Month: September 2022
2022 as the year of AI?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
But the benefits of AI do not accrue only to those in the technology sector. AI makes many goods and services cheaper, and that in turn benefits the poor and disadvantaged. If software routes packages and shipments more efficiently, then transportation costs will be lower. If software and AI programs help economize on the use of electricity, then it will be easier to mitigate climate change. As computational biology improves health care, the sick will benefit.
The people who least need AI are the super-rich. They already can hire armies of servants to manage their obligations, schedules, and so on. They do not need to economize on the use of human labor. The rest of us do, whether directly or indirectly through the businesses we patronize.
Another benefit for lower-income groups is that current manifestations of AI do not usually displace the jobs of the poor. Many poor individuals hold jobs in the service sector or perform manual labor. Those tasks are either hard to automate (a robot gardener?) or, because wages are low, less profitable to automate.
It may be true that the costs of AI in the labor force — displaced jobs — are more visible than the benefits of AI — new jobs and lower prices. So it’s not surprising if AI is not entirely popular.
Recommended.
US Economic Freedom is Falling
A big drop in Economic Freedom, mostly due to pandemic policies. Not surprising but will we recover? This is from the just released Economic Freedom of the World 2022 Annual Report.
Saturday assorted links
1. Differences in art appreciation in autism.
2. Korean cross-border Coase theorem, lottery ticket, with a nod to Oliver Williamson.
3. How did the 2020 airline bailouts work out?
4. Do not three-way stop signs Pareto dominate four-way stop signs? And why had you never thought about that before?
Do conservatives believe in a dangerous world?
One recent study says no:
Decades of research suggest a correlation between belief in a dangerous world and political conservatism. However, research relied on a scale that may overemphasize certain types of dangers. Furthermore, few other world beliefs have been investigated, such that fundamental worldview differences between liberals and conservatives remain largely unknown. A preregistered study of nine samples (N = 5,461; mostly US Americans) found a negligible association between a newly improved measure of generalized dangerous world belief and conservatism, and that the original scale emphasized certain dangers more salient to conservatives (e.g., societal decline) over others most salient for liberals (e.g., injustice). Across many measures of political attitudes, other world beliefs—such as beliefs that the world is Hierarchical, Intentional, Just, and Worth Exploring—each explained several times more variance than dangerous world belief. This suggests the relevance of dangerous world belief to political attitudes has been overstated, and examining other world beliefs may yield insights.
That is from Jeremy D.W. Clinton and Nicholas Kerry. I do not think you should over-index on these new results. But in general you should start seeing this literature as increasingly dubious.
*Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality*
Now on Amazon for pre-order, due out April 18, 2023.
By Dave Edmonds. I read an earlier version and it was just fantastic.
Is “imposter syndrome” a good thing?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
Impostor syndrome is a positively good thing. When searching for talent, I look for people who feel they suffer from impostor syndrome. If you think you are not qualified to do what you are doing, it is a sign you are setting your sights high and reaching for a new and perhaps unprecedented level of achievement…
Another advantage to feeling like an impostor is that it gives you better insight into your fellow humans. Estimates vary, but up to 82% of people may suffer from some form of impostor syndrome. Even if that is on the high side, impostor syndrome is very common. On a professional level, if you want to be in better touch with your colleagues, maybe it is a good idea for you to try out some new and unfamiliar tasks, and they can too. It will make everyone more understanding and more sympathetic — especially important qualities for being a successful boss.
Recommended. And if you are not currently an impostor, perhaps you should try impersonating one!
Friday assorted links
1. “Still, “I’m worried that with all this newfound fame, this was Creepy Chloe’s plan all along for world domination,” Beard joked. “She’s just using Briar and her power of cuteness to get a foothold.”” Link here.
