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Erasmus Darwin, apostle of progress
Erasmus Darwin plunged into popular scientific poetry. Cantering along in the style — if not with the elegance — of Alexander Pope, he never aspired to greatness. His verses, however, were remarkable for their vivid pictures of evolution interlaced with stirring accounts of the advancement of science, technology, and human culture during the late eighteenth century, the very epitome of optimistic entrepreneurial thought applied to the natural world in the bright glow of the prerevolutionary era.
It is hard to recapture the full extent of the fame these writings, virtually forgotten today, brought him. Yet for many readers of the 1790s, Darwin was the poet for the age of liberty and social advance: an advocate of industrialisation and cultural improvement; an avid admirer of the power of steam; a discipline of the French philosophes, revealing his Jacobin-like fervour for change and transformation at every turn, and deliberately provocative in taking as his publisher the radical Joseph Johnson, the Londoner who printed William Godwin and friends; at all times a poet of progress, with such an obvious sense of humor that his zest for life could not fail to amuse.
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) was of course the grandfather of Charles Darwin and also of Francis Galton. And that passage is from the truly excellent biography Charles Darwin Voyaging, by Janet Browne.
Tuesday assorted links
1. I did a Firewall podcast with Bradley Tusk.
2. Complacency and American girl dolls.
3. In China, “grey market” vaccine doses are going for $600-$1500.
4. Who are the greatest right-wing literary authors?
6. The rise of undrafted NBA talent. A good piece and of general interest.
7. Reduce event size rather than general lockdowns: “Our model predicts that a small minority of “superspreader” POIs account for a large majority of infections and that restricting maximum occupancy at each POI is more effective than uniformly reducing mobility.”
Post-Covid, is the U.S. falling behind China?
I don’t think so, as I argue in my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:
If you are wondering whether China or the U.S. with its allies is more likely to make a big breakthrough, in, say, quantum computing, ask yourself a simple question: Which network will better attract talented immigrants? The more that talent and innovation are found around the world, the more that helps the U.S.
And:
Perhaps most important, the European Union has evolved from seeing China primarily as a customer to seeing China primarily as a rival. Even Germany, a longstanding advocate for closer ties with China, has become more skeptical. Furthermore, most European nations have ended up agreeing with the U.S. that Chinese telecom giant Huawei be kept out of the critical parts of their communications infrastructure.
It is also worth noting that GPT-3 came out of the Anglosphere, not China, even though we have been hearing for years that China may be ahead in AI.
Sentences to ponder
How many will speak up for science today?:
Our results show that the enormous expansions of parental leave and child care subsidies have had virtually no impact on gender convergence.
That is from a new NBER working paper by Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais, Johanna Posch, Andreas Steinhauer, and Josef Zweimüller., based on decades of data from Austria.
Monday assorted links
1. State capacity: Italian Police Use Lamborghini To Transport Donor Kidney 300 Miles In Two Hours.
3. This source argues there was no real foreign election interference.
4. “A fact that was never mentioned ahead of time. If we had reached complete suppression vaccine development would have been impossible. Depends, on the math but I think this means that *if* a vaccine is out there slow burn saves lives compared to suppression that eventually snaps” From Karl Smith.
5. “Student loan debt forgiveness likely has a multiplier close to zero. Forgiveness is taxable. If this negative cash flow effect outweighs interest savings would even be net negative. And wealth effect small in short run. Arbitrary/regressive $1T for ~$0 GDP, not a great idea.” From Jason Furman.
Economics and epidemiology, revisited
The Economist was kind enough to reference my earlier blog post on this topic, from April 12, so I thought we should look at it again. Please do reread it! Here are my first two points:
1. They [epidemiologists] do not sufficiently grasp that long-run elasticities of adjustment are more powerful than short-run elasticites. In the short run you socially distance, but in the long run you learn which methods of social distance protect you the most. Or you move from doing “half home delivery of food” to “full home delivery of food” once you get that extra credit card or learn the best sites. In this regard the epidemiological models end up being too pessimistic, and it seems that “the natural disaster economist complaints about the epidemiologists” (yes there is such a thing) are largely correct on this count. On this question economic models really do better, though not the models of everybody.
