Month: April 2022
What I’ve been reading
1. Susanne Schattenberg, Brezhnev: The Making of a Statesman. Can you have an interesting biography of a life and man that was fundamentally so…boring? Maybe. He ruled the world’s number two power for eighteen critical years, so surely he deserves more attention than what he has received. “Nevertheless, Brezhnev had dentures and only stopped smoking in the mid-1970s because his doctors told him his false teeth would fall out at some point if he didn’t.” And “Analysis of why Brezhnev’s children made themselves known largely for their drinking and scandals would fill another book.” I’ll buy that one as well.
2. Declan Kiberd, Irish Classics. One of the very best books on Ireland and Irish ideas, and more broadly I can recommend virtually anything by Kiberd. Do note, however, that much of this book requires you have read the cited Irish classics under consideration. Nonetheless there is insight on almost every page, recommended.
3. Olivier Zunz, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville. A self-recommending biography of one of the greatest social science thinkers. Easy to read, and good for both the generalist and specialist reader. Note that it is a complement to reading Tocqueville, in no way a substitute.
4. Kevin Lane, The Inca Lost Civilizations. Short and readable and with nice photos, maybe the best introduction to this still underrated topic?
Paul Sagar, Adam Smith Reconsidered: History, Liberty, and the Foundations of Modern Politics considers the broader implications of Smith’s thought from a “freedom as non-domination” perspective.
John E. Bowit, Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia’s Silver Age. The early twentieth century, basically. Beautiful plates, good exposition, and if nothing else a lesson in just how far aesthetic deterioration can run. A picture book!
Matthew Continetti, The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism is interior to my current knowledge set, but clear and I suspect for many readers useful.
Rainer Zitelmann’s Hitler’s National Socialism is a very thorough, detailed look at Hitler’s actual views.
James Kirchick, Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington also serves as a better than average general history of the city.
Why the innocent can’t get out of prison
The main title is Barred, and the author is Daniel S. Medwed. The book has many interesting points, here is one excerpt:
Alaska eliminated plea bargaining in 1975. The rationale was grounded in fairness, with the governor at the time proclaiming that the new policy was designed to counter “weakened public confidence in the administration of justice.” The conditions seemed ideal. Small population, small(ish) amount of criminal activity, creative attorney general, open-minded governor. The results were initially promising. Although the number of trials in the state rose by 37 percent in the year following the ban, the system appeared capable of absorbing the surge. But the experiment didn’t last. A new state attorney general relaxed plea policies in 1980, and bargaining was officially back in the 1990s. By the 2010s, nearly 97 percent of Alaska’s criminal cases resulted in pleas. Those who’ve studied the history of plea bargaining Alaska attribute the demise of the ban to a change in personnel in the AG’s office and a decline in state revenues. Trials don’t come cheap.
Recommended, for those who care.
Saturday assorted links
2. Faster vaccines would have saved how many lives?
3. Yishan, on Twitter and Musk.
4. “Every chess movie, ranked.” On the list is an oddly under-publicized Kasparov-Thiel “documentary” of the two walking/driving around New York City for a day. Though it was only nine years ago, it feels like such a different world. You also get to watch Peter beat Frank Brady in speed chess, and Garry then comment on the proceedings.
5. From Hannes Malmberg (email): “Pre-1920, rapid natural population growth made high immigration consistent with a low share of foreign-born. Between 1880 and 1920, the number of foreign-born more than doubled, 6.7mn to 13.9mn, while the share of foreign-born didn’t budge, 13.3% to 13.2%.“
An Operation Warp Speed for Nasal Vaccines
I have been pushing for more funding for nasal vaccines since early last year when I wrote about trypanophobia and see also my Congressional testimony. The Washington Post reports that the idea is gaining traction among scientists but funding is limited:
As the omicron variant of the coronavirus moved lightning-fast around the world, it revealed an unsettling truth. The virus had gained a stunning ability to infect people, jumping from one person’s nose to the next. Cases soared this winter, even among vaccinated people.
That is leading scientists to rethink their strategy about the best way to fight future variants, by aiming for a higher level of protection: blocking infections altogether. If they succeed, the next vaccine could be a nasal spray.
