Friday assorted links
1. Rohit is solving for the AI equilibrium.
2. Robin Hanson explains his political evolution.
3. Restoring the Book of Kells.
4. More Scott Sumner movie reviews.
5. Peter Howitt YouTube talk on golf? (I have not heard)
6. “Academics need to change, not the AI.”
7. I answer questions about AI for Berkman Klein Center.
8. On late Dylan.
How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi
How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi is a good piece in the Atlantic by Idrees Kahloon filled with colorful anecdotes of a nation in decline:
The health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care. Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their own teeth or gluing broken crowns back together.
Incomes can be shockingly low: Junior doctors recently went on strike for the 15th time in three years over their salaries, which start at just £38,800; the median salary for British civil servants is £35,680. In April, amid the Iran conflict, the Daily Mail pounced on Prime Minister Keir Starmer for vacationing in Valencia, Spain, at what the tabloid described as a luxury hotel, costing £200 a night.
Americans are likely to come away a bit smug, especially as Independence Day approaches and Europeans are enjoying our giant stadiums and central air conditioning. Look deeper, however, and Britain’s story becomes more uncomfortable. Does this sound familiar?
Recent plans to transform the country have rested in no small part on High Speed 2, a superfast rail line intended to connect London with Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester. But since HS2 was proposed, in 2009, its costs have tripled, to more than £100 billion. It is the most expensive rail line in the world. (A special structure to protect a rare bat species near the rail line in Buckinghamshire required 8,000 permits and was built at a cost of £216 million.) The most important sections of the proposed route have been lopped off. The rump line—going from Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, to not-quite-central London—may be finished by 2040…. HS2 has been delayed for so long that two swiftly built towers near the terminus now themselves look derelict and in need of demolition.
…Building infrastructure, or much of anything else, has become all but impossible in the United Kingdom. In addition to having the world’s most expensive (not yet built) train line, Britain also hosts the world’s most expensive (not yet built) nuclear-power plant, Hinkley Point C. Its environmental-impact assessment ran 31,401 pages; the plant will feature a £700 million “fish disco,” which will pulse sounds underwater to deter animals from its intake pipes.
Upon closer inspection, the United States looks a lot less like a shining city on a hill and a lot more like a declining Great Britain, appendaged with one or two dynamic sectors, most notably AI. The similarities are especially obvious in the retrograde solutions Britain has lumbered into, namely attacking immigrants and trade—Brexit being the equivalent of a high tariff regime. Nations in decline, like people, tend to lash out at others rather than deal with their real problems. Needless to say, neither immigrants nor trade explain Britain’s—or California’s—inability to build high-speed rail or other infrastructure.
It is discomforting to watch the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, individual rights, and free speech—the nation that once built the railways, the steam engines, the factories that remade the world—lose the capacity to build much of anything, or even to tolerate people speaking their minds. In parallel, instead of dealing with our real problems—almost all of our creation—the right gets literally hysterical over symbolic culture-war questions like birthright citizenship, while the left nominates candidates with Marxist-Leninist sympathies. The abundance and progress movements are some of the few shining lights. It’s not too late. But Great Britain is a warning.
How will AI and the fertility crisis interact?
That is from my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt:
Each individual will be seen as something special by the other humans. Public spaces will be emptier, so anyone out in public will attract more notice. If you are waiting in line at the movie theater, you will be more likely to start talking to the person next to you. After all, you already have had the option of talking to the AIs all day long.
It has long been the norm in American small towns that you say hi to the people you pass on the sidewalk, or perhaps start chatting with customers in your store who appear to be outsiders. Those kinds of practices will spread to the large cities of today, which will become like smaller towns due to lower population density.
Many of these humans will invest heavily in their appearances, in their charisma, and in their “vibes.” After all, the AIs will, and already do, perform so many useful informational functions. If you, as a human, wish to draw attention to yourself and be seen as noteworthy, you will have to specialize in the remaining human functions. That may include “touching grass,” giving warm and appropriate hugs, looking good or at least looking interesting, and having some kind of unique identity that either is visible upon meeting or which AI smart glasses will communicate during social interactions. (“This guy has sailed around the world three times and punched a shark on the nose.”)
The YouTube celebrity Clavicular has attracted a lot of ridicule for his “looksmaxxing,” which involves a lot of manipulation of his appearance and some plastic surgery. Like it or not, that is a harbinger of how some aspects of this future will operate. Clavicular has achieved nothing of note, except for being immediately recognizable for how he looks. For similar reasons, people are likely to pay more attention to how they dress, what kind of makeup they wear, and other aspects of their appearance, such as how tall they are and how much they weigh. Plastic surgery and the successor drugs to GLP-1s are likely to command even more interest than today.
If a person comes across as extremely nondescript, you might feel there is no reason to speak with that person instead of chatting with your AI. A lot of ordinary social interactions will become more like a gala, where everyone shows up wanting to look a very particular way to draw attention.
