Category: Uncategorized
Tuesday assorted links
The best study to date on school phone bans
Schools across the U.S. have sharply restricted student use of phones during the school day. We evaluate one type of restriction—lockable phone pouches—using nationwide data combining large-scale surveys, GPS pings, standardized test scores, and school administrative records, along with sales records from the largest pouch provider. Using a staggered difference-in-differences design, we find that pouch adoption substantially reduces phone use as measured by GPS pings and teacher reports. In the first year after adoption, disciplinary incidents increase and student subjective well-being falls, consistent with short-term disruption. However, effects on well-being become positive in later years and disciplinary effects fade. For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero. High schools see modest positive effects, particularly in math, while middle schools see small negative effects. We find little evidence of effects on school attendance, self-reported classroom attention, or perceived online bullying.
In sum, it is fine to want to run a school that way, but do not expect huge educational gains, if any. The evidence on this is accumulating, but many seem unable to accept the results. In any case it is not worthy of a major moral crusade.
Here is the NBER working paper, with top-tier researchers involved I might add, namely .
Monday assorted links
1. Ezra Klein on whether AI is likely to lead to mass unemployment (NYT).
2. There is a great Kentucky Derby stagnation.
3. Is open source AI overrated?
4. The deadweight loss of the human capital in prison?
5. How AI is transforming China’s entertainment industry (NYT).
6. “Twelve free, citation-rigorous tools for the students, debaters, and policy desks the textbooks forgot. From AP free-response grading to live tariff modeling to a Shadow Fed with a public track record, every formula shown, every dataset cited.” Link here, made by a Colorado high schooler.
Sunday assorted links
1. “data centers are now responsible for nearly half of county tax revenue in Loudon County, VA”
2. The emerging role of competition in health care markets.
3. Did the Swedes boost tax revenue by abolishing their inheritance tax?
4. WSJ profile of Reihan Salam.
5. Are NJ diners doomed? (NYT)
6. How far back does European family structure go?
7. Why Coase needs Hayek, AI essay and the limits of the firm.
Saturday assorted links
Have online worlds become the last free places for children?
Major public intellectuals and politicians have responded by arguing that children should rarely, if ever, participate in digital spaces. As a result, many schools in the US now demand that students seal their smartphones in magnetic pouches. A number of countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom and France, are even considering or have already implemented bans on social media accounts for children and teenagers.
Such restrictions, however, are not the tools of liberation we may imagine them to be.
In fact, for some children, the internet may be one of the last remaining spaces where they can grow up doing what children everywhere have evolved to do: independently play and explore with their peers.
Here is more from anthropologist Eli Stark-Elster. I would add a point. I do accept the evidence suggesting that limiting or banning cell phones in schools brings marginally better academic results. Yet the people who advocate such policies never point out that so many schools are just deadly dull and not very intellectually stimulating? Often what is on the phone is in fact more interesting and sometimes more instructive as well, even if the students do worse in terms of the standards set by the school.
My NPR debate on whether science is too risk-averse
This coming Tuesday at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, here is the event information, with three others as well. With debate partner Brandon Ogbunu I will be arguing the “yes” side, science is too risk-averse. Self-recommended!
Here is the Open to Debate Substack.
Friday assorted links
1. Does trade cause peace? (FT)
2. Where the goblins came from.
3. The next big advance to come from AI?
4. Georg Baselitz, RIP. And now in English. I am happy to own a print of his, one of the upside-down eagles.
6. In spite of what polling says, political events do not much affect voter attitudes?
New results on AI mental health therapists
AI-powered mental health apps have attracted growing interest as a low-cost way to expand care. Yet questions remain about their effectiveness, safety, and whether they may crowd out psychotherapy. We evaluate one such app in a randomized controlled trial among 1,964 Mexican women with mild to severe psychological distress. Over six months, app access improved mental health by 0.3 standard deviations with no evidence of harm, improved sleep quality, increased healthful behaviors, and reduced missed work, yielding considerably larger benefits than costs. Treated participants were also more likely to seek traditional psychotherapy, but this increase does not explain most of the mental health gains. App use was high in the first month but then declined, as is common in digital interventions. Despite this drop in use, treatment effects persisted. Participants continued to implement practices promoted by the app, suggesting that even short-term engagement can produce durable improvements through sustained behavioral change.
That is from a new paper by Manuela Angelucci, Raissa Fabregas, and Antonia Vazquez. Those are some pretty strong results for a cheap intervention, let us hope they hold up. Via John Holbein.
Thursday assorted links
2. An SRO approaching to regulating AI.
3. Dwarkesh: “We don’t talk enough about how any state or group which is harvesting encrypted packets right now will be able to read those contents once quantum computers arrive. There’s a huge espionage and transparency overhang on any information that is currently “secret” and hasn’t been encrypted using post-quantum cryptography.”
4. Craig Venter, RIP. Here is the NYT obituary.
6. With the UAE’s departure, OPEC will become much more an instrument of Iranian power (FT). But also weaker.
Wednesday assorted links
Are we finally seeing some market clearing prices for movies?
One of the best selling points of a night out at the movies has long been how cheap it was for two hours-plus of entertainment. Not so much when it costs $50 a ticket.
That is how much Regal Cinemas recently charged for opening night seats in the best theaters to see December’s “Dune: Part Three.”
Eye-popping prices for the most in-demand movies on the best screens are becoming increasingly common as the cinema industry copies the audience-segmentation playbooks of airlines and hotels. Theaters are getting people who love movies and have discretionary income to pay substantially more.
Some 17% of film tickets sold last year were for premium-format theaters with bigger screens and better sound, compared with 13% in 2021. They cost an average of $18 nationally, according to research firm EntTelligence, and as much as $30 in big cities such as New York and Los Angeles.
$50 still seems too low for me, for instance: “Regal sold its inventory of $50 “Dune” tickets projected in 70 millimeter IMAX film in a matter of minutes.” But this is what they call “a good start…” Here is the full WSJ piece.
Tuesday assorted links
Monday assorted links
1. Does monopsony power induce firms to stay small?
2. Currentzis conducting the War Requiem.
4. Did three different groups settle South America?
5. The China-shocked towns are coming back? (NYT)
8. PC on Arab novels. And a response from Hussein Mansour.
9. What is Progress Engineering?
10. Milei’s popularity is falling. I am a fan and he has done many great and good things, but the victory march has been premature for some while now. Quite simply it is hard to overcome a bad political culture.
Sunday assorted links
1. Why AI can simulate but not instantiate consciousness.
2. Why you should start a company instead of working in aid.
3. Evidence that tennis has become less interesting?
4. A smidgen more on wet market origins.
5. Who is most (least) opposed to European immigration?
6. John Burn-Murdoch on the Jevons paradox and AI employment effects (FT).
7. Can plants sense the sound of rain?
8. Zena.