…Scientists at the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority — known as BARDA — are vetting an array of next-generation vaccine concepts, including those that trigger mucosal immunity and could halt transmission. The process is similar to the one used to prioritize candidates for billions of dollars of investment through the original Operation Warp Speed program. But there’s a catch.
“We could Operation Warp Speed the next-generation mucosal vaccines, but we don’t have funding to do it,” said Karin Bok, director of Pandemic Preparedness and Emergency Response at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “We’re doing everything we can to get ready … just to get ready in case we have resources available.”
In my estimation, Operation Warp Speed was the highest benefit to cost ratio of any government program since the Manhattan Project. Amazingly, despite having now seen the benefits of the program and the costs of the pandemic, a government that spends trillions every year can’t get behind millions for a nasal vaccine.
To be sure, the emergency is over. The risk to the vaccinated are now tolerable and the benefits of further investment are much less than before vaccines were available. But the costs are also lower. Much of the research on nasal vaccines has already been done–what is needed is funding for clinical trials.
A nasal COVID vaccine will also pay off in future vaccine programs. If in a future pandemic we were able to use nasal vaccines to vaccinate more quickly, that alone could save many lives.
Addendum: Here’s my post on RadVac the do it yourself nasal vaccine.
Solve for the wartime presentation equilibrium
Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow’s invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families in what may be one of the most gruesome applications of the technology to date.
The country’s IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform the families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses.
The Ukrainians champion the use of face-scanning software from the U.S. tech firm Clearview AI as a brutal but effective way to stir up dissent inside Russia, discourage other fighters and hasten an end to a devastating war.
Here is the full story. Maybe this feels gruesome, but I am not sure we should let ourselves be led by the nose of our intuitions here. Furthermore, we have zero information on its effectiveness, or lack thereof. So I am not ready to have an opinion on this practice. We all seem fine with the idea of killing, so squeamishness on the “presentation side” probably is undertheorized.
I am more interested in what the next step looks like. If this stands a chance of being effective, how might you try to “improve” the presentation? Record death screams and send them in audio files? A virtual reality version? A “director’s cut” for the more committed audience members?
How about AI that scans the battlefield for fights your preferred side seems to be winning? Then do face scans of the opposing soldiers and using internet, text, or phone calls, invite their relatives to watch the struggle. Wouldn’t a fair number of family members click on that link?
Might some people crowdsource funding for extra footage, or shoot it themselves? I read this (New Yorker) report about the recent Brooklyn terror attack:
Many [bystanders] also responded as no one should ever do in an active-shooter scenario—when presented with an escape route, they instead stopped to record videos.
A yet more advanced version of the footage could throw in deep fakes of some kind? CGI?
Do you find this all more repulsive yet? Ever watched a war movie? We seem to accept those in full stride. It would be weird — but perhaps a coherent view nonetheless — to think “killing fine, phony movie of killing fine, movie of real killing just terrible.”
What do you all think?
For the initial pointer I thank Maxwell.
U.S.A. poll fact of the day
Only one poll, yes, but here goes:
61% of Democrats say “improving border security and restricting illegal immigration” would strengthen democracy
To be clear, I don’t consider this good news. The broader point is that I genuinely do not understand Bryan Caplan’s argument that there is no backlash worry from humongous levels of immigration. I see that Angela Merkel let in one million Syrian refugees (which I favored and still favor, by the way), and that strengthened “Far Right” anti-immigrant parties throughout Europe. I see Brexit as in part motivated by a fear of loss of control of immigration. I see that Donald Trump focused on the immigration issue to win the Republican primaries and debates leading up to the 2016 election. The government in Singapore is now facing a major backlash from earlier high levels of in-migration.
How can there not be a backlash from open borders?
The actual, in practice backlash against open borders simply would be to close the borders/limit entry once again, rather than anything too dramatic. But if you continue with a “this lectern is made of ice” counterfactual where the open borders continue against what would otherwise be the political equilibrium, what exactly would be the backlash? I, for one, am afraid to find out. So we want “more open” borders, but not open borders per se.