To inhabitants of 2026, that might sound stupid, undesirable, and ridiculous. I do not love the thought myself. Yet people today care much more about how they look, and can do much more about it, than could people in medieval times. We are used to those differences, and few of us wish to go back to earlier times. People in this future may well feel the same way.
There are other interesting points at the link.
James Mirrlees auction markets in everything
To mark what would have been Jim Mirrlees’ 90th birthday on 4 July, Nuffield College (Oxford University) is auctioning off some signed books from Jim’s personal collection and other special items of Jim’s generously donated by the Mirrlees family and the artist Yu Ji. The proceeds will support a fund for scholarships in Jim’ s memory.
The auction is conducted entirely online and is open to all.
Our auction is a simplification of the Product-Mix Auction that Paul Klemperer (Jim’s successor as Oxford’s Edgeworth Professor) designed for the Bank of England in 2007-8 at the beginning of the financial crisis. The Bank still runs its version regularly, and has now sold almost £400 billion of repos using it. (We expect to raise a little less!) This version has been programmed by Edwin Lock (Nuffield Research Fellow, 2021-24) who, along with Elizabeth Baldwin (Nuffield Research Fellow 2016-2017), has been involved with Paul in the further development of the Product-Mix Auction. (For more on this auction, see this paper, or this 5-minute film published by the Guardian newspaper.)
…The auction is focused on “social welfare”, not expected revenue…
Here is the link, via Tim Harford and Paul Klemperer..
Noah Smith on negative emotional contagion
Every movement in 2020s America is defined not by what they want, but by who they hate.
Rightists: Immigrants
Leftists: Israel
Intellectual liberals: Rich techbros
Here is the link, in the last six months or so I have noticed all these trends getting worse. Praise goes to all those who avoid negative emotional contagion, you will prove the saviors of our civilization.
Thursday assorted links
1. There is massive synaptic pruning between birth and adulthood.
2. Some major city populations from 1854.
3. From Samuel Hammond: “The AI boom is doubly upsetting to progressive economic commentators because it a) shows “financialization” was largely a macro story that eventually solved itself, and b) the boom is being driven by AI rather than their hoped-for “green transition”.” Plus it shows the internet and social media really were worth it, and that many tech companies are run by geniuses not superficial idiots.
4. The safety of mRNA vaccines.
5. Do the optimistic live longer?
6. How many people have ever lived in the United States? And what percentage of them are living here now?
7. What is going on with SpudCell? (NYT).
Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap
Rent control is in the news again. Check out my new website, Rent Control: The Ceiling Trap. Here is just one bit:
Norway abolished its rent control in 1982, and the economist Are Oust realized the newspapers had been quietly recording the whole experiment. He collected housing classifieds from Oslo’s Aftenposten from 1970 to 2008 and watched the market turn inside out.
Under rent control, Oslo’s listings pages looked nothing like a housing market. It was tenants who advertised, pleading their qualities to landlords — “housing wanted” ads outnumbered “housing for rent.” Ten to fifteen percent of those ads were placed by the tenant’s employer, vouching for them the way a bank vouches for a borrower. Tenants offered babysitting, gardening, snow-shoveling, and janitorial work on the side to sweeten the deal. Landlords, for their part, could demand a tenant of a particular gender, age, occupation, region of origin — some ads specified “strong Christian beliefs.” Deposits commonly ran to 50 or 60 months’ rent, occasionally 100 or more: tenants effectively lent the landlord the equity of the flat, interest free. And only about 20 percent of “for rent” ads dared print the rent, much of which would have been illegal.
Then the ceiling lifted. Within a few years the page flipped: landlords advertised to tenants, roughly 80 percent of listings printed an asking rent, the mega-deposits vanished, and the demands for snow-shoveling Christians of specified gender dwindled to nothing. The price went back to doing the rationing — so nothing else had to.
Check out the whole thing–it’s fabulous.
Is Alexander Calder the great American artist?
I am not ready to make this claim, but I wondered this after seeing the marvelous exhibit at Fondation Vuitton. To Calder’s credit:
1. His work is both beautiful and deep. It also can be fun. Unlike many other high-status artists, most Americans like or could like his work.
2. It is immediately recognizable and the body of work has a coherence as a whole.
3. He invented a new form — the mobile — and showed it could be art.
4. His works have iconic placement in many major American cities, namely Chicago, Grand Rapids, New York, Los Angeles, Cambridge, Philadelphia, Houston, Minneapolis, Seattle, and a bunch more. Who else can match that list?
5. He worked in multiple genres with great success, including not just sculpture (of various kinds, including wire sculpture and bronze sculpture) but also painting, works on paper, and jewelry (!). He worked with metal and wood and wire and string in his sculptures. The exhibit is wonderful in showing all this.
