Category: Uncategorized
My Conversation with Anna Keay
A very good episode, here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
Tyler sat down with Anna to discuss the most plausible scenario where England could’ve remained a republic in the 17th century, what Robert Boyle learned from Sir William Petty, why some monarchs build palaces and other don’t, how renting from the Landmark Trust compares to Airbnb, how her job changes her views on wealth taxes, why neighborhood architecture has declined, how she’d handle the UK’s housing shortage, why giving back the Koh-i-Noor would cause more problems than it solves, why British houses have so little storage, the hardest part about living in an 800-year-old house, her favorite John Fowles book, why we should do more to preserve the Scottish Enlightenment, and more.
And here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Which are the old buildings that we have too many of in Britain? There’s a lot of Christopher Wren churches. I think there’s over 20.
KEAY: Too many?
COWEN: What if they were 15? They’re not all fantastic.
KEAY: They’re not all fantastic? Tell me one that isn’t fantastic.
COWEN: The Victorians knocked down St. Mildred. I’ve seen pictures of it. I don’t miss it.
KEAY: Well, you don’t miss something that’s not there. I think it’d be pretty hard to convince me that any Christopher Wren church wasn’t worth hanging on to. But your point is right, which is to say that not everything that was ever built is worth retaining. There are things which are clearly of much less interest or were poorly built, which are not serving a purpose anymore in a way that they need to. To me, it’s all about assessing what matters, what we care about.
It’s incredibly important to remember how you have to try and take the long view because if you let things go, you cannot later retrieve them. We look at the decisions that were made in the past about things that we really care about that were demolished — wonderful country houses, we’ve mentioned. It’s fantastic, for example, Euston Station, one of the great stations of the world, built in the middle of the 19th century, demolished in the ’60s, regretted forever since.
So, one of the things you have to be really careful about is to make a distinction between the fashion of the moment and things which we are going to regret, or our children or our grandchildren are going to curse us for having not valued or not thought about, not considered.
Which is why, in this country, we have this thing called the listing system, where there’s a process of identifying buildings which are important, and what’s called listing them — putting them on a list — which means that if you own them, you can’t change them without getting permission, which is a way of ensuring that things which you as an owner or I as an owner might not treat with scorn, that the interest of generations to come are represented in that.
COWEN: Why were so many big mistakes made in the middle part of the 20th century? St. Pancras almost was knocked down, as I’m sure you know. That would have been a huge blunder. There was something about that time that people seem to have become more interested in ugliness. Or what’s your theory? How do you explain the insanity that took all of Britain for, what, 30 years?
KEAY: Well, I think this is such a good question because this is, to me, what the study of history is all about, which is, you have to think about what it was like for that generation. You have to think of what it was like for people in the 1950s and ’60s, who had experienced, either firsthand or very close at hand, not just one but two catastrophic world wars in which numbers had been killed, places had been destroyed. The whole human cost of that time was so colossal, and the idea for that generation that something really fundamental had to change if we were going to be a society that wasn’t going to be killing one another at all time.
This has a real sort of mirror in the 17th century, during the Civil War in the 17th century. There’s a real feeling that something had to be done. Otherwise, God was going to strike down this nation, this errant nation. I think for that generation in the ’50s and ’60s, the sense that we simply have to do things differently because this pattern of life, this pattern of existence, this way we’ve operated as a society has been so destructive.
Although lots of things were done — when it comes to urban planning and so on — that we really regret now, I think you have to be really careful not to diminish the seriousness of intent of those people who were trying to conceive of what that world might be — more egalitarian, more democratic, involving more space, more air, more light, healthier — all these kinds of things.
Definitely recommended, with numerous interesting parts. And I am very happy to recommend Anna’s latest book The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown.
*The Two-Parent Privilege*
A new and great book, authored by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland. The subtitle is How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind, and here is one excerpt of the summary points:
Two-parent families are beneficial for children.
The class divide in marriage and family structure has exacerbated inequality and class gaps.
Places that have more two-parent families have higher rates of upward mobility.
