic priests seized the rest--the Spanish Church vehemently opposed brutality toward Indians. (In 1537 Pope Paul III proclaimed that "Indians themselves are indeed true men" and should not be "deprived of their liberty" and "reduced to our service like brute animals.")  The priests intended to save both Tisquantum's body, by preventing his enslavement, and his soul, by converting him to Christianity.  It is unlikely that Tisquantum was converted, though it's possible that he allowed the friars to think he had been. 

From Charles C. Mann's surprisingly good book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.  Tisquantum was the true name of Squanto, from grade school history lore.  

On knowledge

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Yoni Applebaum on knowledge:

I think Yoni Applebaum gave the best advice some years back:

Choose the things about which you genuinely care, and come to know them deeply and well. Form your own judgments, and constantly question them. In other matters, attempt instead to ascertain the consensus of expert judgment. It will be right far more often than not. The only alternative is to form your own judgment upon every question, and I can assure you that you will be correct far less frequently. 

 If you encounter an attack upon a conventional piety that troubles you, first assess its source. Has its author taken the time or trouble to know his subject deeply or well? Then, assess its content. Does it seem sophisticated and convincing? If it meets those two tests, ask yourself how much you care to know about the matter. You can always add it to the list of things you wish to know deeply. But if you feel that you simply don't have the time, because of the realities of your life, then bracket your concerns and set them aside. The regnant consensus will do.

Great advice. You simply can't know everything, and you can't always be right. But you can be honest and you can be brave.

On drawing, and doing

From Alain de Botton: 

"Through drawing, we may find explanations for our tastes and begin to develop an 'aesthetic', or a capacity to assert judgements about beauty and ugliness.  We may determine with greater precision what is missing from a building we don't like and what contributes to the beauty of one we do.  We may be able more quickly to analyse a scene that impresses us and to pin down whence its power arises.  We may move from a numb 'I like this' to a more exacting 'I like this because...', and then in turns towards a generalisation about the likeable.  Even if they are held only in exploratory, tentative ways, laws of beauty come to mind: it is better for light to strike objects from the side than from overhead; grey goes well with green; in order for a street to convey a sense of space, the buildings must be no taller than the street is wide..."  

I daresay this is likely true for cooking, soccer and everything else in life as well.  To put it into a simple maxim: "In order to appreciate, you must do."  

Negotiated rulemaking and the greening of car emissions

This Economist article on the cleaning of car emissions seems like a very successful example of negotiated rulemaking between government and industry.  

Cars the world over will become appreciably cleaner in the coming years. The European Union is the strictest master. Under its “Euro 6” standards, due to come into force next year, diesel cars’ NOX emissions will have to be 84% below the limits set when it started regulating them in 2000, and their soot output must be 96% below the initial limits set in 1992. Earlier this year Beijing, in response to an episode of appalling air pollution, introduced new limits similar to the current EU ones, which it plans to tighten further in 2016.

The EU is also leading the way in cutting CO2 emissions, ahead of Japan, China and America. Carmakers know full well that they will have to keep investing heavily in low-carbon technology. Average CO2 emissions are due to come down from 130g per km now to 95g per km in 2020, and plans are already being drawn up for even tougher limits in 2025, of perhaps 70g.  

Cosmetics as an idiot tax

Just like the lottery, the cosmetics industry is playing on people's dreams, and people are free to waste their money.  I can very happily view fancy cosmetics--and other forms of quackery--as a special, self-administered, voluntary tax on people who don't understand science properly.  

Also from Goldacre's Bad Science.