6. He built things, a very American endeavor, and he trained as a mechanical engineer. Mobility is also a very American idea.
7. He lived during the major period of American growth and hegemony, namely 1898-1976, very American years to have been on the scene.
I would note that most people think first of his large installations, which to me are his least interesting works. The small sculptures I admire the most? In this regard he remains underrated.
Who else are possible candidates for this designation? A while back Jasper Johns might have been an obvious leader for the title, and he remains in contention. But perhaps it is all a tad too formal and serious?
Rothko and Pollock are too one-dimensional, no matter how much you may admire the dimension. The Hudson River School does not boil down easily enough to a single artist, plus it is mainly just painting. Winslow Homer is a possibility. Warhol is another candidate, as his work is both seminal and “very American,” but currently it feels overexposed? (I am not anti-Warhol but perhaps his influence peaked some while ago.) Roy Lichtenstein did very well in sculpture as well as painting and prints, and he is in the running as well.
But I no longer think Calder is such a crazy choice for this designation. Do go see the show! The people we saw the show with were amazed at how much they had underrated his depth, breadth, and quality.
Emergent Ventures India, 17th cohort
This is all from Shruti:
Aryamman Bhatia is part of the team building HackerFab IITB, an open-source student-built chip microfabrication lab. He received his grant to build what he hopes will become the world’s cheapest fabrication tools and to inspire bottom-up contributions to India’s Semiconductor Mission.
Yashi Garg, 17, received her grant for Neurosole, a smart shoe designed to detect and prevent diabetic neuropathy. She is also a poet and emerging entrepreneur focused on purposeful innovation.
Fahad Hasin received his grant for the Kerala Growth Series, articles and policy memos to improve economic growth in the state. He thinks of the project as publicly building “the M document” of today.
Shafquat Aman, founder of NexuSelf, received his grant to build an AI wellness platform syncing women’s nutrition, workouts, hydration, and menstrual cycles to drive 2x adherence and lasting health outcomes. The company is a Delaware C-Corp in beta with users across the United States and India.
Kevin Wilson, founder and director of Tala Education, received his grant to scale play-based music pedagogy programs that train teachers and turn early childhood classrooms across India into spaces of creativity, inquiry, and joyful learning.
Yogesh Ostwal and Ayush Ranawade received their grant to build a generative AI model for discovering novel oncolytic viruses.
Priyansh Kumar, from Delhi, received his grant to work on an autonomous aerial defense system.
Gowtham Y is an instrumentation, electronics, and chemical engineer. He received his grant to work on synthetic fuel production, starting with cooking gas, at large scale using solar power.
Yash Mandlik, 18, received his grant to create a decentralized hostel network for solo and budget travelers, empowering every house to host the world.
Khush Mahajan, 22, received his grant to build a hyper-personalized AI storytelling app that helps kids grow curious. He is focused on learning by building consumer AI products and turning those lessons into useful tools.
Suraj Tripathi, 17, received his grant for Xorbital, a space-based solar power system that collects sunlight in orbit and wirelessly transmits clean energy to Earth, aiming to provide 24/7 power for defense, disaster response, and remote regions.
Jenil Gandhi, 22, founder of Avinya Vegan Leather, received his grant to develop 100 percent compostable, plant-based vegan leather made from agricultural waste, reducing crop burning and animal cruelty.
Tanay Lohia received his grant for Mandrake Bioworks, which is building what he hopes will be the world’s smallest and most efficient gene editors for breakthrough cures, crops, and more.
Krishna Kant, 20, received his grant to develop a novel type of quantum dots for applications in science and technology.
Vaibhav Dabas, 20, received his grant to develop a smart ramp for train boarding.
Anindyadeep Sannigrahi, founder of LiteFold, received his grant to build infrastructure for drug discovery. The platform helps researchers iterate on experiments faster and move findings to the wet lab with greater confidence.
Chitra Singh, a visual computing graduate from MPI Germany, received her grant to build an AI copilot that streamlines radiology imaging workflows. She has spent a decade building and scaling imaging AI at deep-tech startups and GE Healthcare.
Shreyansh Diwakar, 18, from Jhansi, received his grant for the 1825 Fund, a micro-grant initiative offering equity-free capital to ambitious young builders and hackers across India.
Aditya Jha, 16, founder of Workithm, received his grant to build an AI-powered system designed to protect attention rather than merely manage tasks. He is focused on the future of human-AI collaboration, especially deep work and cognition.
Jeya Kalis, 18, from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, received his grant to develop AI for scientific discovery by exploring combinatorial possibility space.
Chetan Bhattacharji, a journalist and climate communications consultant, received his grant for Earth Chakra, where he writes and produces videos and a podcast that place science, solutions, and experts on air pollution, climate change, and sustainability center stage.