2. The titled culture that is German. And here is the UK.
3. How well do behavioral scientists predict?
4. History of Gander airport in Newfoundland.
5. New Lawrence H, White book coming on monetary economics.
6. Arbitrage: ‘All fun and games until the health inspector shows up.‘
The true long-termist has passed from the scene
RIP…
AEA Hypocrisy
Here’s the AEA’s official statement on inclusion:
The AEA seeks to create a professional environment with equal opportunity and fair treatment for all economists, regardless of age, sex, gender identity and expression, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, health condition, marital status, parental status, genetic information, political affiliation, professional status, or personal connections.
Yet the AEA is requiring any attendees at the annual meeting to be vaccinated and boosted, a standard which excludes half of the US population! How is that equal opportunity and fair treatment? I suppose some people will want to say “health condition” doesn’t include vaccinated or not…dubious legerdemain…but there’s no question the AEA vaccination policy is a huge violation of the spirit of inclusion.
*The Rise and Fall of the EAST*
The author is Yasheng Huang of MIT and the subtitle is Examination, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology in Chinese History and Today. Forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2023. Excerpt:
For many years, I struggled to come up with a coherent explanation for the power, the reach, and the policy discretion of the Chinese state. There is coercion, ideological indoctrination, and probably a fair amount of societal consent as well.
Keju [the civil service exam system] had a deep penetration both cross-sectionally in society and across time in history. It was all encompassing, laying claims to time, efforts and cognitive investments of a significant swath of Chinese population. It was incubatory of values, norms, and cognitions, therefore impacting ideology and epistemology of Chinese minds. It was a state institution designed to augment the power and the capabilities of the state. Directly, the state monopolized the very best human capital; indirectly, the state deprived society access to talent and preempted organized religion, commerce, and intelligentsia. The Chinese state in history and today is an imprinted version of this Keju system.
Chinese state is strong because it reigns without a society.
Among the other interesting features of this book, including many, are:
There is a very useful discussion of Sui Wendi, the man who reunified China (and is barely known in the West).
Just how much the exam system expanded in the 17th century, to support a larger and growing Chinese state.
Why Chinese bureaucrats in the provinces tend to be generalists and the ministerial officials tend to be specialists.
Oliver Williamson is applied and cited throughout.
“A state without society is a vertically integrated organization…Keju’s powerful platform effect crowded and stymied alternative mobility channels…the Keju was an anti-mobility mobility channel.”
“In the 1890s, China’s population literacy was only 18 percent, way below 95 percent of England and the Netherlands.”
Exam competition takes up so much of individual mind space. Furthermore the competition atomizes society and makes it harder to form the kinds of collective movements that might lead to democracy.
The author sees the 1980s as the truly revolutionary time in Chinese history.
“Throughout Chinese history very few emperors were toppled by their generals or senior functionaries, a sharp contrast with the Roman Empire.”
I could say much more. This is by far the best book on Chinese bureaucracy I have read, and probably one of the best books on China period. I am sure many of the claims will be contested, but the author tries in a very serious way to be explanatory and to actually answer the questions about China you care about. So few books even attempt that!
Addendum: Note that the author also wrote Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics, another of my favorite books about China.
The Impact of Female Teachers on Female Students
It is widely believed that female students benefit from being taught by female teachers, particularly when those teachers serve as counter-stereotypical role models. We study education in rural areas of the US circa 1940–a setting in which there were few professional female exemplars other than teachers–and find that female students were more successful when their primary-school teachers were disproportionately female. Impacts are lifelong: female students taught by female teachers were more likely to move up the educational ladder by completing high school and attending college, and had higher lifetime family income and increased longevity.
That is from a new paper by David Card, Ciprian Domnisoru, Seth G. Sanders, Lowell Taylor, and Victoria Udalova. As I have been saying now for some number of years, role model effects are more important than many people believe.
