Crémieux Profile picture
Sep 14, 2025 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Ever wondered why advertisements heavily feature Black actors when they're just 12-14% of the population?

I might have an explanation:

Black viewers have a strong preference for seeing other Blacks in media, whereas Whites have no racial preferences. Image
These results are derived from a meta-analysis of 57 pre-2000 and 112 post-2000 effect sizes for Blacks alongside 76 and 87 such effect sizes for Whites.

If you look at them, you'll notice that Whites' initial, slight preference declined and maybe reversed. Image
It's worth asking if this is explained by publication bias.

It's not!

Neither aggregately (as pictured), nor with results separated by race. Image
This study also plotted an alternative measure of racial preferences: differences in thermometer ratings.

These are ratings of how "warm" people feel towards other groups.

For Blacks, a persistent, consistent in-group preference. For Whites, in the past, yes, but now, no. Image
The hypothesis that Black media overrepresentation is due to catering to higher propensities for Blacks to spend, all else equal, is interesting, but it fails on the merits (less total spending).

It seems plausible that advertisers and media creators are just catering to demand.
Of course, people could just ask.

We do see this crop up in many other areas too. There is usually a Black in-group bias, and at the very least, no/a small White net disdain for Blacks or preference for Whites.

Accordingly, identifying Black-owned businesses benefits owners: Image
And here's another example of this 'net bias' that I posted about earlier today. This time, it's in jury trials:

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More from @cremieuxrecueil

Jun 1
My Uber driver says

- His license is suspended
- He was once a soldier for a Mafia family
- He's telling me about his time in Rikers
- He's showing me YouTube videos
- He's telling me his theories about Jews
He's telling me about gang wars he was in ad a kid.

He's wondering why all the Chinese girls are lined up - for an audition?

He says to go to Mother's Ruin for latin prostitutes.

All of this entirely unprompted.
"Yeah, these African guys, yeesh"

"I couldn't fuck that whore because I got the erectile dysfunction."

He just keeps going.
Read 6 tweets
May 29
This is just not true and it's sad that people believe it.

It's also indicting, when it's so obviously false if you just look out into the world. What you see should match what the statistics clearly show:

Estimated marriage effects for men and women are almost always similar🧵 Image
In that chart, I used the GSS and found something many people replicate:

1. Cross-sectionally, there's a relationship between being married and life satisfaction. It's similar for men and women.

2. Within persons—causally!—marriage boosts life satisfaction, but more for women.
Leveraging the same within-person design, we can use the Add Health dataset to look at stress and depression.

For both sexes, the effects are indistinguishable.

But they're also mostly not real: it's just that people who get married tend to be less stressed and depressed! Image
Read 10 tweets
May 26
As a recap on my appearance, Eli Lilly is pursuing:

- A one-dose drug for preventing most heart disease
- A vaccine for chlamydia
- A vaccine for gonorrhea
- A vaccine for Epstein-Barr
- A drug that lets you stay awake longer and feel more rested

It's a golden age of pharma! Image
And remember, Eli Lilly's big break historically was the University of Toronto licensing them to produce insulin.

They started off by giving it out for free, saving the world's diabetics at a time when there was no treatment available.

They've always been a force for good. Image
I think

- The heart disease drug will succeed
-- Will it commercialize? It can, easily. But I'm 50/50 due to the competition
- Chlamydia and gonorrhea vax will succeed, but I don't see much commercial potential with Lilly
- EBV vaccine will fail with Lilly, succeed eventually
Read 5 tweets
May 25
Eli Lilly has done it.

They've gone and made what seems to be a powerful, permanent gene therapy for LDL cholesterol.

That means they'll be able to effectively prevent most heart disease with a single infusion! Image
Almost all of the side effects were just things you see with any infusion. Some people react poorly to needles and having to sit for a while🤷‍♀️

And that's what we expect, because the people with good PCSK9 genes naturally are totally fine. This therapy catches the rest of us up!
This is amazing stuff, beating drug administration because it's permanent, and it only gets better from here.

We are going to get so healthy, so fast. Our grandkids are going to hear about heart attacks and have never actually seen one.

Source: nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…
Read 5 tweets
May 24
Are White women the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action?

That's a real claim that's commonly advanced by journalists, and the claim has gone so far that it's even made its way into academic publications and policy.

But the claim is completely false🧵 Image
This claim doesn't make a lot of sense. After all, shouldn't the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action be the people who the policies primarily target?

In America, that's African Americans and, among them, women get an added benefit. How could it be Whites? Image
To figure out where the claim comes from, I started reading supposed sources.

Often enough, journalists will just take the claim for granted without providing *any* source.

It's just tacit knowledge now, and that's not good!

Then, when you hit a source, it's not supportive: Image
Read 13 tweets
May 7
World War I devastated Britain and likely slowed down its technological progress🧵

The reason being, the youth are the engine of innovation.

Areas that saw more deaths saw larger declines in patenting in the years following the war. Image
To figure out the innovation effects of losing a large portion of a generation's young men who were just coming into the primes of their lives, the authors needed four pieces of data.

The first were the numbers and pre-war locations of soldiers who died. Image
The next components were the numbers and locations of patent filings.

If you look at both graphs, you see obvious total population effects. So, areas must be normalized. Image
Read 12 tweets

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