Bookmarks (563)

“AI, Philosophy, Climate Change & Bitcoin”  Here are Jack’s other podcasts, mostly with economists. The post My podcast with Jack Roycroft appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsTyler likes to tout the Covid vaccine as a success story of ... by FRLIn reply to Karl Pooper. Pooper isn't me. I'm not Pooper. ... by Adam !== PooperCommenting is back by Commenting is backTC's comments...

CPI inflation has come in at three percent, and there are signs of vulnerability in labor markets, as I discuss in my latest Bloomberg column: What about unemployment? There is a general consensus that the labor market has stayed broadly stable, but hiring is slowing down and people are less likely to quit their jobs. The overall […] The post Might we end up with a...

1. Ireland seems to be relaxing its regulations on modular homes. 2. AI assistance can enhance rather than hinder skills development. 3. The zero-electricity Indian restaurant.  Here is their home page. 4. Bari Weiss is correct. 5. Donald Shoup obituary (NYT). 6. NYC congestion pricing may not be disappearing after all (NYT). 7. Why disintermediation […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Yes I will be doing a podcast with him.  And he has a new and very good book coming out with Derek Thompson, namely Abundance.  So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Ezra Klein? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsWhat did you learn in college that has been of value to you in ... by Jon“Ezra, while we...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: How much of your life’s trajectory was set in motion centuries ago? Gregory Clark has spent decades studying social mobility, and his findings suggest that where you land in society is far more predictable than we like to think. Using historical data, surname […] The post My excellent Conversation with Gregory Clark...

1. Plane crashes are still on a downward trend. 2. 2015 Matt Yglesias on whether American democracy is doomed. 3. 3.1%. 4. Does technology do more to help submarine tracking or submarine autonomy? 5. Good piece on Macca. 6. The actual budget news: House Republicans reluctant to cut Medicaid.  And does the bond market believe […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

A very good list from Kevin Bryan. 49 out of 50 correct, excellent ratio. 1) Ukrainians are heroes who suffered a ton. 2) Putin obviously covets Georgia and the Baltics also. 3) EU not in talks because they basically have no hard power; France even lost the Sahel. 4) The far right European parties are bad. […] The post 50 Takes from Kevin Bryan appeared...

If men create intelligent machines, or fantasize about them, it is either because they secretly despair of their own intelligence or because they are in danger of succumbing to the weight of a monstrous and useless intelligence which they seek to exorcize by transferring it to machines, where they can play with it and make […] The post Baudrillard on AI appeared first on...

A fun book, I enjoyed the read.  Here is one bit: There is another contribution to my productivity.  While sitting at my desk at home doing physics or preparing classes, or doing some science writing, I picked up the habit of watching classic movies or the History Channel on television.  My TV is always turned […] The post *Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics*...

Germany has lost almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs since the start of the Covid pandemic as companies and politicians sound the alarm that Europe’s industrial heartland is suffering an irreversible decline… The contraction of Germany’s industry is evident in the fall of market value in the sector. Together, Dax constituents Volkswagen, Thyssenkrupp […] The post Germany facts of the day appeared...

Scientific projects that carry a high degree of risk may be more likely to lead to breakthroughs yet also face challenges in winning the support necessary to be carried out. We analyze the determinants of renewal for more than 100,000 R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health between 1980 and 2015. We use four […] The post Does Peer Review Penalize Scientific Risk...

1. Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Bans are life-enhancing for the blind (WSJ). 2. Removal of all NEPA regulations? 3. New betting odds for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. 4. Capybaras face vasectomies. 5. Stock market data for Estonia. 6. Andrej on Grok 3.  And Ethan Mollick.  So far I like it. The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments# 2…Good idea to reform government,...

A very good dialogue, here is the YouTube: Johnathan discusses it here on Twitter, plus it is on all the usual podcast services.  This is an inaugural video for the Cosmos Institute, other people will follow in the series. The post Talking with Johnathan Bi about AI appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI'm totally prepared for hearing gasbags blow wind about the ......

My three-part essay for Liberty Fund continues, here is the opener: In the previous article, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I also noted that what most strikes me about The Odyssey is Homer’s treatment of comparative political regimes. Looking at the wide variety of regimes Odysseus encounters is the […] The post An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey:...

1. What is the meaning of life? 2. Rohit gets The Boss to write a science fiction novel. 3. AI and the Sisyphus Myth. 4. Are there workable mechanisms for fiscal discipline in the current eurozone? 5. Click on the first link here for an incredible account of a romance. 6. Who has cancelled at […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code. In an email to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool […] The post It’s happening at The New York...

Luis Garicano has an amazing post on “one of the dumbest fiscal policies in recent memory.” Launched in Italy during COVID by Prime Minister Conte, the “Superbonus” scheme subsidized 110% of housing renovation costs. Now if one were to use outdated, simplistic, Econ 101 type reasoning one would predict that such a scheme would be […] The post Italy’s Superbonus: The Dumbest Fiscal Policy...

