Some reasons why I do not cover various topics much
1. I feel that writing about the topic will make me stupider.
2. I believe that you reading more about the topic will make you stupider.
3. I believe that performative outrage usually brings low or negative returns. Matt Yglesias has had some good writing on this lately.
4. I don’t have anything to add on the topic. Abortion and the Middle East would be two examples here.
5. Sometimes I have good inside information on a topic, but I cannot reveal it, not even without attribution. And I don’t want to write something stupider than my best understanding of the topic.
6,. I just don’t feel like it.
7. On a few topics I feel it is Alex’s province.
Addendum: Pearl, in the comments, adds an excellent #8: “8. Choosing sides in these debates would reduce my overall influence and access to new information”
Personality traits and gender gaps
This paper examines the effects of the Big Five personality traits on labor market outcomes and gender wage gaps using a job search and bargaining model with parameters that vary at the individual level. The analysis, based on German panel data, reveals that both cognitive and noncognitive traits significantly influence wages and employment outcomes. Higher conscientiousness and emotional stability and lower agreeableness levels enhance earnings and job stability for both genders. Differences in the distributions of personality characteristics between men and women account for as much of the gender wage gap as do the large differences in labor market experience.
That is from German data, published in the JPE by Christopher J. Flinn, Petra E. Todd, and Weilong Zhang.
Saturday assorted links
2. Writing for the AI is paying off.
3. You’ve quoted Gerhard Richter as saying that a good picture “takes away our certainty,” and suggested (Philip Guston) that doing so enables us to “begin to see the push and pull of impulse, recanting, and reconfiguration that constitute painting and, by extension, life itself.” From Prudence Crowther.
4. Details on DOGE history (NYT).
5. Anthropic wants someone to write on the economic effects of AI.
6. “Access to legal status reduces the probability of immigrants intermarrying with natives by 40% and increases the hazard rate of separation for intermarriages by 20%.” USA data — incentives matter!
USA fact of the day
After years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has been stable for several years, a shift fueled in part by young adults, according to a major new survey from the Pew Research Center. And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, which had grown steadily for years, has also leveled off.
Here is more from the NYT. The youngest cohort does not seem to be declining in religiosity (unlike earlier generational shifts), and for that youngest cohort the gender gap in religiousity basically has disappeared.
The Economist 1843 magazine does a profile of me
I believe you can get through the gate by registering. A very good and accurate piece, first-rate photos as well, including of Spinoza too, here is the link. Here is one excerpt:
I asked Cowen – it is the kind of question you come to ask him – what were the criteria for a perfect Central American square. He began plucking details from the scene around us. Music, trees, a church, a fountain, children playing. “Good balloons,” he noted, looking approvingly at a balloon seller. I genuinely couldn’t tell whether he was extemporising from the available details, or indexing what he saw against a pre-existing model of what the ideal square should look like.
And:
When he told me he had never been depressed, I asked him to clarify what he meant. He had never been clinically depressed? Depressed for a month? For a week? An afternoon? I looked up from my notebook. An enormous smile, one I’d not seen before, had spread across the whole of Cowen’s face.
“Like, for a whole afternoon?” he asked, hugely grinning.
Here is the closing bit, taken from when the reporter (John Phipps) and I were together in Roatan:
As we came back to shore, Cowen smiled at the unremarkable, deserted village. “I’m long Jonesville,” he said warmly. (He often speaks about places and people as though they were stocks you could go long or short on.) I asked him if he would think about investing in property here. He shrugged as if to say “why bother?”
The cab had begun to grind its way up towards the brow of a hill with audible, Sisyphean difficulty. I mumbled something about whether we were going to have to get out. “We’ll make it,” Cowen said firmly. He was talking about how he liked to play basketball at a court near his house. He didn’t mind playing with other people, but most days he was the only person there. He’d been doing this for two decades now; it was an efficient form of exercise; the weather was mostly good. I asked him what he’d learned playing basketball alone for decades. “That you can do something for a long time and still not be very good at it,” he said. The car began to roll downhill.
Self-recommending, and with some significant cameos, most of all Alex T. and also Spinoza.
Friday assorted links
1. Insightful Bob McGrew tweet on GPT 4.5. And Andrej. My remark from a group chat: “I am more positive on 4.5 than almost anyone else I have read. I view it as a model that attempts to improve on the dimension of aesthetics only. As we know from Kant’s third Critique, that is about the hardest achievement possible. I think once combined with “reasoning” it will be amazing. Think of this as just one input in a nearly fixed proportions production function.”
3. Hot hand in Jeopardy betting?
4. “We’re seeing an AI boom on Stripe.”
5. The pandemic drove a dating recession.
A $5 million gold card for immigrants?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
As usual, however, the devil is in the details. There is a good chance Trump’s proposal could work out well — and a chance it could severely damage the nation.
