~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (545)

Let’s say you have a production process, and the AIs involved operate at IQ = 160, and the humans operate at IQ = 120.  The O-Ring model, as you may know, predicts you end up with a productivity akin to IQ = 120.  The model, in short, says a production process is no better than […] The post Does the O-Ring model hold for...

It’s well past the August holiday peak, but anger against over-tourism in Spain is spilling into the off-season, as holiday-makers continue to seek winter sun. On Sunday locals in the Basque city of San Sebastian plan to take to the streets under the banner: “We are in danger; degrow tourism!” And in November anti-tourism protesters […] The post The anti-tourism movement continues into winter...

1. Samuel Siskind, Awake, he is a 17-year-old composer.  And Les Aunties, female vocalists from Chad. 2. Forthcoming Nvidia book. 3. Emory University invests in Bitcoin. 4. We can terraform the American West.  By Casey Handmer, I am a big fan of this approach and think it is far more promising than Mars exploration. 5. […] The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on...

More than 6.1 million malaria cases, and 1,038 deaths, have been recorded in the country this year through the end of September, compared with 4.5 million cases, and 469 deaths, for all of 2023. Worse, cases are likely to soar far higher in the next couple of months because peak malaria season, driven by seasonal […] The post Ethiopia fact of the day appeared...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: To see how this is likely to play out, start with a distinction between sectors in which it is relatively easy to go out of business, and sectors in which it is not. Most firms selling computer programming services, for example, do […] The post The uneven effects of AI on...

Here is a very good New York piece by Reeves Wiedeman, here is the excerpt from yours truly: When I reached out to Tyler Cowen, he said that his prognostication of football’s death had been off in part because he misread people’s concern for their health and the health of others. “COVID changed my mind […] The post What happened to football’s concussion crisis?...

1. Goldfish crackers are changing, but only for a limited period of time. 2. The rise and decline of the secretary. 3. Not every economist would agree.  Even fewer would frame it as such, even if they had some sympathies in that direction. 4. Canadian backlash on immigration. 5. Perplexity on the move. 6. The […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

From the Institute for Progress, here is the link, the participants were Caleb Watney, Dylan Matthews, Alexander Berger, and myself.  Excerpt: Tyler Cowen: I would stress just how decentralized science funding is in the United States. The public universities are run at the state level. We have tax incentives for donations where you have to give […] The post Science and politics podcast appeared first...

Here is one excerpt: Over-regulation was the enemy at many presentations, but this wasn’t a libertarian conference. Everyone agreed that safety, quality, the environment, etc, were important and should be regulated for. They just thought existing regulations were colossally stupid, so much so that they made everything worse including safety, the environment, etc. With enough political will, […] The post Scott Alexander on the Progress Studies...

Here is a fun post by Arnold Kling on which thinkers have kept name recognition and also influence.  Excerpt: Sociology (Erving Goffman, Talcott Parsons, Robert Nisbet, Charles Murray, Matt Granovetter, Robert Trivers, E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould) Is there not a good case to be made that we are living in Erving Goffman’s world? […] The post Risers and Fallers, mostly Fallers appeared...

1. First robot painting to auction at Sotheby’s. 2. A Large Language Model for Interpreting Longitudinal Medical Records.  Twitter summary here. 3. Practical suggestions for federal action on housing affordability. 4. Pseudoerasmus. 5. Are drivers an especially right-wing group of people? 6. Might Argentina have to default? (FT) 7. Origins of truth terminal and what it […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

There is a new paper on this topic: We investigate the effects of substantial Medicare price reductions in the medicaldevice industry, which amounted to a 61% decrease over 10 years for certain devicetypes. Analyzing over 20 years of administrative and proprietary data, we find theseprice cuts led to a 25% decline in new product introductions […] The post Quantifying the Super-Villains appeared first on...

From the Institute for Progress.  There are four of us, namely  Dylan Matthews, Matt Clancy, and Jacob Trefethen as well.  There is a transcript, and here is one very brief excerpt: Tyler Cowen: I see the longer run risks of economic growth as primarily centered around warfare. There is lots of literature on the Industrial Revolution. People […] The post Metascience podcast on science and safety...

Although many women report being victimized by gossip, fewer report spreading negative gossip. Female gossipers might be unaware they are gossiping if they disclose such statements out of concern for targets. Four studies (N = 1709) investigated whether women believe their gossip is motivated by concern and whether expressing concern for targets insulates female gossipers against social […] The post Gossip phrased with concern provides advantages...

1. The latest @pmarca gambit.  Crypto + AI.  And a Brian Armstrong offer, take it! 2. Where did all that Millennial wealth come from so suddenly? 3. Anthropic’s new computer use capabilities.  And further observations on that. 4. The perverse consequences of tuition-free medical school (Atlantic). 5. New James Boyle book on AI and the […] The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on...

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: It also matters if Satoshi was a single person or a small team. If a single person, that might mean future innovations are more likely than generally thought: If Satoshi is a lone individual, then maybe there there are more unknown geniuses […] The post Does it matter who Satoshi was?...

We argue that deep learning provides a promising avenue for taming the curse of dimensionality in quantitative economics. We begin by exploring the unique challenges posed by solving dynamic equilibrium models, especially the feedback loop between individual agents’ decisions and the aggregate consistency conditions required by equilibrium. Following this, we introduce deep neural networks and […] The post Quantitative Economics with Deep Learning appeared...

Watch here.  (It’s happening.) The post The new Claude can run and direct your computer for you appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsOld: clickbait that tricks humans New: clickbait that tricks ... by compromise is the death of innovationIn reply to Flex. Yes, that probably should have been the ... by JWattsIn reply to Gene de Murro. “When is sunrise at Golden Gate...

1. The importance of conditional risk in finance. 2. Brendan Greeley on how exclusive and inclusive institutions fit together (FT).  “Rather, this inability to see how London, Virginia and Barbados function within the same system is, ironically, an institutional problem within the profession of economics.” 3. Joseph Walker and Larry Summers podcast on AGI and […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

Our second podcast on the 1970s titled Oil Shocks, Price Controls and War is now available! Here’s one bit: Tabarrok: …Sheikh Ahmed Yamani, in a famous statement, he was the oil minister for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he’s a leader of OPEC, he says on October 16th, this is 10 days after the war […] The post The MR Podcast–Oil Shocks, Price Controls...

I loved this Craig Brown book, although many of you won’t.  A good biography typically brings a subject to life.  This biography sets out to convince you that Queen Elizabeth II could never be understood whatsoever, that she was a literal cipher and always was going to stand outside our typical categories.  She did love […] The post *A Voyage Around the Queen* appeared...

How does a person’s childhood socioeconomic status (SES) influence their chances to participate and succeed in science? To investigate this question, we use machine-learning methods to link scientists in a comprehensive biographical dictionary, the American Men of Science (1921), with their childhood home in the US Census and with publications. First, we show that children […] The post What predicts success in science? appeared...

If you ask them whether they are short the market, many will say there is no way to short the apocalypse.  But of course you can benefit from pending signs of deterioration in advance.  At the very least, you can short some markets, or go long volatility, and then send those profits to Somalia to […] The post A funny feature of the AI...

1. Grandmaster level chess without search, or how AI can learn from Stockfish directly.   And one possible interpretation. 2. Shakespeare on the wane. 3. Eric Budish on the limits of blockchains, now in the QJE. 4. A defense of surveillance capitalism. 5. The effects of the Dawes Act on American Indian mortality. 6. Stripe and […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...