From the comments, on moving to the suburbs
Emergent Ventures, 37th cohort
Nicholas Kruus, 17, Highlands Ranch, CO, poverty alleviation, general career support.
Tobi Shevlane, Oxford, AI and prediction of real world events.
John Gross-Whitaker, Stanford, writing and thinking and career development.
Benjamin Manning, MIT, AI as a tool for doing economic research.
Arden Berg, Western Massachusetts, incoming student at the University of Chicago, philosophy and economics.
Sean Cai and associates, Cornell, using AI to improve the information content of musical notation.
Nicholas Decker, George Mason University, economics Ph.D student, to write his Substack and general career development.
Tim Mak, Kyiv, originally McGill, developing a periodical to cover business and defense developments in Ukraine.
Jack Wiseman, London, “A workspace for life sciences, hardware/robotics, and AI research in London for young scientists/technologists.”
Zeaus Koh, 17, Singapore, general career support, bio and AI.
Nathan J. Zhao, Stanford, general career support.
Naila Moloo, 18, Ottawa and Chapel Hill, turning duckweed into bioplastics.
Marina Lin, McLean, VA, high school, biological approaches to hard-NP problems, t cover possible publication costs.
Pablo Cobo Pérez, Córdoba, Spain, 16, programming and AI, to finance a trip to San Francisco.
Jon Hartley, Hoover and Stanford, gather data on how LLMs are used in workplaces.
Sean Keyes, Progress Ireland, to study Irish policy issues, and for travel and fact-finding missions.
Luke Marks, Australia, general career support and AI, to visit the Bay Area.
Janet Guo, MIT and New Zealand, longevity research.
Tejas Chakrapani, 16, Basking Ridge, NJ, general career support for efforts in tech.
Rohit Kulkarni, 17, Chantilly, VA, AI and biology.
Ricardo López Cordero, Mexico City, podcast on Mexican intellectual life.
Ekaterina Leksina, University of Warwick, mathematical biology.
Another zero lower bound prediction bites the dust
Popular New Keynesian macroeconomic models predict that cuts in various types of distortionary taxes are contractionary when monetary policy is constrained at the zero lower bound. We turn to a long span of history in the United Kingdom to test this hypothesis. Using a new long-run dataset of narrative-identified tax changes from 1918to 2020, we show that tax cuts are expansionary in both low interest rate environments and in more normal times. We also do not find evidence of a deflationary spiral in the response of inflation or real rates at the ZLB, suggesting a limited role for intertemporal substitution. We highlight a number of alternative mechanisms that can help rationalize our findings. Our results suggest that tax cuts may still be a useful tool to stimulate economic activity during periods when monetary policy is constrained.
That is from a recent paper by James Cloyne, Nicholas Dimsdale, and Patrick Hürtgen, forthcoming in the JPE.
With Russ Roberts, on Vassily Grossman
Russ tweets:
In about two months I will be discussing Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman with @tylercowen on our respective podcasts. Read along with us if you’d like. 872 pages so start soon. It starts slowly. Just gets better and better.
So what should Russ and I talk about, and here I am asking for Grossman-related queries and content only?
Friday assorted links
1. Why is India so bad at sport? (FT)
2. Review of Olivier Roy on culture.
3. Strong ratings for Reflection 70B, a new open source model.
5. I heard this song on satellite radio yesterday — does anyone still think about these guys?
6. When South Africa banned alcohol sales.
Why Don’t We Have Flying Cars?
In the 1970s the general aviation aircraft industry was selling 15,000 or more aircraft a year but that number fell by a factor of about 10 in the early 1980s. What happened? One factor was a massive increase in tort liability as discussed in my paper with Eric Helland, Product Liability and Moral Hazard: Evidence from General Aviation. Another factor was ever-increasing FAA regulation.
But Max Tabarrok raises an interesting puzzle. It’s not at all obvious that the regulation of personal aircraft has been more strict than that of automobiles. So why the big difference in outcomes? There is, however, one small but potentially very important difference between the regulation of cars and aircraft.