2. They do not sufficiently incorporate public choice considerations. An epidemic path, for instance, may be politically infeasible, which leads to adjustments along the way, and very often those adjustments are stupid policy moves from impatient politicians. This is not built into the models I am seeing, nor are such factors built into most economic macro models, even though there is a large independent branch of public choice research. It is hard to integrate. Still, it means that epidemiological models will be too optimistic, rather than too pessimistic as in #1. Epidemiologists might protest that it is not the purpose of their science or models to incorporate politics, but these factors are relevant for prediction, and if you try to wash your hands of them (no pun intended) you will be wrong a lot.
And:
I have not yet seen a Straussian dimension in the models, though you might argue many epidemiologists are “naive Straussian” in their public rhetoric, saying what is good for us rather than telling the whole truth.
Many people took umbrage at my points, but:
On this list, I think my #1 comes closest to being an actual criticism, the other points are more like observations about doing science in a messy, imperfect world.
I also queried about the political orientation of epidemiologists (among other matters), and that occasioned a great deal of pushback and outrage. Yet we saw during the summer that many of them were explicitly political and favoring the Left, willing to abandon their earlier recommendations to endorse demonstrations for a cause they strongly favored. I am not sure how big was the resulting boost in cases or fatalities, but it did seem the American people concluded that you could ignore the rules if something was sufficiently important to you. Like visiting your relatives for Thanksgiving, and we will be reaping that harvest rather soon.
Asking for a friend
What is the current take on foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election? I hardly hear anyone mentioning this. Was there much? And if not, why not? Our sagest minds were warning of this for years, and I heard several nat sec experts warn me of this but a few weeks ago. There have been hundreds of media articles about the topic. So what is up? I see a few options:
1. There was lots of foreign interference (again), but things turned out OK so it is not a major issue. “Never mind.”
2. President Donald Trump ensured election integrity through vigilance, good policy, and cooperation with Vladimir Putin.
3. Local election authorities were alert this time around, and they choked off each and every instance of foreign election interference.
4. The major tech companies were alert this time around, and they choked off each and every instance of foreign election interference. They didn’t even let the Russkies spend 60k on Facebook ads. Those are such great companies.
5. Foreign election interference was never much of a significant issue to begin with. “Never mind.”
6. Foreign powers are now all, in each and every country, committed to free and fair American elections, and they acted accordingly.
To be clear, I am not asking which is true. I am asking which one I am supposed to believe.
Sunday assorted links
1. Andrew Gelman on driving and the stock market.
2. Covid and complexity (Scott Sumner, I would note that much of Africa seems to fit this same story).
3. Sanity about Sweden (both sides were wrong).
5. China Belgium fact of the day: racing pigeon sells for $1.9 million.
6. It seems Al Zajeera has better coverage of Ethiopia?
7. Covid in Milan in September 2019? (speculative). Here is the paper. Cross-contamination, or might this be Cowen’s 17th Law: Most phenomena have origins earlier than you are at first inclined to think. It is true for “the marginal revolution” as well!
Best classical music recordings of 2020
As you might expect, this has been a pretty spectacular year for listening to classical music on disc, too good you might say. Here is what I enjoyed the most:
Beethoven Complete Piano works, by Martino Tirimo. I probably know the performance canon for Beethoven piano sonatas better than any other area of classical music, and this is one of my two or three favorite sets of all time. They are fresh, direct, and to the point, and remind me of the earlier Yves Nat set, though with better sound and the mistakes edited out. Here is one review: “It’s decades since a pianist has managed to convey such an overwhelming sense that we’re listening to pure Beethoven. And there are 20 hours of it — surely the greatest recorded achievement of this anniversary year.” The pianist is a 78-year-old Cypriot who is barely known even to most of the concert-going public.