Are you confused by all the model names and terminology running around?  Here is a simple guide to what I call them: o1 pro — The Boss 4o — Little Boss o3 mini — The Mini Boss GPT 4o with scheduled tasks — Boss come back later o1 — Cheapskates’ boss Deep Research — My […] The post Naming AI models correctly appeared first...

Here is one of them, in part: Here in brief is the method I’ve honed to optimize a two-week vacation: When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. If there is a small village, remote spa, a friend’s farm, […] The post Kevin Kelly’s fifty travel tips appeared...

It seems the Trump proposal to simply cut overhead to fifteen percent will not stand up in the courts, at least not without Congressional approval?  Nonetheless a few of you have asked me what I think of the idea. My preferred reforms for the NIH include the following: 1. Cap pre-specified overhead at 25 percent, […] The post Reforming the NIH appeared first on...

Yes, David Robertson the conductor.  He studied with Boulez and Messiaen, and arguably is the second best Boulez conductor ever.  He also is famous for his recordings of John Adams.  I find him consistently excellent, for instance his Unsuk Chin, Milhaud, or Porgy and Bess.  Here is his Wikipedia page.  Here is his TEDx talk […] The post What should I ask David Robertson?...

I have now read through the very impressive paper on AI tasks to have come out of Anthropic, with Kunal Handa as the lead author, including Dario, Jack, and quite a few others as well.  Here is the paper and part of the abstract: We leverage a recent privacy-preserving system [Tamkin et al., 2024] to […] The post Which economic tasks are performed with...

Akhil Kumar, 19, Toronto, global health issues and general career development. Janet Shin, Berkeley, neurotech and brain imaging. Diana Leung, San Francisco, AI and bio and machine learning. Kyle MacLeod, Oxford University, economics videos on YouTube. Aarav Sharma, Singapore, high school, to work on exoskeletons and AI. Megan Gafford, NYC, writings on aesthetics, Substack. Alice […] The post Emergent Ventures winners, 40th cohort appeared...

1. Dwarkesh and Toby Ord on inference and AI governance. 2. Gwern on Greenland. 3. Bill Gates and Patrick Collison in conversation. 4. George Selgin is retiring. 5. Was there a Soviet DOGE under Gorbachev? 6. New results on clouds and global warming? The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Tamerlane. It didn't take long for this...

The IMF estimates that Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a tariff of 45 per cent for manufacturing and 110 per cent for services. These effectively shrink the market in which European companies operate: trade across EU countries is less than half the level of trade across US states. And as activity shifts more towards […] The post European Union fact of the day...

That is my recent Bloomberg column on this all-important topic.  Here is one part: The risk is that Trump would hoard the most sensitive information and disclose selectively, to manipulate the news cycle or to distract attention from other events. It also could give him more political weapons to use against what he calls the […] The post How should government disclosure be done?...

Human capital—encompassing cognitive skills and personality traits—is critical for labor market success, yet the personality component remains difficult to measure at scale. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and comprehensive LinkedIn microdata, we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel “Photo Big 5” predicts school […] The post AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor...

In the previous post, I cited data showing that Ukrainian bond prices had fallen over the last few months.  But it seems that data source was faulty, and the value of Ukrainian bonds has been rising, including recently.  You can find some sources here.  Apologies for the error! I thank JoshB. for drawing this to […] The post Ukrainian bond data correction appeared first...

Right now in the neighborhood of 46%.  Right before the election they were roughly at 34%.  That is for the one-year bond. The post Ukraine bond yields appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Reason. Yup. This is a weird instance where the ... by Lord ActionIn reply to Donald Pretari. Hey dumbass, they weren’t ... by Shower of SmegmaIn reply to...

1. New blood test for pancreatic cancer. 2. More on IRBs and the law. 3. Freedom Cities for America: the White Paper. 4. Nina Jankowicz corrects the record on US AID funding of her. 5. DOGE website is live. 6. Social Stockfish. 7. Free Exchange at The Economist covers Deep Research. 8. Google sheet from […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

Charles Mann is worried that so few of us have any notion of the giant, interconnected systems that keep us alive and thriving. His new series, How the System Works at the The New Atlantis, is a primer to civilization. As you might expect from Mann, it’s beautifully written with arresting facts and images: The great […] The post How the System Works appeared first...

I have been reading the new Liz Pelly book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.  It is a very intelligent and well done book, though it is more pessimistic than I am about the future of music. One central lesson of the book is just how many “passive” […] The post Passive listeners on Spotify appeared first...

I have a very concrete and specific proposal for teaching people how to work with AI.  It is also a proposal for how to reform higher education. Given them some topics to investigate, and have them run a variety of questions, exercises, programming, paper-writing tasks — whatever — through the second or third-best model, or […] The post How to teach people how to...

Our analysis suggests that income equality in the Nordics is primarily driven by a significant compression of hourly wages, reducing the returns to labor market skills and education. This appears to be achieved through a wage bargaining system characterized by strong coordination both within and across industries. This finding contrasts with other commonly cited explanations […] The post Income inequality in the Nordics appeared...

