Fuck Nuance [pdf]
This article is a truly fantastic critique of how modern social sciences (besides economics) are carried out and publicized in modern society. Any critique one dislikes - typically &quot;your theory predicts X which is false&quot; - can be dismissed by &quot;nuance&quot;, &quot;things are more complicated&quot;, &quot;that&#x27;s different in unspecified way&quot;, etc.<p>In statistical terms, these dismissals are little more than a call for overfitting - if I can arbitrarily add more dimensions to a theory, I can make it fit any data set.<p>This is a fantastic article that can be applied in so many places.<p>In applied social sciences this critique is far easier to work around. &quot;Yeah, my theory is pretty one-dimensional and does lack nuance. My code is in $REPO - feel free to run an experiment and see if your multidimensional theory generates any alpha over mine.&quot;