César A. Hidalgo
@cesifoti
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Last Seen Profiles
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Are you working on economic complexity? Are you interested on the latest developments in the field?
Join us this summer for the 2024 Conference on Economic Complexity (CEC) at Corvinus University of Budapest. The CEC will include a summer school, two days of conference, & a…
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Want to read an insane tenure denial story? I was denied tenure at MIT in 2018. I was the only Hispanic faculty at my department, had 13k+ citations, 2 books, & papers in Nature, Science, & PNAS. I was never given a reason & the only letter I got told me to check the website./1🧵
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After advising PhD & Master students for over a decade, there is one thing I find most students need to unlearn: the half-ass work mentality acquired during years of tests and homework. Let me explain (thread 🧵). 1/N
#AcademicTwitter
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Today I am leaving the US.
With my family we are exploring a new life in the south of France.
I’ve been in the US for more than 16 years. I earned my citizenship & experienced many ups & downs. But I am grateful. The US was good to me in many ways ...
/1
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*I have more to tell. I could probably fill a book with the psychological damage I experienced at “the institute.” But as you may understand these are difficult things to talk about. They are the storm that lives within me & wakes me up at night. It took me years to share this.
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I finally got “an answer.” The president of MIT told me that tenure was not about research, productivity, or merit. It was about office politics & being liked by your department. He didn’t mean it in a bad way. I think he was being kind & honest. So I ask him if I should appeal.
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Un mensaje para nuestro presidente
@sebastianpinera
desde su querida escuela de Economía en Harvard. Con honestidad y respeto, de un ciudadano chileno a otro.
#ChileDesperto
#ChileDespierta
#chile
#ChileInCrisis
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“Look Cesar, the truth is that, if you are a mediocre researcher, but your department wants to keep you, they’ll find a way to keep you. And if you are a strong researcher, and your department wants to get rid of you, they’ll find a way to get rid of you.”
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There is a lot of discussion of bias in economics. This discussion is justified & needed. What I can add to this is some stories on how economists treat people from outside the field. Let me share with you a few bone chilling stories of what I’ve been through 🧵/1
#EconTwitter
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True for so many disciplines. It applies also to cumbersome use of language.
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My mistake was thinking I was a player when I was a pawn.
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I did not appeal.
That year changed me. Before then I believed in an imperfect meritocracy. After all, scientific work is reproducible and verifiable. Its adoption is also expressed imperfectly in citations.
It was time to grow up & accept the cynicism.
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“I am sorry, I am not going to be able to simply talk about research. I just learned that my tenure case was denied.”
He looked at me & said instantly:
“But if your case had been approved, who in the senior faculty would have won?”
He understood the game.
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In hindsight it was obvious. But one of the reasons why I choose academia is because I believed in the power of ideas & hardwork.
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For the time being, if you are a student reading this. Know this is coming and prepare yourself for it. Also, if you don't encounter it, your mentors may not be helping you grow. Keep on at it. Great work is never finished, only improved gradually over time. /END
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This semester I had the pleasure to teach data visualization studio at an elite US university. Many students were interested in social justice (being 2020 in the US). Yet, many approached the topic in a way that was a bit naive ... (thread🧵) /1
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Other universities might be considering me, and would probably call my department head asking for a recommendation. The only thing my dept. head had to do to kill my chances was to reply that he was to busy to provide a recommendation. So I should be careful to not upset him.
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Why is this "wrong"?
Color is a preattentive feature. We see it in miliseconds, before paying attention. So we learn calendar is blue, mail is white & red, etc. By making everything a combination of the same 4 colors, we lose that cognitive shortcut. :-(
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I remember entering his office & seeing the view of the Charles river. The president knew who I was (because of my research) and asked me why I was there. He told me he had never heard about my tenure case since it had never reached him.
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Quality+Entertainment+Simplicity are three aspects of the US that make it an attractive place to me. There are of course many others.
Now, the time has come for me to try to create new opportunities elsewhere. Thanks for everything America! We will meet again! /24
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¿Cuanto litio exporta Chile? ¿Qué tan "lejos" esta Chile de las baterías? Acá un hilo con varios datos sobre el litio y sus derivados.
1. Chile es el principal exportador mundial de carbonato de litio. En el 2022, exportó USD 7600M de este producto
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After the denial I asked to meet my department head. He did not provide any reason other than “the decision came from above” & that there was nothing him or the department could do. So a few months later I asked to meet with him again & requested a meeting with the president.
