Why rooting fails

I explore the origins of the unphysical predictions from rooted staggered fermion algorithms. Before rooting, the exact chiral symmetry of staggered fermions is a flavored symmetry among the four "tastes." The rooting procedure averages over tastes of different chiralities. This averaging forbids the appearance of the correct 't Hooft vertex for the target theory.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Invited talk at the XXV International Symposium on Lattice Field Theory, July 30 - August 4 2007, Regensburg, German

Betsy DeVos Fails the Test

Mitt Romney said: Betsy DeVos is a smart choice for education secretary. The Wall Street Journal said DeVos knows how to fight and how to make the moral case for reform. Andrew Rotherham called her a pretty mainstream pick. Rick Hess, purveyor of straight talk on education issues, informs us that DeVos is a solid pick who is smart, thoughtful, and committed to doing what she thinks is best. It\u27s too bad none of that was on display yesterday when DeVos in the hearing yesterday to determine if she should become the next U.S. Secretary of Education. [excerpt

Why World Redistribution Fails

An optimal linear world income tax that maximizes a border-neutral social welfare function provides a drastic reduction in world consumption inequality, dropping the Gini coefficient from 0.69 to 0.25. In contrast an optimal decentralized (i.e., within countries) redistribution has miniscule effect on world income inequality. Thus, the traditional public finance concern about the excess burden of redistribution cannot explain why there is so little world redistribution. Actual foreign aid is vastly lower than the transfers under the simulated world income tax, suggesting that countries such as the United States either place a much lower value on the welfare of foreigners or else expect that a very significant fraction of cross-border transfers is wasted. The product of the welfare weight and one minus the share of transfers that are wasted constitutes an implied weight that the United States assigns to foreigners. We calculate that value to be as low as 1/2000 of the value put on the welfare of an American, suggesting that U.S. policy implicitly assumes either that essentially all transfers are wasted or places essentially no value on the welfare of the citizens of the poorest countries.

Why Foreign Aid Fails

The main point of this paper is that foreign aid fails because the structure of its incentives resembles that of central planning. Aid is not only ineffective, it is arguably counterproductive. Contrary to business firms that are paid by those they are supposed to serve (customers), aid agencies are paid by tax payers of developed countries and not by those they serve. This inverse structure of incentives breaks the stream of pressure that exists on the commercial market. It also creates larger loopholes in the principle-agent relationship on each point along the chain of aid delivery. Both factors enhance corruption, moral hazard and negative selection. Instead of promoting development, aid extends the life of bad institutions and those in power. Proposals to reform foreign aid – like aid privatization and aid conditionality – do not change the existing structure of the incentives in aid delivery, and their implementation may just slightly improve aid efficacy. Larger improvement is not possible. For that reason, foreign aid will continue to be a waste of resources, probably serving some objectives different to those that are usually mentioned, like recipient’s development, poverty reduction and pain relief.

What Pedro could do

This paper discusses Bernard Williams's famous case of Jim and the Indians. It contrasts two ways of diagnosing the alleged errors of Act Utilitarianism in considering this case. One approach suggests that Act Utilitarianism fails to appreciate the importance of what Jim does; it fails to understand the significance of Jim's agency. This paper favours an alternative diagnosis, according to which Act Utilitarianism fails to appreciate the importance of what Pedro could do; it fails to understand the significance of Pedro's agency

Working out a common task: design and evaluation of user-intelligent system collaboration

This paper describes the design and user evaluation of an intelligent user interface intended to mediate between users and an Adaptive Information Extraction (AIE) system. The design goal was to support a synergistic and cooperative work. Laboratory tests showed the approach was efficient and effective; focus groups were run to assess its ease of use. Logs, user satisfaction questionnaires, and interviews were exploited to investigate the interaction experience. We found that user’ attitude is mainly hierarchical with the user wishing to control and check the system’s initiatives. However when confidence in the system capabilities rises, a more cooperative interaction is adopted