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This is definitely a guilty pleasure of economists: being the "akshually" guy in the room
I was thinking about our common modelling practice of dividing the population into "high types" and "low types".
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Yes, what are high types and what are low types? These classifications look suspiciously collectivist.
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It's a modeling gimmick to classify people into low skill and high skill groups, with the simple binary being chosen simply for mathematical convenience. It lets the model generate heterogeneity in outcomes such as high types getting degrees and low types not
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Another statistical modeling gimmick, huh? How are they working out for the people using the models?
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In terms of getting published I guess it's working out just fine
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Getting published? How is it doing on modeling reality? Or is it just a model constructed from previous data?