And no, I am not persuaded by data from pre-1920 America, when borders were largely open and most parts of the world sent basically nobody, and furthermore there was not much of a welfare state. And we did in fact restrict Chinese immigration to California, because of (irrational) backlash.
Friday assorted links
Infrared Mind Control
The science of mind control is advancing at a furious rate. In 2011, the NYTimes reported that scientists had engineered neurons to be sensitive to light and then using fiber optic cables and brain implants they were able to quickly turn mice neurons on and off, instantly changing the behavior of the mice (paper here). The setup, which required genetic engineering, brain implants and cables worked incredibly well but a rather expensive method of mind control.
In 2021, scientists eliminated the fiber optic cable (see also the NYTimes coverage):
Nature: Advanced technologies for controlled delivery of light to targeted locations in biological tissues are essential to neuroscience research that applies optogenetics in animal models. Fully implantable, miniaturized devices with wireless control and power-harvesting strategies offer an appealing set of attributes in this context, particularly for studies that are incompatible with conventional fiber-optic approaches or battery-powered head stages. Limited programmable control and narrow options in illumination profiles constrain the use of existing devices. The results reported here overcome these drawbacks via two platforms…Neuroscience applications demonstrate that induction of interbrain neuronal synchrony in the medial prefrontal cortex shapes social interaction within groups of mice, highlighting the power of real-time subject-specific programmability of the wireless optogenetic platforms introduced here.
Now, if I am reading this 2022 paper and announcement correctly, scientists have eliminated the need for any implant or cable but can instead program the brain using infrared:
Now, scientists at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University have developed the first non-invasive technique for controlling targeted brain circuits in behaving animals from a distance. The tool has the potential to solve one of the biggest unmet needs in neuroscience: a way to flexibly test the functions of particular brain cells and circuits deep in the brain during normal behavior — such as mice freely socializing with one another.
The research was published March 21, 2022 in Nature Biomedical Engineering by Guosong Hong and colleagues at Stanford and Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University. Hong is a Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Faculty Scholar and assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering who uses his background in chemistry and materials science to devise biocompatible tools and materials to advance the study of the brain.
Moreover, the scientists think that the genetic modifications can be done with a simple injection:
Hong and colleagues are also developing nanoscopic beads that can convert focused beams of ultrasound into light, and which can be injected directly into the bloodstream, making it possible to optogenetically target cells anywhere in the brain and to change this targeting at will within a single experiment.
If the tools for mind control can be injected then it doesn’t seem fanciful to think that they can be ingested. Mind control in a bottle. The fear is outside mind control but the reality will be self mind-control. Humans have been altering their minds for thousands of years but neuronal level adjustment at the flick of a switch is something new.
Hat tip: Kevin Lewis.
The best fiction in recent times
Here are my picks, in no particular order:
W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants (1992, maybe not recent?).
Elena Ferrante, The Neapolitan quadrology.
Karl Knausgaard, My Struggle, volumes one and two.
Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials.
Michel Houellebecq, Submission.
Min Lee, Pachinko.
Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem.
Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives.
And addended:
Haruki Murakami, IQ84.
Vikrram Seth, A Suitable Boy.
Orhan Pamuk, Museum of Innocence.
Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon.
David Grossman, To the End of the Land.
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas.
Jose Saramago, Blindness.
China Mieville, The City and the City.
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace.
I do not feel that recent times lag far so behind some of the earlier, more classic literary eras. Which books am I forgetting?
Germany facts of the day
That’s why the six nuclear reactors that were operating in Germany in 2021 generated 80% as much power as all the gas power plants…
If you turned back on all the nuclear reactors, you could eliminate nearly all the need for gas electricity—and some coal too, which is quite polluting.
Conversely, if you closed the three nuclear reactors remaining and covered that through gas, you’d need to increase your gas burning for electricity by 30%, which could increase gas from Russia by an equivalent amount5.
Put in another way: turning all the German nuclear reactors back on could approximately stop gas imports from Russia. Shutting the remaining ones down could increase the dependency on Russian gas by about 30%.