Thursday assorted links
1. Agglomeration is good for research scientists, even taking costs into account.
2. The demand for secession is more about identity than income.
3. Will Germany succeed in building a new LNG terminal swiftly?
4. Publishing statistics, and how many copies a book actually sells.
5. Single-use plastic grocery bags are pretty environmentally friendly.
6. Health insurers just published nearly a trillion pieces of health care price information.
Firearms and Lynching
I love this paper by Mike Makowsky and Patrick Warren because it pokes so many bears. Makowsky and Warren find that greater access to firearms in the Black community reduced the rate of lynching in the Jim Crow South.
We assess firearms as a means of Black self-defense in the Jim Crow South. We infer firearm access by race and place by measuring the fraction of suicides committed with a firearm. Corroborating anecdotal accounts and historical claims, state bans on pistols and increases in White law enforcement personnel served as mechanisms to disarm the Black community, while having no comparable effect on White firearms. The interaction of these mechanisms with changing national market prices for firearms provides us with a credible identification strategy for Black firearm access. Rates of Black lynching decreased with greater Black firearm access.
Lots of black civil rights leaders were heavily armed but this is rarely mentioned let alone emphasized.
My Conversation with the excellent Vaughn Smith, hyperpolyglot
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. In case you don’t know, Vaughn is arguably the world’s leading polyglot. Here is part of the summary:
He joined Tyler to discuss how he began learning languages, the best languages for expressing humor, why he curses in Slovak, why he considers Finnish more romantic than Portugese, what makes Hungarian so difficult to learn, the best way to teach people new languages, how to combat language loss, why he’d like rural Mexicans to have more pride in their culture and way of life, his time as a roadie for a punk rock van, the most rewarding job he’s had, why he wants to visit Finland, how enjoying films from different eras is similar to learning new languages, the future of English, and more.
And an excerpt:
SMITH: When I study a language, the grammar is super important to me. I don’t have a problem with pronunciation. I can learn different writing scripts — that’s fine. I think the two biggest challenges here for me would be something that’s a very complicated grammar. For example, Estonian or Finnish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, to me, are grammatically very challenging.
As far as orthography and writing systems, certainly kanji or Chinese characters, Mandarin characters would prove difficult because there’s a lot more to memorize.
COWEN: What do you think has been, for you, the hardest language to learn?
SMITH: The hardest language for me to learn — I would say Hungarian.
COWEN: What makes Hungarian so hard?
SMITH: Several noun cases and a very rich vocabulary, very large vocabulary. A lot more words are in regular use to say specific things, more so than, say, any of the Germanic languages.
An opposite of that would be, for example, Norwegian, which is super easy. You just have one little word. It doesn’t change, it doesn’t inflect the verb. Let’s see, the person or the verb is the same, no matter who is it that does it. There’s simply the infinitive form. There’s the past participle, and then there’s the present, which you just put the letter r after the vowel of the infinitive. That’s grammatically, just giving an example of how easy it is for me to learn Norwegian grammar.
Everything is difficult about Hungarian, as the case is knowing what case — the singular, the plural form. The verb changes with the recipient of the verb. If it’s in the first person verb, it changes when the recipient is in second person singular. Szeretnélek instead of Szeretnék, for example. Szeretnélek: “I like you.” Or Szeretnék: “I like.” These little nuances and all these exceptions to rules and irregularities make the language grammar very difficult.
Excellent throughout. Vaughn, although he is a rug cleaner by profession, is a first-rate podcast guest. Every answer substantive and to the point. And this was his first podcast appearance, ever. He should be a lesson to you all.
Mark Skousen on AEA masking
I called the Hilton Riverside, headquarters hotel for the AEA meetings, and asked if they have any mask or vaccine mandates. They said “none.” I’ll speak at the New Orleans Investment Conference at the same hotel in October, and the organizers aren’t mandating masks or vaccines. Overseas it’s the same. I’m speaking at the World Knowledge Forum in September in Seoul and attending the Mont Pelerin Society meetings in October in Oslo. No masks or shots required.
Here is more from the WSJ. I’ll be speaking in Canada soon — Canada!…risk-averse, locking down for longer, many fewer people died there Canada. No masks or boosters required.