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We had our conversation in Spanish, and I think that afforded some candor that would not have been there otherwise. I presented him my appeal papers & asked him about appealing, because I wanted it to do it amicably.
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There is an ongoing discussion involving Harvard and MIT, two institutions where I spent plenty of time during the past 20 years. I first came to Harvard as a visiting PhD student in 2005, then joined the Kennedy School as a postdoc in 2008, and in 2010 I joined the MIT faculty,…
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Many students struggle enormously with this change. They are not trained to do the same thing over and over until they get it right. They are trained to do better than average on their first try and to forget about what they did as soon as they turn their work in. 4/N
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I’ve known about Epstein’s involvement with the MIT Media Lab and Joi Ito from the moment Joi shared his public apology. I joined the Media Lab as faculty before Joi joined as director. I have a few thoughts to share... [open thread] 1/
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He backpedaled & told me that it was not “really above,” but a decision from the school. He then dissuaded me to meet the president, although I did manage to meet him later. But since the school theory didn’t make sense either, I asked for another meeting a few months later.
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Tenure! 🎓
Yesterday I accepted an offer to join the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) as a tenured professor "première classe" at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. As some of you know, this was a long journey for me after MIT rejected my tenure case in 2018.…
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I remember the day of my tenure denial. I had to host a professor who was near retirement. I was scheduled to meet him at 3pm but was informed about my denial at noon. So I had to suck it up and welcome him in my office. But I couldn’t act like nothing happened, so I told him:
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I was trying to understand. To get a reason other than check the website. Eventually the president would tell me a real reason, but what I could put together up until that time was that the department was divided about me & presented a weak case so the school could shoot it down.
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I understood I was not going to get a straight answer from my department head, so I wrote an appeal case and asked for a meeting with the president. If I was going to appeal, I wanted to do it in good terms.
Eventually, the president gave me an answer that changed me forever.
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During this decade, I grew convinced that scientists do not leave fields because they get tired of ideas, but because they get tired of people. Science without camaraderie & a sense of wonder, feels like doing homework forever. The devil that you know is not always best. /19
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His next answer was more strategic. He told me that of course he could not advice me not to appeal, but that I should consider the following:
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It’s official! 📕
New contract signed with Penguin Random House to write “The Infinite Alphabet.”
In this book I will explain the principles governing the growth, creation, & diffusion of knowledge.
Wish me luck. Manuscript is due on Jan 2025.
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He told me he didn’t want to touch the case unless it was an official submission, but that he could provide me with some advice. So I asked him if he had any advice about my situation. He said:
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A good friend once told me: “life changes at 40: before 40 life is about making decisions, after 40 is about living with the decisions you made.” I am turning 40 today, so I wanted to share 8 “nuggets of wisdom” I learned during my 30s. (Thread!)
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It is a tough aha moment that helps them realize work is always unfinished. You are there to help improve the work, not to grade it. And that only by iterating with others they will manage to make a sword out of the lump of steel. 8/N
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But I don't blame them. I also had to learn that lesson. Because most of us grow up in an educational system that grades us on our first try, instead of pushing us to do the same thing over multiple times. 9/N
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First, in the US many people care about the quality of their work. This seems trivial, but it is huge. In many places people prioritize cost or speed over quality. The focus on quality makes a huge difference in teams & in people’s professional behavior. /8
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I want to thank everyone for their support. It has been deeply healing & uplifting.
I also want to share two more things.
1. Despite all, I very much love the heart of research academia: working with students & postdocs & helping them grow. I am blessed with a great team.
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He visto este tuit varias veces. Lamentablemente, la tesis que presenta no es correcta. Holanda es un gran RE-exportador de productos vegetales, y su volumen exportador se explica por logística, no agricultura. Veamos los datos? (1/N) 🧵
Los Países Bajos son el segundo mayor exportador mundial de productos agrícolas.
Solamente EEUU (con un territorio 270 veces más extenso) exporta más.
¿Cómo se convirtió un enano en gigante? 75 años de historia en 5 minutos:
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Could we prepare people better? I think so. Having some activities that do not end in a grade, but that are iterated through long periods of time should be something we could add to earlier stages of education. 11/N
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At that point, I find it useful to have this conversation:
“Look, the paper will need to go through 20 to 30 iterations to be completed. If each iteration takes 2 months, then we will be ready in more than three years. It is up to you.” 7/N
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So why share these stories? And why now?
Because the more I become embedded in the field the more I see how this toxicity consumes the minds of younger students. It is an academic world of exclusion, fear, and deception. /13
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I am married to a Russian-Ukrainian Immunologist.