One worry is selection effects. The $5 million fee means the program would skew toward older people, and would probably also skew somewhat male. Neither of those biases is a problem if other methods of establishing residence remain robust. But will they?
With a gold card program, the government would have a financial incentive to limit other ways of establishing residency. You can get an O-1 visa or an H-1B, for instance, if you have a strong record of accomplishment or an interested employer with a proper priority and perhaps some luck. Neither of those options cost anything close to $5 million, even with legal fees. Not everyone with a spare $5 million can get an O-1, or a proper job offer, but still: At the margin, these options would compete with each other.
These other options are well-suited for getting young, talented people into the US, which is precisely the weakness of the gold card proposal. Ideally the US would expand these other paths, but with a gold card program they might be narrowed so the government can reap more revenue from sales of gold cards.
I favor the idea in principle, but am worried it might be part of a broader package to tighten immigration more generally.
Matt Yglesias on morality
I do broadly align with utilitarian/consequentialist ideas, and I particularly like the formulation Richard Y Chappell calls Beneficentrism, which is simply the claim that one very important thing in life is to try to help others, including those who are very different or distant from ourselves.
I think that in that formulation, you address in one fell swoop 95 percent of what trips people up about utilitarianism. You can take special care of your friends and family. You can care more about citizens of your country than you care about people on the other side of the world. But you should care some about the general welfare. This is in fact pretty important and you should be doing something about it. How much? Probably more than you are doing. Probably more than I am doing.
Here is the full (gated) post, mostly about other matters.
Can Enhanced Street Lighting Improve Public Safety at Scale?
Street lighting is often believed to influence street crime, but most prior studies have examined small-scale interventions in limited areas. The effect of large-scale lighting enhancements on public safety remains uncertain. This study evaluates the impact of Philadelphia’s citywide rollout of enhanced street lighting, which began in August 2023. Over 10 months, 34,374 streetlights were upgraded across 13,275 street segments, converting roughly one-third of the city’s street segments to new LED fixtures that provide clearer and more even illumination. We assess the effect of these upgrades on total crime, violent crime, property crime, and nuisance crime. Results show a 15% decline in outdoor nighttime street crimes and a 21% reduction in outdoor nighttime gun violence following the streetlight upgrades. The upgrades may account for approximately 5% of the citywide reduction in gun violence during this period, or about one sixth of the 31% citywide decline. Qualitative data further suggests that residents’ perceptions of safety and neighborhood vitality improved following the installation of new streetlights. Our study demonstrates that large-scale streetlight upgrades can lead to significant reductions in crime rates across urban areas, supporting the use of energy-efficient LED lighting as a crime reduction strategy. These findings suggest that other cities should consider similar lighting interventions as part of their crime prevention efforts. Further research is needed to explore the impact of enhanced streetlight interventions on other types of crime and to determine whether the crime-reduction benefits are sustained when these upgrades are implemented across the entire City of Philadelphia for extended periods.
That is from a new paper by John M. Macdonald, et.al. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Boris Spassky, RIP
In Leningrad’s embrace, midwinter’s chill, A prodigy was born with iron will. The chessboard’s call, a siren to his mind, Young Boris Spassky left his peers behind.
A crown he claimed in nineteen sixty-nine, Against Petrosian’s force, his star did shine. Yet Reykjavik’s cold winds would soon conspire, With Fischer’s challenge, stoking global fire.
The “Match of Century,” where East met West, Two minds engaged in psychological test. Though Spassky yielded, grace he did display, Applauding Fischer’s genius in the fray.
Beyond the board, his life took varied course, From Soviet roots to seeking new resource. In France he found a refuge, fresh terrain, Yet ties to Mother Russia would remain.
A “one-legged dissident,” some would declare, Not fully here nor there, a soul aware. Through Cold War’s tension, politics entwined, He stood apart, a free and thoughtful mind.
His games, a blend of strategy and art, Reflect the depth and courage of his heart. Now as we mourn his final checkmate’s fall, His legacy inspires players all.
Rest, Grandmaster, your battles now complete, Your journey etched where history and chess compete.
That is a tribute poem from GPT 4.5
The uneven spread of AI
This paper examines the spatial and temporal dynamics of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption in the United States, leveraging county-level data on AI-related job postings from 2014 to 2023. We document significant variation in AI intensity across counties with tech hubs like Santa Clara, CA, leading in adoption, but rapid growth occurring in unexpected, suburban, and remote-friendly areas such as Maries, MO, and Hughes, SD, particularly following the lockdown era. Controlling for county and year fixed effects, we find that higher shares of STEM degrees, labor market tightness, and patent activity are key drivers of AI adoption, while manufacturing intensity and turnover rates hinder growth. Our results point to the uneven distribution of AI’s economic benefits and the critical role of local education, innovation, and labor market dynamics in shaping adoption patterns. Furthermore, they suggest the potential of place-based policies to attract AI talent and investments, providing actionable insights for policymakers aiming to bridge regional disparities in AI-driven economic growth.