Not talking about these facts is counterproductive.
The marshaled evidence is convincing, and I will be blogging more about this book. While some stiff competition is coming, this could be the most important economics and policy book of this year. And yes it is remarkable that such a book is so needed, but yes it is. And here is Melissa on Twitter.
Tuesday assorted links
1. More on Sudan (correct link).
2. Atlas Fellowship, for 19 and younger. Many very good winners.
3. Improving GPT models with self-reflection. And you can now interrogate your pdfs.
4. Ahem: “A proposal to strip Disney World of its ability to self-inspect its rides and monorails could also alter its participation in an agreement that allows major theme parks to self-report injuries on their attractions.
But the other big theme parks, including Universal and SeaWorld, would still retain those privileges, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday.” Link here. Not unrelated to a lot of other regulatory issues as well.
5. AI “photograph” wins prestigious photography award.
6. The Collinses.
Costco
Venture into a Costco warehouse – a more diverse place than many a university or legislature – and you will see shoppers from all walks of life gathered together in the pursuit of consumer goods. Here, people of various faiths and backgrounds peruse the aisles, in search of the latest giant screen television sets, buckets of ice cream, and rotisserie chickens, treating one another with respect, regardless of their beliefs. The only judgement passed is reserved for those who bump carts or try to skip the line. Upon departing this peacful and lively consumer’s paradise, some may venture to their respective places of worship, while others linger and indulge in a beverage and a $1.50 hot dog with friends. One family may commemorate a milestone with a baptism, another might celebrate a traditional rite of passage, while still others head to the ballpark in the comfort of their spacious SUVs. And as this diverse tapestry of personal journeys is woven, everyone finds contentment.
At what rate should we tax AI workers?
I find this (somewhat) tractable problem one good way to start thinking about alignment issues. Here is one bit from my Bloomberg column:
More to the point, there are now autonomous AI agents, which can in turn create autonomous AI agents of their own. So it won’t be possible to assign all AI income to their human or corporate owners, as in many cases there won’t be any.
And to continue the analysis:
One option is to let AI bots work tax-free, like honeybees do. At first that might make life simple for the IRS, but a problem of tax arbitrage will arise. Tax-free AI labor would have a pronounced competitive advantage over its taxed human counterpart. Furthermore, too many AIs will be released into the commons. Why own an AI and pay taxes when you can program it to do your bidding, renounce ownership, and enjoy its services tax-free? It seems easy enough to disclaim ownership of autonomous bots, especially if they are producing autonomous bots of their own. If nothing else, you could sell them to shell corporations.
The obvious alternative is to tax AI labor. Laboring AIs would have to file tax returns, which they may be capable of doing in the very near future. (Can they claim deductions for their baby AIs? What about their investments?)
Since AIs do not enjoy leisure as humans do, arguably their labor should be taxed at a higher rate than that of humans. Still, AIs shouldn’t be taxed too much. At prohibitively high rates of taxation, AIs will have lower stocks of wealth to invest in improving themselves, which in turn would lower long-run tax revenue from AI labor. Yes, they’re AIs, but incentives still matter.
Some people might fear that super-patient, super-smart AIs will accumulate too much wealth, though either investments or labor, and thereby hold too much social influence. That would create a case for a wealth tax on AIs, in addition to an income tax. But if AIs are such good investors, humans will also want the social benefits that accrue from such wisdom, and that again implies rates of taxation well below the confiscatory level.
And here is one of the deep problems with AI taxation:
The fundamental problem here is that AIs might be very good at providing in-kind services — improving organizational software, responding to emails, and so on. It is already a problem for the tax system when neighbors barter services, but the AIs will take this kind of relationship to a much larger scale.
Forget about hiring AIs, actually: What if you invest in them, tell them to do your bidding, repudiate your ownership, and then let them run much of your business and life? You could write off your investment in the AI as a business expense, and subsequently receive tax-free in-kind services, in what would amount to a de facto act of exchange.