By far the costliest part of the FAA’s regulation is not any particular standard imposed on pilot training, liability, or aircraft safety, but a slight shift in the grammatical tense of all these rules. The Department of Transportation (DOT) sets strict safety requirements for cars, but manufacturers are allowed to release new designs without first getting the DOT to sign off that all the requirements have been satisfied. The law is enforced ex post, and the government will impose recalls and fines when manufacturers fail to follow the law.
The FAA, by contrast, enforces all of its safety rules ex ante. Before aircraft manufacturers can do anything with a design, they have to get the FAA’s signoff, which can take more than a decade. This regulatory approach also makes the FAA far more risk-averse, since any problems with an aircraft after release are blamed on the FAA’s failure to catch them. With ex post enforcement, the companies that failed to follow the law would be blamed, and the FAA rewarded, for enforcing recall.
This subtle difference in the ordering of legal enforcement is the major cause of the stagnation of aircraft design and manufacturing.
In some ways, this is an optimistic message, since it illuminates an attractive political compromise: keep all of the safety standards on airplanes exactly as they are, but enforce these standards like they’re enforced with cars—i.e., through post-market surveillance, recall, and punishment. This small change would reinvigorate the general aviation industry, putting it back on the exponential trend upwards that it lost 50 years ago.
Banning Airbnb in NYC
- NYC is now a more expensive destination for visitors:
- The average hotel prices in New York City rose 7.4 percent over the past year (July 2023 to July 2024), compared with an only 2.1 percent increase nationally, according to data from CoStar.
- Despite the law’s promise, rent hits an all-time high and vacancy rates stay stagnant:
- Legislators claimed the law would protect affordable housing, yet rent climbed 3.4 percent during the first 11 months the law was enacted, according to StreetEasy, suggesting that other factors are driving up rent prices.
- The median asking price of rent downtown Manhattan over the past year reached a peak of $5,000 USD for the first time in history.
- The rent increase in New York City since the law took effect continues to outpace nearby cities like Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
- Vacancy rates for apartments in New York City have remained virtually unchanged at 3.4 percent since the law took effect, according to Apartment List.
- New York City’s vacancy rates also continue to significantly lag behind Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C.
Here is the full Airbnb blog post.
How weird will AI culture get?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. Here is one excerpt:
To the extent there is a lot of slack [with cost and energy], AIs themselves will create wild products of the imagination, especially as they improve in computing power and skill. AIs will sing to each other, write for each other, talk to each other — as they already do — trade with each other, and come up with further alternatives we humans have not yet pondered. Evolutionary pressures within AI’s cultural worlds will determine which of these practices spread.
If you own some rights flows to AI usage, you might just turn them on and let them “do their thing.” Many people may give their AIs initial instructions for their culture-building: “Take your inspiration from 1960s hippies,” for example, or “try some Victorian poetry.” But most of the work will be done by the AIs themselves. It is easy to imagine how these productions might quickly become far more numerous than human-directed ones.
With a lot of slack, expect more movies and video, which consume a lot of computational energy. With less slack, text and poetry will be relatively cheaper and thus more plentiful.
In other words: In the not-too-distant future, what kind of culture the world produces could depend on the price of electricity.
It remains to be seen how much humans will be interested in these AI cultural productions. Perhaps some of them will fascinate us, but most are likely to bore us, just as few people sit around listening to whale songs. But even if the AI culture skeptics are largely correct, the sheer volume will make an impact, especially when combined with evolutionary refinement and more human-directed efforts. Humans may even like some of these productions, which will then be sold for a profit. That money could then be used to finance more AI cultural production, pushing the evolutionary process in a more popular direction.
With high energy prices, AI production will more likely fit into popular culture modes, if only to pay the bills. With lower energy prices, there will be more room for the avant-garde, for better or worse. Perhaps we would learn a lot more about the possibilities for 12-tone rows in music.
