Scrabble markets in everything, okie-dokie edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

For the first time in 75 years, Mattel is making a major change to the iconic board game Scrabble — and touting a “No More Scoring” gameplay option.

The new launch is a double-sided version of the famous board game — one side with the original game for those who want to stick to the long-time traditional version, and one side with a “less competitive” version to appeal to Gen Z gamers.

The flip side of the classic game, called Scrabble Together, will include helper cards, use a simpler scoring system, be quicker to play and allow people to play in teams.

“The makers of Scrabble found that younger people, Gen Z people, don’t quite like the competitive nature of Scrabble,” Gyles Brandreth, who co-hosts the language podcast Something Rhymes With Purple, told BBC Radio 4 Today. “They want a game where you can simply enjoy language, words, being together and having fun creating words.”

And:

So what’s new exactly? In addition to a dual-sided board, there are helper cards, which provide assistance, prompts and clues and can be selected to match the player’s challenge level of their choice.

In the new version, scoring is a thing of the past — now all one has to do is finish a goal and collect the goal card.

Goal cards include challenges such as: “Play a horizontal word,” “play a three-letter word” or “play a word that touches the edge of the board.”

Here is the full story.  I have read that 33 out of the world’s top 100 Scrabble players are Nigerian — I wonder what they think of this?

UNOS Kills

by  Alex Tabarrok in

I’ve long been an advocate of increasing the use of incentives in organ procurement for transplant; either with financial incentives or with rules such as no-give, no-take which prioritize former potential organ donors on the organ recipient list. What I and many reformers failed to realize, however, is that the current monopolized system is so corrupt, poorly run and wasteful that thousands of lives could be saved even without incentive reform. (To be clear, these issues are related since an incentivized system would never have become so monopolized and corrupt in the first place but that is a meta-issue for another day.) Here, for example, is one incredible fact:

 An astounding one out of every four kidneys that’s recovered from a generous American organ donor is thrown in the trash.

Here’s another:

Organs are literally lost and damaged in transit every single week. The OPTN contractor is 15 times more likely to lose or damage an organ in transit than an airline is a suitcase.

Organs are not GPS-tracked!

In an era when consumers can precisely monitor a FedEx package or a DoorDash dinner delivery, there are no requirements to track shipments of organs in real time — or to assess how many may be damaged or lost in transit.

“If Amazon can figure out when your paper towels and your dog food is going to arrive within 20 to 30 minutes, it certainly should be reasonable that we ought to track lifesaving organs, which are in chronic shortage,” Axelrod said.

Here’s one more astounding statistics:

Seventeen percent of kidneys are offered to at least one deceased person before they are transplanted….

Did you get that? The tracking system for patients is so dysfunctional that 17% of kidneys are offered to patients who are already dead–thus creating delays and missed opportunities.

All of this was especially brought to light by Organize, a non-profit patient advocacy group who under an innovative program embedded with the HHS and working with HHS staff produced hard data.

Many more details are provided in this excellent interview with Greg Segal and Jennifer Erickson, two of the involved principals, in the IFPs vital Substack Statecraft. 

TimeGPT-1

by  Tyler Cowen in

In this paper, we introduce TimeGPT, the first foundation model for time series, capable of generating accurate predictions for diverse datasets not seen during training. We evaluate our pre-trained model against established statistical, machine learning, and deep learning methods, demonstrating that TimeGPT zero-shot inference excels in performance, efficiency, and simplicity. Our study provides compelling evidence that insights from other domains of artificial intelligence can be effectively applied to time series analysis. We conclude that large-scale time series models offer an exciting opportunity to democratize access to precise predictions and reduce uncertainty by leveraging the capabilities of contemporary advancements in deep learning.

That is from a new paper by Azul Garza and Max Mergenthaler-Canseco.  A few of you may be needing a new job soon!