Beethoven Bagatelles, by Tanguy de Williencourt. This is Beethoven at his most arbitrary and willful and whimsical, all good things. I have many recordings of these pieces, but these are perhaps my favorite. Why again is it that French pianists are so good with Beethoven?
Beethoven, Complete works for Piano Trio, van Baerle Trio. Again, the best recording of these works I have heard, and there is stiff competition.
Masaaki Suzuki put out more Bach organ music, and conducted an incredible version of Beethoven’s 9th symphony. His genius remains under-discussed, as he is also a world-class harpsichord and keyboard player, and has produced the definitive recording of Bach’s entire cycle of cantatas. Why is there no biography of him? He is one of the greatest creators and performers in the entire world in any area. If you are wondering, his parents were Japanese Protestants and he is a Calvinist.
Chopin CD of the year would be by Jean-Paul Gasparian.
Morton Feldman piano box set, played by Philip Thomas. Five CDs if you go that route, this is what I listened to most this year. It is also very good played at low volume, a useful feature in crowded pandemic homes.
I listened to a good deal of Szymanowski, who has finally started to make sense to me. In prep for my CWT with Alex Ross, I relistened to a great deal of Wagner. What rose in my eyes was the von Karajan Die Meistersinger and the Clemens Krauss Ring cycle.
As for contemporary classical music, I enjoyed:
Hans Abrahamsen, String Quartets.
Philippe Manoury, Temps Mode d’Emploi.
Caroline Shaw, Orange, Attaca Quartet.
This year I also rediscovered Robert Ashley’s opera Atalanta (Acts of God), and Raymond Lewenthal’s Alkan CD, one of my favorite recordings of all time, a kind of proto-rock and roll.
As for concert life, I did manage to see Trifonov play “Art of the Fugue” at the Kennedy Center before the whole season shut down, and in January the Danish Quartet playing Beethoven in NYC.
*Queen’s Gambit* (no real spoilers in this post)
I’ve now seen a few episodes, and I have a few comments on the chess:
1. No player, including Magnus Carlsen, can become that good that quickly, without a lot of learning and losing along the way.
2. They show the players moving too fast, though for dramatic reasons this is easy enough to understand.
3. The Sicilian was indeed very popular in 1963, but not quite that popular.
4. It captures the feel of earlier U.S. chess tournaments very well, noting that my own participation came later but things didn’t change much.
5. At the time the Rossolimo was in fact an unusual response to the Sicilian, though it is not now. The show got this right (the protagonist claims she was very surprised by 3.Bb5) — don’t be fooled by the subsequent evolution of the game.
Dramatically, I would say it is “decent and watchable,” and the clothes and hotel scenes are good. The characterization of the mother does not feel entirely consistent. There is an underlying autism theme, mostly handled well, though mainstream reviewers seem to be thrown off the scent by the woman’s charm and good looks. I will let you know if I have further observations.
Saturday assorted links
1. Interview with Charles Koch.
2. mRNA vaccines and nanotech. And vaccine depends on strong vial (WSJ). A very good short piece on the importance of materials science and innovation.
3. Magnus interview.
4. “This decision analytical model found that missed instruction during 2020 could be associated with an estimated 5.53 million years of life lost.” An appreciation of the Lucas critique is badly lacking here (different regime, can’t just re-use the old education/life expectancy gradients!…least of all from meta-studies), but still this is the kind of calculation we should be attempting and publicizing more. Except we need to get it right. This piece is in JAMA Network Open, and the authors are from very good schools, the lead author is highly prestigious and a major editor, but the work would not pass muster from even moderately critical referees in a second-tier economics journal. That said, I do suspect the costs of school closings are very high.
What will the transitional vaccine path look like?