A weirder scenario is that AIs bid for the cultural products of humans, perhaps paying with crypto. But will they be able to tolerate our incessant noodling and narcissism? There might even be a columnist or two who makes a living writing for AIs, if only to give them a better idea what we humans are thinking.
The possibilities are limitless, and we are just beginning to wrap our minds around them. The truth is, we are on the verge of one of the most significant cultural revolutions the world has ever seen.
I urge the skeptics to wait and see. Of course most of it is going to be junk!
Los Angeles area meet-up for CWT fans
Here is the link, hope to see you there! October 16, and you do need to pre-register.
Thursday assorted links
1. “I’d like to see an AI future that focuses on what makes a great teaching interface, what makes users pay attention, and will make more people better learners. Until then, UATX is the only startup I see putting the human interface first.” Link here.
2. Indian student builds the world’s smallest vacuum cleaner, using a pen.
3. Why can’t the U.S. still build ships? This one is by Brian Potter, but I hope Noah’s practice of “keep on going and always get better” is an example to you all! Noah, like many of us, started off as “just some guy,” and now he is one of the most influential economics commentators.
4. Even for Oasis, supply is elastic (and we hope that holds up). And here is some more supply elasticity, there is more of this than many people realize. No update on this one is required from me, but many should update quite a bit.
*Self-Help is Like a Vaccine*, by Bryan Caplan
This is one of the best and most correct self-help books. Bryan describes it as follows:
I’ve been writing economically-inspired self-help essays for almost two decades, Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine compiles the most helpful 5-7% of my advice.
Of Bryan’s recent string of books, this is the one I agree with the most. Bryan offers some further description:
Like my other books of essays, Self-Help Is Like a Vaccine is divided into four parts.
- The first, “Unilateral Action,” argues that despite popular nay-saying and “Can’t-Do” mentalities, you have a vast menu of unexplored choices. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. While most “minorities of one” are fools, cautious experimentation and appreciation of good track records, not conformism, is the wise response.
- The next section, “Life Hacks,” offers a bunch of specific suggestions for improving your life. Only one hack has to work out to instantly justify your purchase of the book.
- “Professor Homeschool” brings together all of my best pieces on teaching my own kids. I have over a decade’s experience: I taught the twins for grades 7-12, all four kids for Covid, and my 10th-grader is working one room away from me as I write. Except during Covid, homeschooling is a fair bit of extra work, but if you’re still curious, I’ve got a pile of time-tested advice.
- I close the book with “How to Dale Carnegie.” As you may know, I’m a huge fan of his classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. Not because I’m naturally a people-pleaser; I’m not. But with Dale’s help, I have managed to make thousands of friends all over the planet. Few skills are more useful, both emotionally and materially.
You can buy the book here.
Solving for optimum U.S. fertility
In this post, we show that under the median estimated elasticity the socially optimal fertility rate is 2.4 in the US, well above today’s 1.7, given that the US should place a value of 14.28x GDP per additional birth ($1.17mn per birth). Furthermore, to achieve this, the US should be willing to spend the equivalent of 3.8% of its GDP ($290K per birth) per birth. For context, the existing child tax credit is worth $2000/year, or $26K present value. We’d like to stress that these figures are highly uncertain, because of both the varying welfare gain from more births, and also varying estimates of how effective subsidising births are. Even still, in the main case, the US government should seriously consider greatly increasing its child tax credits, and explore more creative and ambitious solutions to address this looming demographic crisis.
Here is more from Duncan McClements and Jason Hausenloy. Obviously various assumptions can be debated here…
My excellent Conversation with Philip Ball
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is part of the episode summary:
Tyler and Philip discuss how well scientists have stood up to power historically, the problematic pressures scientists feel within academia today, artificial wombs and the fertility crisis, the price of invisibility, the terrifying nature of outer space and Gothic cathedrals, the role Christianity played in the Scientific Revolution, what current myths may stick around forever, whether cells can be thought of as doing computation, the limitations of The Selfish Gene, whether the free energy principle can be usefully applied, the problem of microplastics gathering in testicles and other places, progress in science, his favorite science fiction, how to follow in his footsteps, and more.