Robert Whaples reviews *GOAT*

by  Tyler Cowen in

An excellent piece, here is one excerpt I enjoyed in particular:

Cowen reads the John Maynard Keynes of The General Theory “as writing about an economy where uncertainty was much higher than usual, investment was highly unstable, fiscal policy was unable to fill in the gap, there was a risk or even reality of a downward spiral of prices and wages, monetary and exchange rate policies were out of whack, multipliers operate, the quest for savings could lower incomes overall, and the influence of liquidity factors on money demand and interest rates was especially high. All at once” (p. 72, emphasis in the original). In other words, Cowen drives home the point that this “general theory” isn’t actually general, it’s about very special, very unusual circumstances.

He considers Lord Keynes the GOAT contender whom he would most “want to hang around with” (p. 54). I had exactly the opposite reaction. The Keynes he portrays is virtually an egotistical monster. One who, for example, “kept an extended spreadsheet of his lovers and sexual encounters … each one rated by number” (p. 58). Anyone who treats other human beings this way—let alone writing it down—isn’t the kind of person I want to hang around with.

Recommended.

Wednesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Terminator metal.

2. An RCT on the economic benefits of vision correction.

3. “Claude 3 Opus is roughly as persuasive as humans.“

4. Jon Haidt responds to the Nature review.  And Greg Lukianoff with his First Amendment concerns.

5. Interview with Nicholas Tabarrok, who works in the movies.

6. Samo Burja skeptical on nuclear.

7. Henry Oliver on smart phones.

8. Noah worries about WWIII.

The $20 bill gets picked up, body parts markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte’s final battle, more than 10,000 men and as many horses were killed in a single day. Yet today, archaeologists often struggle to find physical evidence of the dead from that bloody time period. Plowing and construction are usually the culprits behind missing historical remains, but they can’t explain the loss here. How did so many bones up and vanish?

In a new book, an international team of historians and archaeologists argues the bones were depleted by industrial-scale grave robbing. The introduction of phosphates for fertilizer and bone char as an ingredient in beet sugar processing at the beginning of the 19th century transformed bones into a hot commodity. Skyrocketing prices prompted raids on mass graves across Europe—and beyond.

Here is the full article, via William Meller.  And, as Alex has stressed in the past, never underestimate the elasticity of supply!

Why is there a movement to ban lab-grown beef?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:

…let me offer another theory: The anti-lab-grown-meat movement is about conservative cultural insecurity — the fear that, without the force of law, some conservative cultural norms will fade away…

Imagine that lab-grown meat proves feasible at a reasonable cost. It might end up as cheaper than beef from a cow, and it might also be better for the climate. In such a world, there might be growing pressures to abandon real meat for the lab-grown kind. There could even be a political movement to tax or ban real meat, similar to carbon taxes or plans to phase out fossil fuels.

Currently there is no momentum in that direction. For all the talk of vegetarianism and veganism, the percentage of Americans who practice those beliefs seems to be roughly flat. Many Americans like eating meat, for better or worse. But if real meat had a true substitute, perhaps the political calculus would differ.

This is the real fear — not of lab-grown meat itself, but of the changing culture its popularity would represent. Whether conservatives find the meat substitute to be adequate is beside the point. Society would have decided that some of their most cherished beliefs can be disposed of. Both humankind’s dominion over nature, which runs strong in the Christian strand of conservative thought, and the masculinized meat-eating culture — more specifically, the meat-grilling culture — would be under threat.

If artificial meat is banned, of course, none of that can happen.

In one sense, critics of conservatism should be heartened by the campaign against lab-grown meat. If I were a mainstream animal-rights advocate, I would revise upwards my estimate of my own power and influence.

I then consider how we might use science to arrive at a better resolution of these disputes.

Modi and investment

by  Tyler Cowen in

Yes, India is doing well but the picture could be much better:

During Modi’s tenure, GFCF [gross fixed capital formation] as a percentage of GDP declined and has remained low until the post-pandemic recovery. In fact the highest level of GFCF as a percentage of GDP during the first nine years of Modi’s leadership is lower than the lowest level in PM Singh’s tenure.

Here is more from Shruti.

A graph with a line and a red circle Description automatically generated

Tuesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Skepticism about the beauty premium?