That is from a new paper by Eleftherios Andreadis,Manolis Chatzikonstantinou, Elena Kalotychou, Christodoulos Louca and Christos Makridis. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Thursday assorted links
1. Paul McCartney will be publishing a history of Wings.
3. Dean Karlan resigns from US AID, and tells his side of the story.
4. AIs are turning some people sane.
5. David Perell + Dana Gioia, three hour conversation on writing.
6. Tax increase pending on Harvard?
7. New set of NBER economics papers on AI and economics.
8. “chinese cars cost less than renewing the registration of my car in the us” — China estimate of the day. And DeepSeek is spreading throughout China (FT).
The Trump Administration’s Attack on Science Will Backfire
The Trump administration is targeting universities for embracing racist and woke ideologies, but its aim is off. The problem is that the disciplines leading the woke charge—English, history, and sociology—don’t receive much government funding. So the administration is going after science funding, particularly the so-called “overhead” costs that support university research. This will backfire for four reasons.
First, the Trump administration appears to believe that reducing overhead payments will financially weaken the ideological forces in universities. But in reality, science overhead doesn’t support the humanities or social sciences in any meaningful way. The way universities are organized, science funding mostly stays within the College of Science to pay for lab space, research infrastructure, and scientific equipment. Cutting these funds won’t defund woke ideology—it will defund physics labs, biomedical research, and engineering departments. The humanities will remain relatively untouched.
Second, science funding supports valuable research, from combating antibiotic resistance to curing cancer to creating new materials. Not all funded projects are useful, but the returns to R&D are high. If we err it is in funding too little rather than too much. The US is a warfare-welfare state when it should be an innovation state. If you want to reform education, repeal the Biden student loan programs that tax mechanical engineers and subsidize drama majors.
Third, if government science funding subsidizes anyone, it’s American firms. Universities are the training grounds for engineers and scientists, most of whom go on to work for U.S. companies. Undermining science funding weakens this pipeline, ultimately harming American firms rather than striking a blow at wokeness. One of the biggest failings of the Biden administration were its attacks on America’s high-tech entrepreneurial firms. Why go after Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta when these are among our best, world-beating firms? But you know what other American sector is world-beating? American universities. The linkage is no accident.
Fourth, scientists are among the least woke academics. Most steer clear of activism, and many view leftist campus culture with skepticism. The STEM fields are highly meritocratic and reality-driven. By undermining science, the administration is weakening one of America’s leading meritocratic sectors. The long run implications of weakening meritocracy are not good. Solve for the equilibrium.
In short, going after science funding is a self-defeating strategy. If conservatives want to reform higher education, they need a smarter approach.
Hat tip: Connor.
What I’ve been reading
Alain Mabanckou, Dealing with the Dead. Most African fiction does not connect with me, and there is a tendency for the reviews to be untrustworthy. This “cemetery memoir,” from the Congo (via UCLA), connected with me and held my interest throughout.
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. I was in the mood of thinking I don’t need to read another book about these people. Yet this one was so good it won me over nonetheless.
Eddie Huffman, Doc Watson: A Life in Music. A fun book about one of America’s greatest guitarists. Watson was blind from an early age, and he was collecting state disability benefits until he was 40 — a classic late bloomer.
Philip Freeman, In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor. Call me crazy, but I think Sun Ra and Taylor are better and more important musically than say Duke Ellington. Freeman’s book is the first full-length biography of Taylor, and it is well-informed and properly appreciative. It induced me to buy another book by him. The evening I saw Taylor was one of the greatest of my life, I thank my mother for coming with me.
Carlos M.N. Eire, They Flew: A History of the Impossible. Ross Douthat recommended this one to me. It is well done, and worth reading, but I don’t find it shifted my priors on whether “impossible” events might have really happened.
I agree with the central arguments of Samir Varma’s The Science of Free Will: How Determinism Affects Everything from the Future of AI to Traffic to God to Bees. I was happy to write a foreword for the book.
Kathleen deLaski, Who Needs College Anymore? Imagining a Future Where Degrees Don’t Matter. One of a growing chorus of books suggesting higher education is on the verge of some radical changes.
There is Daniel Brook, The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld Visionary of Weimar Berlin. It is good to see him getting more attention.
There is also Brandy Schillace, The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story.
Nick Freiling asks
Across all of history, which human being has been seen, in-person, by the greatest number of people?
Pope John Paul II? Mick Jagger? A baseball player with extreme longevity? (Cal Ripken?) Here is o1 pro, top guess is PJPII.