The blogs I read

Author

Jason Collins

Published

January 8, 2015

Although RSS seems to be on the way out, I’ve found myself explaining feed readers to a few people recently. They asked for some suggestions of blogs to follow, so below are some from my reading list.

I try not to live in a bubble, but you can see a libertarian bent to these recommendations. My full reading list (as at 4 January 2015) is here - unzip and upload it into your favourite feed reader - and is a bit broader than the below might suggest.

Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science: My favourite blog. Regularly skewers statistical papers of all types. I’ve learnt more about the practical use of statistics from Andrew Gelman than I have in any statistics or econometrics class.

Offsetting Behaviour: Eric Crampton’s regular dismantling of those who want to protect us from ourselves is always worth reading.

Gene Expression: Still the best evolutionary biology and genetics blog.

Bleeding Heart Libertarians: The blog at which I feel most at home politically.

Econlog: I have only Bryan Caplan’s posts in my feed, although Caplan is possibly the most infuriating thinker I regularly read.

Askblog: Arnold Kling’s post-Econlog blog is always a source of sharp comment on interesting material.

Marginal Revolution: One of the most popular economics sites, but possibly the best aggregator of interesting content.

Econtalk: Not a blog but a podcast. Russ Roberts has an impressive guest list and is rarely dull. There is a massive back catalogue worth working through.

Club Troppo: A centrist Australian political blog. I don’t have any Australian “libertarian” or “free market” blogs in my feed, as they are generally horrible - conservative at best (rare), corporatist at worst, with posts closer to trolling than informative and comment sections that make the eyes bleed.

Information Processing: Stephen Hsu provides plenty of material at the cutting edge of research into genetics and intelligence.

Santa Fe Institute News: The best feed of complexity related stories and ideas.

Matt Ridley’s Blog: Hit and miss (a bit like The Rational Optimist), but more than enough good material.

The Enlightened Economist: A constant source of additions to my book reading list.