2. “On a cellular level, younger generations seem to be aging faster than their forebears.” (speculative)

3. Interview with Merve Emre.

4. William Stanley Jevons and eclipses (NYT).  And an Amtrak train ride across the country is less carbon-efficient than flying (NYT).

5. The ascent of high school wrestlers.

6. A short video on how the Great Pyramids may have been built.

7. Was more spent on eclipse tourism than on the Taylor Swift tour?

What to Watch

by  Alex Tabarrok in

3 Body Problem (Netflix): Great! A captivating mix of big ideas, a compelling mystery, and spectacular set-pieces like the Cultural Revolution, strange worlds, the ship cutting and more. Of course, there are some weaknesses. 3 Body Problem falters in its portrayal of genius, rendering the British scientists as too normal, overlooking the obsessiveness, ambition, and unconventionality often found in real-world geniuses. Ironically, in its effort to diversify gender and race, the series inadvertently narrows the spectrum of personality and neurodiversity. Only Ye Wenjie, traumatized by the cultural revolution, obsessed by physics and revenge, and with a messianic personality hits the right notes. Regardless, I am eager for Season 2.

Shogun (Hulu): Great meeting of cultures. Compelling plot, based on the excellent Clavell novel. I didn’t know that some of the warlords of the time (1600) had converted to Christianity. (Later banned and repressed as in Silence). Shogun avoids two traps, the Japanese have agency and so does the European. Much of it is in Japanese with subtitles.

Monsieur Spade: It starts with a great premise, twenty years after the events of “The Maltese Falcon,” Sam Spade has retired in a small town in southern France still riven by World War II and Algeria. Clive Owen is excellent as Spade and there are some good noir lines:

Henri Thibaut: You were in the army, Mr. Spade?

Sam Spade: No, I was a conscientious objector.

Henri Thibaut: You don’t believe in killing your fellow man?

Sam Spade: Oh, I think there’s plenty of men worth killing, as well as plenty of wars worth fighting, I’d just rather choose myself.

Yet for all the promise, I didn’t finish the series. In addition to being set in France, Monsieur Spade has a French cinema atmosphere, boring, long, vaguely pretentious. There is also a weird fascination with smoking, does it pay off with anything? I don’t know. Didn’t finish it.

What I’ve been reading

by  Tyler Cowen in

1. Roger Lewis, Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.  An amazing book, full of life and energy on every page, and yes there are 605 of them.  Imagine if Camille Paglia had stuck with it and produced case studies.  The main problem is simply that most people don’t know or care about Burton and Taylor any more?

2. David Caron, Michael Healy, 1873-1941, An Túr Gloine’s Stained Glass Pioneer.  An excellent book, can it be said that Michael Healy is Ireland’s fourth greatest stained glass artist?  Clarke, Geddes, and Hone would be the top three?  It is good to see him getting this attention, but what will happen when so many Irish churches are decommissioned or abandoned or simply never seen?  What does that equilibrium look like?  All the more reason to invest in this book.  What an underrated European tradition.

3. Paul Seabright, the subtitle says it all, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People.  I’ve just started to crack this one open, Paul’s books are always very smart.

4. Sahar Akhtar, Immigration & Discrimination: (un)welcoming others.  Can the idea of wrongful discrimination be applied to immigration decisions?  Maybe you believe this is a pure and simple matter of national autonomy, but what if the potential immigrants are from a former and wronged colony?  From an island nation perishing due to climate change?  Or they were previously pushed off territory that is now part of the host nation?  And yet open borders as an idea also does not work — how should one fit all these pieces together?

5. Austin Bush, The Food of Southern Thailand.  The best book I know of on southern Thailand flat out.  This one has recipes of course, but also photos, maps, anecdotes, and plenty of history.  The food is explained in conceptual terms.  Recommended, for all those with an interest.

6. Michael Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity.  Mostly ends at 1800, this will become one of the standard, must-read histories of Islam and its multiple homes.  The section on India, which is what I have been reading, is strongly conceptual and novel compared to other survey books such as Hourani.  At the very least a good book, possibly a great book.