In several regards segregation will rise, as I explain in my latest Bloomberg column:
The first issue will be how Americans respond over the course of the next few months. Simple logic suggests that when a good vaccine is pending, you should play it much safer. Instead of putting off that vacation indefinitely, just wait until you’re vaccinated, possibly as soon as next summer. In theory that should be an easier adjustment to make, as indicated by what economists call “intertemporal substitution”: waiting for a short time is easier and less costly than waiting for a long time.
Many people will behave in such a rational fashion. But many will instead take more risk. As the prospect of a post-Covid America becomes more vivid, the temptations of going out and socializing now will become more powerful. Once people start thinking about the imminent prospect of partying and fine dining, they might find it harder to resist the idea of just going ahead with it now, despite the higher risk. The giddiness occasioned by a vaccine might have some counterintuitive and negative effects.
Of course, some truly rational and forward-looking people will realize that some of their friends and contacts will behave in this less responsible manner. The more rational among us thus will take greater care to avoid those whom they do not trust, as well as those who have front-line service jobs and thus cannot avoid contact with these less responsible individuals. The rationalists will cocoon themselves more, most of all from strangers and known irrationalists.
Another possibility is that norms of social scorn will weaken, and confusion will reign for a while. Currently, if you shop without a mask or hog the middle of the jogging path in the park, you will be asked to leave or given dirty looks. These are healthy social reactions that help to keep the virus under control.
Will that remain the case once 10% or 20% of the population has been vaccinated?
There is much more at the link.
Is AI centralizing research influence?
Increasingly, modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) research has become more computationally intensive. However, a growing concern is that due to unequal access to computing power, only certain firms and elite universities have advantages in modern AI research. Using a novel dataset of 171394 papers from 57 prestigious computer science conferences, we document that firms, in particular, large technology firms and elite universities have increased participation in major AI conferences since deep learning’s unanticipated rise in 2012. The effect is concentrated among elite universities, which are ranked 1-50 in the QS World University Rankings. Further, we find two strategies through which firms increased their presence in AI research: first, they have increased firm-only publications; and second, firms are collaborating primarily with elite universities. Consequently, this increased presence of firms and elite universities in AI research has crowded out mid-tier (QS ranked 201-300) and lower-tier (QS ranked 301-500) universities. To provide causal evidence that deep learning’s unanticipated rise resulted in this divergence, we leverage the generalized synthetic control method, a data-driven counterfactual estimator. Using machine learning based text analysis methods, we provide additional evidence that the divergence between these two groups – large firms and non-elite universities – is driven by access to computing power or compute, which we term as the “compute divide”. This compute divide between large firms and non-elite universities increases concerns around bias and fairness within AI technology, and presents an obstacle towards “democratizing” AI. These results suggest that a lack of access to specialized equipment such as compute can de-democratize knowledge production.
That is a new paper by Nur Ahmed and Muntasir Wahed.
Friday assorted links
1. Home field advantage has gone away in the NFL. And thread on reading fast.
2. Atlantic profile of Peter Turchin.
3. “No son of mine will marry a consequentialist!” A lesson in human pettiness.
4. Ticketmaster exploring verifying fans’ vaccine status before issuing concert passes. And the Golden State Warriors will try to reopen at 50% capacity plus tests for everyone. And people taking the placebo will get the Pfizer vaccine (but when?).
5. Hall and Kudlyak on the inexorable recovery of employment.
6. “Settlers and Norms,” job market paper by Joanne Haddad.
How do the NIH and NSF work?
A surprising number of individuals responded to my post last week soliciting books about the NIH and NSF. Thank you to those who did and please do still feel free to reach out on this matter.
It became apparent that a highly complementary effort would be a Substack/blog/podcast/similar about the inner workings of the NIH / NSF, and indeed other institutions relevant to the modern-day administration and practice of science. Think SCOTUSblog or Macro Musings, but focused on the NIH/NSF/etc.
So, if you would like to start such a blog/podcast/newsletter, please email me, and that plan will be considered for financial support.