1. Samir Varma is now on Substack. 2. “This is consistent with my (and Habermas’s) view that discursive practices are in some sense inherently left-wing.” 3. Mafia godfathers are having trouble recruiting talent (Daily Mail). 4. Sending Sora to film school. 5. What is a John Cage pilgrimage like? 6. What does a Macca pilgrimage […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Recall Principle 2 of Three Simple Principles of Trade Policy, Businesses are Consumers Too. Case in point, steel. Justin Wolfers summarizes an analysis of Trump’s 2018 steel tariffs: Going back further we have a good analysis from Lydia Cox of the Bush steel tariffs. Even though the tariffs were temporary, they led to a rearrangement […] The post Steel Tariffs in Two Pictures appeared...

This paper investigates the causal impact of place-based factors on fertility decision using mover design and data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1968-2019). We find that moving to a state with a 1 percentage point higher birth rate increases the probability of childbirth by 0.9 percentage points, with cumulative effects reaching 3.8 percentage […] The post Place Effects on Fertility Decision: Evidence...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one excerpt: Stablecoins are programmable crypto assets that promise conversion into some currency, typically US dollars. Currently, they are the fastest-growing sector of crypto. Stablecoin usage is up 84% since August 2023 and is now at a peak of $224 billion. The sympathetic stance of President […] The post Will stablecoins herald a broader-based dollarization?...

1. Nvidia markets in everything? 2. Selfish Reasons to Have Kids is now available on audiobook. 3. Software development job postings, the trend. 4. Jason Furman on Bidenomics, a very good piece. 5. Hard truths, NJ edition. 6. New DOGE Executive Orders. 7. Richard Grenell the new interim executive director at the Kennedy Center. 8. […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

An excellent thread from Dilan Esper.  Excerpt: I have pointed out already that Elon Musk has massive economic interests in cases currently before the federal courts. That is reason enough he would have to obey an order or resign if Trump demanded he not do so. A federal court could default him on those suits. […] The post Why it is hard for the...

Ilya Somin covers this question over at Volokh Conspiracy.  I receive many queries about this, some of them panicky and anguished.  I haven’t covered it, mostly because I don’t feel I have enough insights into the relevant matters of constitutional law, or for that matter what is going on inside the administration (for instance, how […] The post The danger of Trump disobeying court...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with him.  So what should I ask?  Here is his Wikipedia page.  Here is Austan on Twitter.  Here is scholar.google.com.  Note that Austan is now president of the Chicago Fed.  So what should I ask him? The post What should I ask Austan Goolsbee? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIN October on an Odd Lots (Bloomberg!)...

If you are trying to contextualize someone’s opinion on current AI, I suggest asking three basic questions about their perspective.  In particular, you should know which of the following three realities they are aware of.  Here goes: 1. How good are the best models today? Most people do not know this, even if you are […] The post The three levels of AI understanding...

Marriages in China plunged by a fifth to the lowest level on record last year, a setback to efforts by the government to reverse a demographic crisis threatening the world’s second-biggest economy. The number of marriage registrations fell to 6.1 million, according to statistics released by China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs on Saturday, after a post-pandemic increase to nearly […] The post China fact of the day appeared...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with her.  From Wikipedia: Jennifer Pahlka (born December 27, 1969) is an American businesswoman and political advisor. She is the founder and former executive director of Code for America. She served as U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer from June 2013 to June 2014 and helped found the United States Digital Service. Previously she […] The post What should I ask Jennifer Pahlka?...

1. How much did the modern mortgage support the baby boom? 2. “Over the 2008-2016 period, the global cycle phase, the North accounts for 68% of Southern [bond] spreads’ fluctuations. Over the whole 1994-2024 period, however, Northern shocks account for less than 20% of these fluctuations.” 3. Adam Smith cartoon. 4. Bryan Caplan is telling […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Boom, the supersonic startup, has announced that their new jet reaches supersonic speeds but without creating much of an audible boom. How so? According to CEO Blake Scholl: It’s actually well-known physics called Mach cutoff. When an aircraft breaks the sound barrier at a sufficiently high altitude, the boom refracts in the atmosphere and curls […] The post Lift the Ban on Supersonics: No...

I have some bad news, fellow Earthlings: There is a newly discovered asteroid, called 2024 YR4, headed for our planet. Fortunately, the risk is neither great nor urgent. The chance of impact, which would happen on Dec. 22, 2032, is estimated at only about 2.3%. The worst-case scenario, though not world-ending, is still horrific. The asteroid is estimated […] The post Protection against asteriod strikes appeared first...

We create a novel reign-level data set for European monarchs, covering all major European states between the 10th and 18th centuries. We first document a strong positive relationship between rulers’ cognitive ability and state performance. To address endogeneity issues, we exploit the facts that (i) rulers were appointed according to hereditary succession, independent of their […] The post The Effect of European Monarchs on...

Hat tip: Max The post Greenland Next appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI assume you are referring to the state of North Maine. by PshrnkGo Trump!! Go Elon!! by MPIn the spirit of Tyler's “N. Y. C. fact and poetry” item a ... by Edward BurkeCan he make Pluto a planet again, too? by rsmRelated StoriesThe exhaustion of rentsDwarkesh’s QuestionUSPS as a failed...