New study has released personality profiles of 263 occupations.
Short thread of the occupations that are the most extreme with respect to each of the five personality dimension (I will mention only occupations with a sample of at least 100).
Neuroticism.
High:
- Visual Artists
- Graphic and Multimedia Designers
- Musicians, Singers and Composers
Low:
- Health Services Managers
- Finance Managers
- Information and Communications Technology Services Managers
Extraversion:
High:
- Advertising and Public Relations Managers
- Sales and Marketing Managers
- Human Resource Managers
So I decided to look at car accident deaths over time in the United States, 1999-2022.
Is there any evidence that the female death rate suddenly drops relative to men's? No, the male and female *trends* are almost identical.
In the 2000s, there is a strong decline traffic accident deaths overall. But this is independent of sex, so clearly this isn't caused by this narrow sex-specific factor.
The homicide rate also fell from 2000 to 2010, so perhaps it's a more general decline in recklessness.
The open problem -- the "moving sofa problem" -- has possibly just been solved!
This mathematical problem basically asks "what is the largest area of a 'sofa' that can be maneuvered through a right-angled corner in a hallway of width 1?"
Short thread 🧵
This problem was originally posed by Leo Moser in 1966.
Quickly after, Hammersley (1968) proposed a very simple construction.
Take a semi-circle. Cut it into two. Then fill the gap in between, but leave a smaller semi-circle of empty space to help maneuver the corner.
This construction works and gives an area of 2.2074.
It is a very simple-minded construction, however. And it turns out, it is not the greatest possible area you can achieve.
Many responses to this misunderstand it. A lot of commenters, in their confusion or ignorance, assume that it must necessarily simply be due to abject poverty and lack of access to other food.
In reality, this is an old cultural tradition that persists from West Africa.
Why poverty is not a major cause of violent crime: macroeconomic evidence
While it is well known that poverty tends to be correlated with violent crime, causally informative evidence usually tells a different story. One important source of evidence is the macroeconomic kind.
If economic factors causally affected violent crime, then, when macroeconomic conditions change within a country or region, you should expect violent crime rates to follow. Economic downfalls should lead to increases in violent crime, and vice versa.
One illustrative example is that the homicide rate actually fell in America during the Great Depression–the opposite of what the causal hypothesis would expect.
But it's not just the Great Depression. In the Handbook of Crime Correlates, Lee et al. review the macroeconomic evidence and find that economic downturns have no systematic effect on violent crime.
More recently, Ludwig & Schnepel (2024) also reviewed macro evidence and also concluded that there is no systematic effect on violent crime.
The COVID economic crisis is yet another example. Hoeboer et al. (2024) reviewed the evidence and found that globally there was no increase in violent crime. If anything, it was in the opposite direction.
The United States famously did experience a homicide rate increase starting in 2020. But a careful analysis of the timing of that homicide increase shows that this was the result of a homicide spike immediately following the death of George Floyd. It should not be considered an economic effect.
Overall, there is no clear indication that macroeconomic downturns result in an increase in violent crime. Often the evidence finds the opposite. This is yet another strong line of evidence against the idea that poverty has a major causal impact on violent crime.
There is also evidence from within-individual studies:
The moment when the West changed forever, on its trajectory towards the modern world.
This is at least what I have argued. This chart is based on my analysis of a database of notable people. But, if you think such a database is too biased to consider, fear not, for much other evidence points to this being an important transition period.
Abacus schools were important in Italy, emphasizing practical math for the merchant class. These eventually diffused and became popular in Germany and elsewhere.
Furthermore, universities were being set up in large numbers across Europe.
Recently, I wrote a piece in which analyzed the topic of immigration and crime in Sweden. I have posted some of the findings individually, but I thought it would be useful to compile all the major findings in one place. So, thread below.
Immigrants and second-generation immigrants have higher crime rates than people with Swedish background.
As shown in the image, this is true after adjusting for age and sex compositions, and it's true for all major categories of crime.
Between 2015 and 2018, people with foreign background (1st and 2nd generation immigrants) accounted for half of all crime suspects -- a much higher share than their population share.
The overrepresentation was especially prominent for deadly violence and robbery.