That was then, this is now, NBA edition
Then, from summer of 2023: “The Boston Celtics just set an NBA record by agreeing to a five-year, $304 million contract with two-time All-Star Jaylen Brown…the odds are the deal will be seen as a good one — maybe even a bargain. The economics of the National Basketball Association have been shifting toward more and more money.”
That was by me, for Bloomberg, and at the time that claim received a lot of pushback.
Now: “With a potential $7B annual media rights deal looming, NBA players could make up to $95M a year on supermax contracts in the future.”
Here is a further look at those numbers. Did I mention that the Celtics are in the Eastern Finals and are the current favorite to win the title?
*GOAT* is now a free audiobook
Here is the link to consuming various forms of GOAT, including the free audiobook, available through several forms of download. The voice is excellent, can you guess how it was done? My wife and sister thought it was me.
To access it and sample, the YouTube link perhaps is easiest:
I heartily thank OpenAI for their assistance in this matter.
Don’t bother learning about this one, unless you already know what I am talking about
You know, the job market, the tweets, and the RCT, here is a complaint from Christopher Phelan. Here is the paper. I’ll just make a few points in hit and run fashion:
1. I am not convinced IRBs should have a say in this kind of matter, one way or the other. (I do think they should stop professors from injecting patients with syphilis.) In that sense I am not upset that this proceeded.
2. Given current standards (I would prefer much weaker IRBs), I don’t think this experiment should have been approved. It corrupts a process of evaluation.
3. Consider my behavior at MR. As you may know, every job market season I blog quite a few job market papers, and usually I will say or at least imply something positive about the candidate and the work. (As an aside, I suppose I now think this helps them, and I was not sure before.) I take this process very seriously, and try to look at as many job candidate web sites and papers as possible. Toward this end, I also will look at schools of management and public policy schools, as well as large numbers of schools outside the top ten. I wouldn’t randomize this process for the purposes of conducting an experiment. I feel that would be unfair to the candidates, unfair to MR readers, and somehow ever so slightly corrupting the integrity of the economics job market. I know my tastes are weird! But they are my true tastes, and I want my readers to know that. I would not have participated in this experiment. In fact, I feel the experiment is ever so slightly impugning the integrity of which papers I choose to cover, because some readers might think I too am a randomizer in the fashion of this experiment.
I don’t think “learning something about the job market” suffices to make up for these problems.
4. As a practical matter, the experiment shows us that you can do relatively well looking for talent in some new or unusual places. I agree, and Daniel Gross and I pushed that theme in our book on talent.
5. If you have read this far, I hope you heeded the title of this post.
The death of the AI safety movement?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, and here is one part:
The safety movement probably peaked in March 2023 with a petition for a six-month pause in AI development, signed by many luminaries, including specialists in the AI field. As I argued at the time, it was a bad idea, and got nowhere.
Fast forward to the present. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his working group on AI have issued a guidance document for federal policy. The plans involve a lot of federal support for the research and development of AI, and a consistent recognition of the national-security importance of the US maintaining its lead in AI. Lawmakers seem to understand that they would rather face the risks of US-based AI systems than have to contend with Chinese developments without a US counterweight. The early history of Covid, when the Chinese government behaved recklessly and nontransparently, has driven this realization home.
No less important is the behavior of the major tech companies themselves. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta all released major service upgrades this spring. Their new services are smarter, faster, more flexible and more capable. Competition has heated up, and that will spur further innovation.
Do note this:
The biggest current obstacles to AI development are the hundreds of pending AI regulatory bills in scores of US states. Many of those bills would, intentionally or not, significantly restrict AI development, as for instance one in California that would require pre-approval for advanced systems. In the past, this kind state-level rush has typically led to federal consolidation, so that overall regulation is coordinated and not too onerous. Whether a good final bill results from that process is uncertain, but Schumer’s project suggests that the federal government is more interested in accelerating AI than hindering it.
Safety work of course will continue under many guises, both private and governmental, but “AI safetyism,” as an intellectual movement, has peaked.
This piece was drafted before some of the recent controversies at OpenAI, and the argument does not rely on any particular interpretation of those events, one way or the other.
Arnaud Schenk has some useful clarifications, especially for those who cannot read the full column.
Here is a version of the column, adapted for Don Mclean’s song “American Pie.”
How important is “the scientific method”?
From a recently published paper by Alexander Krauss:
Using data on all major discoveries across science including all Nobel Prize and major non-Nobel Prize discoveries, we can address the question of the extent to which “the scientific method” is actually applied in making science’s groundbreaking research and whether we need to expand this central concept of science. This study reveals that 25% of all discoveries since 1900 did not apply the common scientific method (all three features)—with 6% of discoveries using no observation, 23% using no experimentation, and 17% not testing a hypothesis. Empirical evidence thus challenges the common view of the scientific method.
File under “In favor of methodological pluralism.” Via Zhengdong Wang.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Model this, cross-state variation in teen suicide rates.