So for the last two years & running, my need for expert knowledge has been fully covered.
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The only thing that I can ask you, if you are reading is, is for you to choose to be different. For those interested in what I did, here is a review on the field that a few have so adamantly rejected.
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But when they make it to grad school (or to their first job) it is quite different. Once they turn in work, they are not given a grade. They are given feedback and asked to do the work again. Sometimes several times. 3/N
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People who care about quality know how to receive feedback. They don’t search for excuses because they put the work above themselves. You sometimes disagree, but you will discuss things from a perspective where the only thing that matters is what is best for the work. /9
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So students show up with a first draft of a paper and tell you “I am done!” So you give them feedback and ask them to keep working on it. And you do this again, and again, and tension can begin to build. 5/N
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2. If you are on the tenure track, don’t postpone having a family. I waited to hear about my tenure decision before trying to conceive a second child. By then it was too late for us. I regret that choice deeply & would choose differently if I had to do it all over again.
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To me, these two values: “entertainment” + “quality” help explain in part why the US has been so successful at pushing its culture into the world. Why the world watches US movies & television. To me, these are “the” quintessential US exports. /17
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We have a saying in Chile: criticizing a musician is easy, but it is more difficult "when you have a guitar in your hand." It is our hands the ones that teach us humility, and it is that humility what teaches us understanding. /14 _END
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***New Paper***
Many of you are familiar with urban scaling, the idea that outcomes such as innovation and crime grow super-linearly with city size. But what if I told you that the "network of cities" was better at explaining some of these outcomes?
In a new paper led by…
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Third-world migrant here. Taught & directed research at MIT for 9 years. Published 3 books. Created an award winning company employing +20 people. Earned US citizenship. Moving to France next week.
Most third-world migrants can not assimilate into civil societies.
Prove me wrong.
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This is not a video. It is where computer graphics are in 2020. 🤯
I have added some dynamic lighting to my VR Train scene.
@madewithunity
@AmplifyCreates
#shaders
#realtimeVFX
All made inside
@unity3d
and rendered with
#DeckardRender
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Many cultures focus on costs. But cutting costs translates quickly into a culture of “good enough” work, where feedback is met with excuses, not iterations. But the iterations make the difference. You can always do better if u put quality first. Never be satisfied. /10
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I work with many students that are learning how to write. So I get to see a lot of them making the same mistakes. When I ask them why they are pursuing an academic career, or why they are working on a paper, they often tell me something like: “because I want to make a…
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Some students struggle to understand this, and will keep the paper hostage for many months thinking: this time I will be really done (I'll get an A). 6/N
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In academia, you see this when you see speakers from US universities at international conferences. They know how to engage an audience, and they take the cake. They understand that it is not easy to pay attention & it is the job of the speaker to enthuse. /15
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As an entrepreneur, I see this in my company as well, with young hires, which are trying to do “good enough” work and react against feedback. If they struggle to learn this lesson for too long, it is a bad sign. 10/N
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But they don’t realize that the extra effort is unlikely to make a difference, and they could be better targeting a healthier community. The institutionalization of rejection is communicated as rigor and methods (surmountable), but it is closer to a disciplinary culture. /16
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Three years ago my family and I moved to France 🇫🇷. We left the United States 🇺🇸after living there for more than 16 years. Today, I am no expert in France or the United States, but I am a bit of an expert on their differences.
While both France and the US are both prominent…
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My original sin was to be interested in economic development & contribute to it through the perspective of structural transformation, physics, & machine learning. But my trajectory means I pay a daily emotional toll to continue working on the field. /12
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The second point will sound trivial, but I think is also extremely important. In the US, entertainment, is considered a value. This is a simple change in perspective that makes a huge difference in a planet where many cultures confuse dull with serious. /14
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Los invito a Chilecracia, una nueva plataforma participativa donde podemos rankear de manera colectiva más de 80 propuestas ciudadanas recopiladas de redes sociales y grupos expertos
#chilecracia
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The bottom line was that three senior faculty, including two future Nobel prize winners and the department head, were ganging up against a junior faculty with less than a year at the university (anybody said welcoming committee?) /10
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The time has come to say goodbye to
@mit
& the
@medialab
. After a decade serving as the director of
@CollectiveMIT
, I have decided to relocate to Europe in 2020. I have accepted an ANITI Chair in Toulouse (
@Univ_Toulouse
) to start a new lab on Data Science, AI, and Complexity /1
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For 10+ years I’ve been leading teams in academia & the private sector. When I started I was clueless, but I slowly picked up a few lessons that today I use to think about team leadership & management. Here is a list of three lessons I wish I had when I started🧵 /1
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For most of their education students are evaluated using tests & homework. We are all familiar with the process. The student is asked to do some work; they turn it in, and get a grade (eg a B+,B, A, etc.) 2/N
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I’ve coached and mentored many students, alone or with co-advisors, and I see how the students that don’t come from the right places struggle to belong, and I know they never will. /14
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¿Cómo hacer crecer el odio?
