Thread of the best papers and books I read in 2020, roughly in order.

1. Lewin & Cachanosky, "The Average Period of Production: History and Rehabilitation of an Idea"

Good fisking & constructive replacement of the idea of 'roundaboutness' in capital theory. Even though I think they can go further. ↓ https://t.co/LgxNclt1g2 https://t.co/7yI5eVRuWQ
2. O'Hear, "Popperian Individualism Today"

Good, concise statement of an important point: https://t.co/tVaVBTDVwk
3. Zero HP Lovecraft - "God Shaped Hole"

I enjoyed last year's "The Gig Economy" better, but this still lives up to the idea of Lovecraftian cosmic horror better than anything the actual Lovecraft ever wrote. https://t.co/8cSIyuZ6lk
4. Keane, "Sincerity, Modernity, and the Protestants"

Interesting case study of the W.E.I.R.D.ification of a south pacific tribe and how the Protestant converts, unlike the Catholic ones, fundamentally change their relationship to ritual. https://t.co/vYTgufbrU1
5. Okasha - "Evolution and the Levels of Selection"

A framework for thinking about when you're looking at group-selected adaptations, and by extension, what counts as "really" rational at any given level (gene, individual, group, etc). https://t.co/vmAUtEd8YV
6. Frank Herbert - "Dune"

Didn't realize the movie was coming out when I picked it up. Lots of interesting ideas, e.g. on infohazards and institutional evolution. https://t.co/gauakeiBJC
7. Boehm - "The Evolutionary Development of Morality as an Effect of Dominance Behavior and Conflict Interference"

Talks about human morality as a negotiation between evolved dominance and submission strategies. https://t.co/ANwOc9paA7
In that sense Boehm's paper similar in spirit to my & @hiltonroot's "Feudal Origins" paper that also came out earlier this year, but for primate evolution instead of institutional evolution. https://t.co/QoPZOoeY1b
8. Grüne-Yanoff - "Evolutionary game theory, interpersonal comparisons and natural selection"

A good warning not to casually mix classical and evolutionary game theory, as many cultural-evolutionary models do. https://t.co/7S2XCqS9eG
9. Arthur - "Complexity and the Economy"

This is how you criticize neoclassical econ right: sympathetically, and without just going "BuT iT's CoMpLeX". Ok—so what do we do with that? https://t.co/jQ6Ov7zgQy

I wish SFI had hewed closer to this ethos! https://t.co/lcAEeyODos
10. Heiner - "The Origin of Predictable Behavior", which I did a thread on recently. https://t.co/ajYF8QjoDS
11. Knight, "Puzzles and mysteries in the origins of language"

Similar to his earlier v good paper, emphasizing the reliability problem in signals, but with lots more connections to other lits, e.g. animal signaling. https://t.co/jiSB0RC9wg https://t.co/GaahKU8RxT
(I should note since the first tweet is ambiguous: this is in chronological order, not rank order!)

More from Culture

I'm going to do two history threads on Ethiopia, one on its ancient history, one on its modern story (1800 to today). 🇪🇹

I'll begin with the ancient history ... and it goes way back. Because modern humans - and before that, the ancestors of humans - almost certainly originated in Ethiopia. 🇪🇹 (sub-thread):


The first likely historical reference to Ethiopia is ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to the "Land of Punt" in search of gold, ebony, ivory, incense, and wild animals, starting in c 2500 BC 🇪🇹


Ethiopians themselves believe that the Queen of Sheba, who visited Israel's King Solomon in the Bible (c 950 BC), came from Ethiopia (not Yemen, as others believe). Here she is meeting Solomon in a stain-glassed window in Addis Ababa's Holy Trinity Church. 🇪🇹


References to the Queen of Sheba are everywhere in Ethiopia. The national airline's frequent flier miles are even called "ShebaMiles". 🇪🇹

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