2. What Swedes think about driverless car algorithms and their moral weights.
3. Median voter theorem: “A year-long joint investigation by The Washington Post, Lighthouse Reports and a consortium of international media outlets shows how the European Union and individual European nations are supporting and financing aggressive operations by governments in North Africa to detain tens of thousands of migrants each year and dump them in remote areas, often barren deserts.”
4. MIE: “the train station has a mystery vending machine where you can buy whatever is in the unclaimed packages from delivery lockers”
5. Bryan Caplan, technological pessimist (though I would put aside faster than light travel).
6. Kroszner on AI risk and financial prudence and supervision. And the AI bill SB 1047 has at least passed the California Senate, with an uncertain future.
The Left on FDA Peer Approval
Robert Kuttner discovered an excellent treatment for colds while vacationing in France and is rightly outraged that it’s not available in the United States:
Toward the end of our stay, my wife and I both got bad coughs (happily, not COVID). We went to our wonderful local pharmacist in search of something like Mucinex or Robitussin, which are not great but better than nothing.
“We have something much better,” said he. And he did. It’s called ambroxol. It works on an entirely different chemical principle, to thin sputum, facilitate productive coughing, and also operates as a pain reliever and gentle decongestant with no rebound effect.
We experienced it as a kind of miracle drug for coughs and colds. A box cost eight euros.
Ambroxol is available nearly everywhere in the world as a generic. It has been in wide use since 1979.
But not in the U.S.
…You can’t get ambroxol in the U.S. because of the failure of the Food and Drug Administration to grant reciprocal recognition to generic medications approved by its European counterpart, the European Medicines Agency, when they have long been proven safe and effective. To get FDA approval for the sale of ambroxol in the U.S., a drug company would need to sponsor extensive and costly clinical trials. Since it is a generic, as cheap as aspirin, no drug company would bother.
…I’ve petitioned the FDA, asking them to create a fast-track procedure, whereby generic drugs approved in Europe, and well established as safe and effective, could get reciprocal approval in the U.S.
This would produce approval of ambroxol as over-the-counter medication for coughs and colds without unnecessary new clinical trials. And should ambroxol turn out to have real benefits for Parkinson’s as well, it would already be well established in the U.S. as an inexpensive generic.
Influenced by my work on FDA reciprocity aka peer approval, Ted Cruz introduced a bill, the Result Act to fast-track approval in the United States for drugs and devices already approved in other developed countries. Similarly, AOC has noted that the FDA is far behind the world in approving advanced sunscreens. Perhaps there is an opportunity here for bipartisan support.
Hat tip: the excellent Scott Lincicome.
What are your favorite non-violent movies?
From Jonathan Birch on Twitter:
What are your favourite nonviolent movies? I don’t mean romcoms, I mean movies that in some way exemplify or explore the idea of nonviolence.
Sorry, but Gandhi doesn’t do it for me. What actually comes to mind is that old Bruce Dern movie Silent Running. Or how about Babette’s Feast? The LLMs in general cough up politically sanctimonious movies. Is it crazy to suggest Vincent Ward’s Map of the Human Heart, admittedly a tragic work too? Terence Malick’s Tree of Life is a natural pick, but somehow it has never registered with me. Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night surely is in contention.
What I’ve been reading
1. Alexander C.R. Hammond, Heroes of Progress: 65 people who changed the world, with a forward by Steven Pinker. Starts with Gutenberg, of course Norman Borlaug is included, don’t forget Cobden, Bentham, Frederick Douglass, and many others. An Auto-Icon to those who spurred progress! Who knew that Virginia Apgar was born in Westfield, N.J.? Well done.
2. Cixin Liu, Supernova Era. An A+ plot premise (I won’t spoil it), the story goes downhill somewhat but still worth reading.
3. Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan, Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War. Clear and to the point, the best book I know on this topic. It is also especially clear on the roles of Eritrea and Somalia.
4. Kunal Purohit, H-Pop: The Secretive World of Hindutva Pop Stars. If you are an outsider and looking for a good “micro-study” to understand India, this is a good place to start. Trying to better understand a country typically should consist of both macro overviews and micro-studies, of course.
5. Asimov Press, Origins. Their first publication, this volume is a series of essays on biotechnology. The key mission is learning how to conduct science better, and you can get updates here on synthetic biology, transgenic ants, macrophages, and other topics of recent (and earlier) note.
Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman, What Are Children For?: On Ambivalence and Choice is not a book for me right now (thus I haven’t read it), but the authors are very smart and thus it is worthy of mention.
In return for a referee report, I requested Chen-Pang Yeang, Transforming Noise: A History of Science and Technology from Disturbing Sounds to Informational Errors, 1900-1955. This book is good background for understanding late Fischer Black, as ideas derived from Brownian motion lie behind both options pricing theory and Black’s essay “Noise.“
What exactly is the national security argument here?
Janet Yellen, the US treasury secretary, has urged the EU to intervene urgently to dampen the growing export levels of Chinese cut-price green technology including solar panels and wind turbines, pushing European leaders to move to a full-scale trade war.