Here is more from Tomas Pueyo, via Hazel Meade. There is also an interesting discussion of transition problems for “back to nuclear” at the link.
Thursday assorted links
1. Some of the most effective people to have died from Covid.
2. Yellowstone is Offering a $1,500 Annual Pass That You Won’t Be Able to Use for 150 Years.
3. A Caribbean micronation off Belize?
4. Taylor Swift fans want to crash NYU graduation markets in everything.
5. Spencer Haywood almost became a billionaire.
6. The Yuxi circle, the world’s most densely populated area.
Pakistan synthetic control estimate of the day
I find that Pakistan’s per capita GDP would have been an average of about $718 per year higher had the country not undertaken the effort to produce a nuclear weapon. This equates to per capita GDP being 27.8 percent lower on average over the 25-year weapons-development period. Results are robust to several alternative specifications, including country exclusion, sparse synthetic controls, non-outcome characteristics as predictors of GDP, and in-space placebo experiments of differing specifications.
Here is the paper by Anthony Mayberry, via TEKL.
Talent rules in the NBA
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
With the basketball playoffs starting this week, it is worth asking what can be learned from the NBA’s more recent history. This year the NBA story is one of talent — extreme talent. Talent so plentiful that even the middling teams are full of strong players. The broader lessons for the world economy are very optimistic.
Consider the three players competing for the Most Valuable Player award — Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo. Their play and statistics have been stratospheric. Embiid, for instance, led the league scoring, is a leading rebounder and defender, and his team is in contention for an NBA title. Yet he is not favored to win the award because the other contenders are (at least in my eyes) better yet. My pick is Jokic, who is the first NBA player with 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 500 assists in a season.
Other top players, such as Jayson Tatum, Luka Doncic and Ja Morant, might in other years be obvious MVP winners. But this year they don’t stand a chance. LeBron James, Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Stephen Curry — the best players from the recent past — are still amazing but are practically also-rans.
And:
The lessons and implications for the broader economy and society are insanely bullish. If the NBA can do this, other parts of the world can, too. Just imagine business and science (and maybe politics?) all improving at the rate of professional basketball. The most important form of wealth today is human capital. As the world moves further from a brute-force economy, human capital is also the major force driving productivity.
The NBA shows that it is possible, over time, to do a much better job of both finding and mobilizing talent. Granted, most parts of the world are not as well-run as the NBA, so the process will be slower than it ought to be. But it is underway.
The implications are staggering. Yes, global problems are piling up at an alarming rate. On the other hand, global talent is more accessible than ever. Which phenomenon is likely to turn out to be of greater consequence? As the co-author of a forthcoming book on the importance of talent, I suspect you can guess my view.
And I am still picking the Milwaukee Bucks to win the NBA title this year.
The fragmentation of France?
The less fortunate have their own cultural markers of Americanisation. Again, Fourquet analyses names. The Maries of French tradition were replaced by Kevins (after Home Alone) and Dylans (after Beverly Hills 90210). The map of these American names coincides with the places where Marine Le Pen can count on her firmest support. Many National Rally activists bear names such as Jordan Bardella, today the number two in the party, or Davy Rodriguez, who headed its youth organisation. More phenomena of this kitschy low-status Americanisation include the immense popularity of country music clubs, vintage US cars, and pole dancing across France, as well the spread of the Buffalo Grill restaurant chain in hundreds of locations.
And this sentence I found interesting:
Americanisation was the only component of globalisation that did not bitterly divide the French.
Here is more from Krzysztof Tyszka-Drozdowski. I wouldn’t say I have an opinion of my own on these issues — haven’t been there in a few years — but I found this piece stimulating.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Is Germany really with the program? (NYT) I liked this sentence: ““The government has made some courageous decisions, but it can seem afraid of its own courage.”
2. New Yorker profile of Nakamura.
3. Did Yves Klein sell the very first NFT?
4. Jason Furman on “running labor markets hot” — don’t expect higher real wages! (WSJ), #Thegreatforgetting
5. Complete works of Voltaire now available in 205 volumes.
6. The neurodiverse, work from home, and cybersecurity (WSJ).