Here is one general issue:
A major topic in AI circles is “alignment,” namely whether humans can count on AI agents to do our bidding, rather than mounting destructive cyberattacks or destroying us. These investments in alignment are necessary and important. But the more successful humans become at alignment, the larger the problem with tax arbitrage.
Not easy!
Monday assorted links
1. It is the economists who would be astonished.
2. The NYPD Can Now Shoot GPS Trackers at Your Car.
3. Arbitrage. San Francisco style.
Increasing returns markets in everything
Some South Korean youth are so cut off from the world, the government is offering to pay them to “re-enter society.”
The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family announced this week that it will provide up to 650,000 Korean won (about $500) per month to isolated social recluses, in a bid to support their “psychological and emotional stability and healthy growth.”
About 3.1% of Koreans aged 19 to 39 are “reclusive lonely young people,” defined as living in a “limited space, in a state of being disconnected from the outside for more than a certain period of time, and have noticeable difficulty in living a normal life,” according to the ministry’s report, citing the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs.
Here is the full article, via Shruti.
Alaska food notes
There is salmon, halibut, and crab, the latter usually priced at $125 for the meal. The salmon I liked but did not love, so the halibut is the standout order in Anchorage, noting that even fish and chips may cost you $45. The vegetables were somewhat better than expected. Many quite good restaurants (at least if you order halibut) look like they are somewhat less than quite good, so the usual visual cues do not apply. Prices seem determined by ingredients, rather than restaurant location or status of the restaurant. I enjoyed my reindeer bibimbap. Chinese restaurants are not common, you will find many more Japanese and sushi places, which based on n = 2 are pretty good. Namaste Shangri-La was excellent, it is one of three (!) Nepalese places in town. The Mexican food I did not try. There are several Polynesian locales. Fresh blueberry and lingonberry jams are not to be neglected. Lower your expectations for the supermarkets, not just the fruit but also the cheese.
Sunday assorted links
1. Game-theoretic analysis of China blockading Taiwan.
2. Pentagon official offers new UFO theory (not my theory, to be clear).
3. “How did the men, whom the authorities are still working to identify and arrest, lug so many dimes into their white Chrysler 300 and dark-colored pickup truck?” (200k, NYT) And problems with prompt injection.
Claims made by intelligent Alaskans
I am not endorsing these, or claiming these propositions are the entire story, but I heard a number of interesting claims during my trip. Here are a few:
1. Ranked choice voting has worked relatively well for Alaska, by encouraging more moderate candidates.
2. Faculty at U. Alaska are not rabid crazy, because the locale selects for those who are into hunting and fishing, and that keeps them from the worst excesses of academic life.
3. The oil-based “UBI” in Alaska keeps down government spending, because voters feel that any money spent is being spent at their expense.
4. Health care costs are a major problem up here, mostly because there is not enough scale to support many hospitals.
5. When air travel shuts down, due to say ash from Russian volcanos, the local blood bank runs into problems either testing its blood donations or getting out-of-state blood.
6. East Anchorage has perhaps the largest number of languages in its high school student population of anywhere in the United States. Some of this stems from the large number of different kinds of Alaska Natives, some of it stems from having many Samoans, Hawaiians, Hmong, and other migrant groups.
7. Resources for Alaska Natives are often held through the corporate form (with restrictions on share transferability), rather than tribes, and this has worked fairly well.
8. Starlink has had a major impact on the more remote parts of Alaska, which otherwise had internet service not much better than “dial up” quality.
9. For a while there were direct flights from Chengdu to Fairbanks, due to Chinese interest in the “Northern Lights” phenomenon.
10. The population of Anchorage turns over by about ten percent each year, with only some of this being driven by the military.
11. For a human, a moose is a greater risk than a bear.
Personally, I observe that the university in Anchorage is more pro-GPT than other academic groups I have had contact with. Might this be due to their distance from the center, their frontier mentality, and the possible scarcity of skilled labor here?