Nithish Kumar, 26, received his grant to build the computational layer for portable nuclear fission reactors to power the next frontiers of humankind.
Sparsh Agarwal, a tea planter based in Darjeeling, received his grant for Alter Magazine, a Works in Progress-style monthly publication featuring new writing on science, technology, and progress from South Asia.
Those unfamiliar with Emergent Ventures can learn more here and here. The EV India announcement is here. More about the winners of EV India second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth cohorts. To apply for EV India, use the EV application, click the “Apply Now” button and select India from the “My Project Will Affect” drop-down menu.
And here is Nabeel’s AI engine for other EV winners. Here are the other EV cohorts.
If you are interested in supporting the India tranche of Emergent Ventures, please write to me or to Shruti at [email protected].
How to ask for help from a stranger
The next heuristic is to make your request easy to accept. Making something easy to accept largely is about reducing the cost of acceptance. One clear kind of cost is the magnitude. Do ask someone for twenty minutes of their time, but don’t ask them to read your five-hundred-page manuscript in a week. Another is to make it specific: asking for a resource to start with is better than “can I pick your brain?”. When you’ve made your request, make it low friction for them. If you’re asking for an introduction, write a blurb about yourself which they can forward. If you have a question, ask it in writing rather than over a call. And last on cost, make your ask bounded. Don’t ask for recurring obligations like being your mentor for your whole life, but do keep it limited to asking them to read a blog post. If that instance goes well, they’ll gladly read more.
My last heuristic is stranger: make it easy to say no. You might think that the worst outcome is a no, but the worst outcome is a pressured, begrudging yes. Your coercion will have poisoned your relationship with this person while you feel the false glow of a hard-won victory. A person who helps you with gritted teeth is one who will never help you again. And even then, the help will be a half-hearted effort to get rid of the obligation you manufactured. By contrast, help freely given is effortless, the way you’d hold the door open for someone. Help willingly given keeps your conscience clear, free from the burden of having pressured someone. And help, when given from the heart, is the foundation of a relationship where both of you contribute to what you’re building.
Here is more from Pradyumna Prasad.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Florida drivers speed up after a close NFL home team loss. No such comparable effect for the NBA.
3. Ezra Klein and Chris Rufo (NYT).
4. Generating human eggs from stem cells?
5. AI to predict human chess moves?
7. Anthropic on the reconstruction of Fable 5. And Alex Stamos comments.
Civilian supersonic flights are being legalized in the U.S.
For too long, outdated rules based on old technology held back American aerospace innovation. Now, we are updating those rules for the first time since the 1970s. Today @USDOT announced a new proposal to enable civil supersonic flight by replacing speed limits with noise limits, ushering in a new era of safer, quieter, and faster air travel for all Americans.
That is from Michael Kratsios. Here is how the 1973 ban first came about. More details will be forthcoming, here is one concern from Eli.
Fables of the Reconstruction/Reconstruction of the Fables
What I’ve been reading
1. Elizabeth Buchanan, So You Want to Own Greenland? A useful and dispassionate overview of the relevant history and issues. The author is from Australia. I had not known that Norway unilaterally claimed parts of eastern Greenland in the early 1930s, though gave it back to Denmark following a Hague adjudication and ruling.
2. Andrea Wulf, The Traveler: One Man’s Epic Quest for Discover Our Shared Humanity. This book meets her usual high standards. In this case the traveler is George Foster, who sailed with Cook to the South Seas and had relatively sympathetic attitudes toward the indigenous peoples there.
3. James Hawes, The Shortest History of Ireland. From a useful series, even if some of the claims are wrong and the judgments intemperate. Such books force you to think through your own views and interpretations, they serve as refreshers for the basic history, and they do give you conceptual frameworks of a sort. You are more likely to remember the core histories when you read books like this, but caution typically is in order as well.
4. Simon Warrack, Monumental: Great Buildings of the World Through the Hands and Eyes of a Stonemason. An engaging book about the beauties of stonemasonry, with case studies of Venice, Angkor Wat, Lalibela, Zimbabwe and other locales.
5. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light. Yup. “Earth is long since dead. On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rule their world as gods of the Hindu pantheon.” First published in 1967.
Differentiation drives the erosion of positivity on social media
We live in a digital age, where billions of people engage in dialogue within topic-bound communities and threads. In an archival analysis of over 2 billion Reddit comments and an experiment, we show that this dialogue becomes more negative over time. Further analyses suggest that negativity rises over time because social media users seek to make unique comments on the same topic, and it is easier to differentiate oneself through negative comments than through positive comments. As threads and communities evolve, and it becomes more difficult to make unique observations, users turn to negativity. Our studies show how basic human motives interact with the structure of social media platforms, posing an acute challenge for sustaining healthy online dialogue.
Here is the article by Hongkai Mao, et.al. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis. For some of you commenters, how does it feel to be a puppet in the unfolding of this game?