Here is one excerpt, namely the opening bit:
TYLER COWEN: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I’ll be chatting with Philip Ball. I think of Philip this way. We’ve had over 200 guests on Conversations with Tyler, and I think three of them, so far, have shown they are able to answer any question I might plausibly throw their way. Philip, I believe, is number four. He’s a scientist with degrees in chemistry and physics. He’s written about 30 books on different sciences. Both he and I have lost count.
He was an editor at Nature for about 20 years. His books cover such diverse topics as chemistry, physics, the history of experiments, social science, color, the elements, water, water in China, Chartres Cathedral, music, and more. But most notably, he has a new book out this year, a major work called How Life Works: A User’s Guide to the New Biology. Philip, welcome.
PHILIP BALL: Thank you, Tyler. Lovely to be here.
COWEN: What is the situation in history where scientists have most effectively stood up to power, not counting Jewish scientists, say, leaving Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union?
BALL: Gosh, now there’s a question to start with. Where they have most effectively stood up to power — this is a question that I looked at in a book (it must be about 10 years old now) which looked at the response of German physicists during the Nazi era to that regime. I’m afraid my conclusion was, the response was really not very impressive at all.
On the whole, the scientists acquiesced to what the regime wanted them to do. Very few of them were actively sympathetic to the Nazi party, but they mounted no real effective opposition whatsoever. I’m afraid that looking at that as a case study, really, made me realize that it’s actually very hard to find any time in history where scientists have actively mounted an effective opposition to that kind of imposition of some kind of ideology, or political power, or whatever. History doesn’t give us a very encouraging view of that.
That said, I think it’s fair to say, science is doing better these days. I think there’s a recognition that at an institutional level, science needs to be able to mobilize its resources when it’s threatened in this way. I think we’re starting to see that, certainly, with climate change. Scientists have come under fire a huge amount in that arena. I think there’s more institutional understanding of what to do about that. Scientists aren’t being so much left to their own devices to cope as best they can individually.
But I think that there’s this attitude that is still somewhat prevalent within science, that’s a bit like, “We’re above that.” This is exactly what some of the German physicists, particularly Werner Heisenberg, said during the Nazi regime, that science is somehow operating in a purer sphere, and that it’s removed from all the nastiness and the dirtiness that goes on in the political arena.
I think that that attitude hasn’t gone completely, but I think it needs to go. I think scientists need to get real, really, about the fact that they are working within a social and political context that they have to be able to work with, and to be able to — when the occasion demands it — take some control of, and not simply be pushed around by.
That, I think, is something that can only happen when there are institutional structures to allow it to happen, so that scientists are not left to their own individual devices and their own individual sense of morality to do something about it. I’m hoping that science will do better in the future than it’s done in the past.
COWEN: Which do you think are the power structures today that current scientists, say in the Anglo world, are most in thrall to?
Recommended, there are numerous topics of interest. I also asked GPT how much money it could earn if it had the powers of Wells’s Invisible Man.
Cosmos Institute
Announced today, here is the website: “A network of thinkers and builders advancing human flourishing in the AI era.”
Here is a tweet storm from Brendan McCord. Here is the video and Substack post.
Wednesday assorted links
1. Nabeel Qureshi on adapting to the AI revolution.
2. Patrick Wolff on San Francisco YIMBY.
4. Rothko Chapel in Houston to close indefinitely, and the Pergamon Museum in Berlin may not reopen until 2043. We are a bit asleep on some of these heritage issues. Low-quality institutions are not merely a cause of stasis, rather decline sets in at some point. I know the Rothko piece cites “climate change,” and while that is a real problem, isn’t that, in this context, simply a shorthand for “we ran out of money”?
Here is the link.