Paso 1: Encuentra una persona del bando opuesto haciendo algo reprochable.
Paso 2: Úsala como ejemplo para argumentar que todos los “otros” son así.
Paso 3: Recibe muchos RT y likes de personas que piensan como tú.
Paso 4: Celebra y Repite!
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Will the culture of economics change? I doubt it. The pleasure of feeling that “I belong” because “you don’t” is primal. I’ve experienced first hand. Whether it is whispered into on ear, gossiped in a hallway, or emailed to a university president. /20
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**New Paper**
Economic complexity methods are popular tools in industrial policy. Yet, despite their widespread adoption, these methods are sometimes misunderstood. In this new paper, I explain & explore the policy implications of economic complexity. /1
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Trust matters. If you are an entrepreneur working with 5 or 6 clients, these extra steps are the difference between working on your company or getting stuck in busywork. They are the difference between having to staff up with admins instead of engineers. /23
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They are dipped to think that if they sophisticate their methods more, and have more robustness and causality checks, they would be accepted. And they produce 80 page long papers with all the methods they can find that not even themselves like to read. /15
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La complejidad económica ha sido debatida en Chile las ultimas semanas. Lamentablemente, incluso los expertos entienden poco que es la complejidad o como se mide. Acá un hilo y un artículo aclarando varios malos entendidos. (1/N)
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Si los académicos de verdad saliéramos en el diario cada vez que presentamos, tendríamos nuestro propio diario. 😂
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One thing I’ve noticed since I moved to Toulouse, is that I use social media way less. But I am not alone. Look at these pictures I took near my house. How many phones do you see? My hypothesis is that the virtual space may be a substitute for bad urban spaces, not good ones.
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What is economic complexity? And how it is helping us understand the economy? More than a decade ago, two papers helped ignite the field. Today, I am publishing the first comprehensive review of Economic Complexity in Nature Review Physics (thread) 1/N
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El conflicto no termina cuando unos ganan y otros pierden. Termina cuando todos aprenden a convivir juntos. Aún estamos muy lejos de entender eso. Cuando “todo termine,” los “otros” aún estarán ahí.
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Yes. The only Hispanic member of the lab was kicked out of a classroom for Joi’s “minorities in science event.” I have a PhD in physics by the way. During my decade at the lab I also had two 1-on-1 meetings with Joi, & when I requested them I was put on a waitlist of months. 8/
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The fact that entertainment is a shared value is simple, but it matters. You do not need to argue for it in meetings. People get it. Everyone agrees that the content you produce, or the product that you make, has to be entertaining. It is a key value. /16
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Chilecracia nunca pretendió reemplazar cabildos o instancias de diálogo. Por el contrario. Creemos que el diálogo es importantes y que instancias de participación online son complementarias a este. Si les dicen que nuestra intención es reemplazar cabildos, les están mintiendo.
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Map Time!
So you’ve seen a lot of maps in the last few days. What maps work, which ones don’t, and how to think about them? Time for a thread ! /1
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It left me cold. He did not seem to get that, for a graduate student, it was not funny to have a senior faculty from a top tier university whisper into his ear that he would feel pleasure rejecting his work. But there is more. /5
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I know the leadership of the lab, and the department head, are taking this seriously. Shame is only the beginning of the journey. A future is possible, if you don’t walk alone. Be strong. Do what’s right. You’ve pushed people out for less. 25/END
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Why should we care about economic complexity? And why do complexity measures capture information that escapes measures of concentration such as entropy, Herfindahl-Hirschmann, or Gini?
A nerdy thread: 👇🧵/1
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To understand why I care about such simple things, you need to first understand what I came here for. I did not come “yearning for freedom” or “escaping hardship.” I came here searching for accomplishment. For an opportunity to contribute to global science. /6
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Yet the lab was also a strange environment. A place filled with stars, but without a galaxy. A place rich in physical & human capital, but dire in social capital. A place that was easy to capture politically by someone cunning. 12/
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