Another Followup To “Economists On Education”

A short followup resolving a dispute empirically. After Scott argued a news article misleadingly implied economists oppose school vouchers (and got pushback), he offered a bet and proposed an MTurk test. Two people ran it: 91% (and 78%) of readers misinterpreted the article to claim economists oppose privatization, when the true answer was 'the article doesn't say.' Scott wins his $10 bet and celebrates a rare case of decisively settling a disagreement by operationalising and testing it.

Quality 57 · Solid. 57 — Solid. A clean, admirable little demonstration of the bet-and-test ethos for settling disagreements about media misreporting, but short and minor. Firm mid-Solid.

Claude’s paradigm shift 40 · Moderate. 40 — Moderate. The empirical-resolution demonstration is a nice practice, not a novel idea.

Real-world impact 1 · Negligible. 1 — negligible. A short followup; no material reach.