Here is the full story. And from the FT two days ago: “A number of major European power companies have scaled back or are reviewing their targets to develop renewable energy because of high costs…” Where again is the net national security argument? The biggest risk is that China will stop sending future wind turbines to Germany? Which is somewhat in China’s lap in any case? And according to GPT-4o those turbines have an average life of 20-25 years? C’mon people, we are not stupid…
Tuesday assorted links
1. Anthony Edwards jersey for sale at Sotheby’s at 20k.
2. On the disbanding of AI safety operations.
3. On the heritability of fertility, more from Robin Hanson. And Cremiaux differs.
4. It seems the House Republicans’ crypto bill will proceed. Maybe that is why ether was up 23% yesterday?
5. The growing importance of desalination.
7. Again, a generative AI directory of EV winners, by Nabeel.
8. TNSSjobs, or is this manufacturing?:
Cross-border gunshot arbitrage markets in everything, Jean Baudrillard gone wrong edition
Federal prosecutors on Friday announced charges against five people in connection with a Chicago-based scheme that staged armed robberies so the purported victims could apply for U.S. immigration visas reserved for legitimate crime victims…
Officials believe hundreds of people, including some who traveled from out of town, posed as customers in dozens of businesses across Chicago and elsewhere, all hoping to win favorable immigration status by becoming “victims” of pre-arranged “armed robberies.”
During a staged hold-up in Bucktown last year, one of the “robbers” accidentally fired their gun, severely injuring a liquor store clerk, according to one source. During that caper alone, five “customers” were “robbed.”
Here is the full story, via Ian.
Is the internet bad for you?
A global, 16-year study1 of 2.4 million people has found that Internet use might boost measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and sense of purpose — challenging the commonly held idea that Internet use has negative effects on people’s welfare.
“It’s an important piece of the puzzle on digital-media use and mental health,” says psychologist Markus Appel at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “If social media and Internet and mobile-phone use is really such a devastating force in our society, we should see it on this bird’s-eye view [study] — but we don’t.” Such concerns are typically related to behaviours linked to social-media use, such as cyberbullying, social-media addiction and body-image issues. But the best studies have so far shown small negative effects, if any2,3, of Internet use on well-being, says Appel.
From separate Gallup polls:
Pryzbylski and his colleagues analysed data on how Internet access was related to eight measures of well-being from the Gallup World Poll, conducted by analytics company Gallup, based in Washington DC. The data were collected annually from 2006 to 2021 from 1,000 people, aged 15 and above, in 168 countries, through phone or in-person interviews. The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems.
…The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.
Do note that in these latter data sets women ages 15-24 still are worse off from internet access.
Here is the Nature piece, via Clara B. Jones.
Emergent Ventures, 34th cohort
Kaavya Kumar, 16, Singapore, AI safety.
Asher Ellis, Yale, Indonesia studies and Pacific national security.
Sohi Patel and Teo Dimov, Yale, to work work on medical devices in the cardiovascular field.
Diego Sanchez de la Cruz, Madrid, to translate his new book on liberalism in Madrid into English.
Michael Ryan, Dublin, to build medical devices to monitor health.
Aden Nurie, 16, Tampa, to build an app to help people find soccer games.
Robert Davitt, Dublin/SF, starting a company to bring together visiting children with family and farm experiences.
Ulrike Nostitz, Dublin, to build out an Irish space law association.
Onno Eric Blom and Vinzenz Ziesemer, Netherlands, For a Dutch progress studies institute and a study on Dutch tech policy.
Katherine He, Yale, project to use LLMs to read and interpret legal codes.
Dan Schulz, San Francisco, podcasting.
Andrew Fang, Stanford, AI and real estate data project.
Ivan Zhang, San Francisco, AI safety.
Samuel Cottrell VI, Bay Area, general career support.
Julian Gough, Berlin/Ireland, book on black holes and the evolutionary theory of the universe.
Sean Jursnick, Denver, architect, website, competition, and Medium essays for single-stair reform to improve building codes.
Julia Willemyns and David Lawrence, London, to support studies for improving UK science policy.
Adam Mastroianni, Ann Arbor, to run a Science House.
Jacob Mathew Rintamaki, Stanford, Nanotech. Twitter here.
Agniv Sarkar, 17, San Francisco, neural nets.
Ukraine tranche:
Maria [Masha] O’Reilly, Kyiv, Instagram videos on Ukraine and its history.
Yanchuk Dmytro, Kyiv, to develop better methods for repairing electric station short circuits.
Yaroslava Okara, Kyiv/Kharkiv/LSE, to study internet communications, general career support.
Julia Lemesh, Boston, to send young Ukrainian talent to elite boarding schools abroad, Ukraine Global Scholars Foundation.
Monday assorted links
1. George Miller talks movies, silent movies, Mad Max, and Furiosa (New Yorker).
2. In this Greg Clark study, fertility seems not very heritable.
3. Mennonites smuggle illegal drugs from Mexico to Canada.
4. Yes the Fed is subject to political pressure.
5. “Ironically, the best hopes for a vibrant open source AI ecosystem might rest on the presence of a “rogue” technology giant, who might choose openness and engagement with smaller firms as a strategic weapon wielded against other incumbents.” Link here.
6. Eel vs. octopus (NYT).