Saturday assorted links
De-dollarization will be minimal
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
How far is the talk of de-dollarization going to proceed? Probably not very. The US has the world’s deepest and most liquid financial markets, and they remain relatively open, in spite of some restrictions on Chinese investment in industries sensitive for national security. There are strong reasons to have a dominant currency in international markets, just as there are strong reasons for having a dominant currency in domestic transactions within the US. Liquidity for a currency begets further liquidity, whether at home or globally.
With the dollar estimated at 88% of all international transactions, the euro at 31% is only a modest competitor (since a transaction may involve two currencies, the total may exceed 100%). The euro, unlike the dollar, will never be tied to a single national government, and the European Union does not come close to the military might of the US.
The yuan is estimated at only 7% of that total of international transactions, and China seems unwilling to open up its capital markets, as that could lead to rapid capital outflows and possibly a financial crisis. But without open capital markets, the yuan is not a strong contender for a global reserve currency.
Those are all very much points of intuitive, common sense.
Friday assorted links
1. Why did Wyoming kill school choice? (hint: median voter theorem?)
2. Romer, Glaeser, Bertaud, and other talks on charter cities.
3. Which kinds of ungulates innovate most?
4. And you thought their greatest sin was Overlapping Generations models.
6. Sarah Constantin on why she is not an AI doomer. And using ChatGPT to hold down multiple jobs.
LLMs and neurodiversity
I hold two hypotheses, neither of them tested:
1. LLMs will on average give a big boost to autistics.
Autistics (or autists, as the term is now evolving) are used to communicating with “beings” whose minds work very differently. So they will do relatively well working with LLMs. Plus LLMs, in their current forms, are text-based, also a strength of many autistics. Or if you are like Temple Grandin, and especially strong at images, Midjourney might be of great interest. The general point is that autistics are used to “weird,” and used to dealing with “aliens.”
One friend of mine reports an autistic relative, who otherwise was not doing well, but who finds GPT a revelation and a wonderful learning tool. More generally, you can think of autistics as people who are used to dealing with a lot of information. LLMs provide that, and at whatever level of information density you request.
2. LLMs will on average give a big boost to ADHD individuals.
I view many ADHD individuals as very smart and able, but doing poorly when they cannot control the pace, intensity, and direction of their learning. (Ever see people who can’t pay attention in class, or who nod off during academic lectures and can’t sit still? But will work for hours on their own tasks?) LLMs let you control the topic, the pace of the exchange, and just about everything else, including mood and tone. You are the boss, and so ADHD individuals should benefit disproportionately from this.
Sriram Subramaniam writes to me:
- It’s great for people with ADHD to get things done: Lesser amount of concentrated attention is needed to ship stuff. I shipped a webapp (a game for my kids) in 2 hours yesterday. I have never programmed. I hang on hacker news and knew enough to prompt. With that knowledge, I could build and ship a game in 2 hours. I could hold my attention for 2 hours and that got me to a meaningful end state. Attention is all that matters as the founding paper said 🙂
I would frame some of that differently (see above), but the general observation is well-taken.
Any other hypotheses about LLMs and neurodiversity?
Why superyachts?
I’ve been reading more polemics against superyachts lately, for instance from Paul Krugman (NYT). I’ve never been on a superyacht, or even a non-super yacht, but I can give you my “hypothesis from a distance” about them. A super-wealthy individual wants to convene a group of people, all of whom are talented, or friends, or famous, but not all of whom are super rich. The point is to offer them some kind of extra special experience, namely the superyacht. And you can’t convene everybody in normal public spaces, in part because the super rich person is famous and would attract notice, and in part because of the security risk. Thus enter the superyacht.
I don’t know how useful these convenings are on average (do the critics?), but I don’t think they are merely or even mainly about status-seeking by the super rich. The desire is to have a focal, locational base for drawing people together and sometimes working on projects of mutual interest. That said, I don’t doubt the super rich person enjoys seeing others admire a beautiful yacht, but is that so crazy or craven? It doesn’t have to be a zero-sum pleasure. That is, I enjoy it if my friends enjoy my (rather modest) backyard deck, but I’m not so concerned about whether they like Alex’s house better, etc. There is room for fun everywhere! Even on superyachts.