Results for “YouTube”
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Wednesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. The Frick Museum will reopen with 14 (!) evening bars.

2. Sebastian Barry in conversation with Roy Foster.

3. On ideological gender disparities in Korea.

4. Those new service sector jobs, What is Intervenor Compensation?, and “robot wranglers” (WSJ).

5. Is Petro stifled in Colombia?

6. Further fresh Vitalik.  Includes coverage of his childhood, more personal than about mechanism design.

7. Is there really a “National Hug an Economist Day”?

8. Other than this tweet, I know nothing about the new Catholic Institute of Technology.

Quick tour of Argentina’s fiscal deficit (from my email, anonymous author)

by  Tyler Cowen in

I won’t double indent, but this is not by me, though I agree with it:

“I agree with your read re Argentina’s history of fiscal stability. From this paper (unclear if the data is accurate), here is Argentina’s deficit from 1960 to 2016 or so:

[See Figure 3 here]

Notice 2003-2009 is the only time with a noticeable superavit (exports > imports, taxes > spending), which coincides with Kirchner. It happily coincided with booming soy prices and it was immediately followed by more public spending. Remember soy exports have their own special tax rate (retenciones + FX tax, ~double other exports). Here are soy prices (source):

[See Figure here]

Here is Carlos Pagni in 2009 covering the law that let the state spend as much as it pleased once again. This was only a few years after 2004, when the IMF had forced Argentina to pass Ley 25.917 constraining government spending and debt under GDP.

Also notice that the deficit continued after the hyperinflation of 1989-1990! Between the privatizations, Plan Bonex, and reduced social spending, Menem reduced inflation (and caused a recession for which he is resented to this day). Then Cavallo comes in with convertibilidad. This gets world bankers excited and the dollars start flowing back into Argentina but the fiscal deficit immediately resumes. That same Menem ran an ad campaign in 1999 partially based on infrastructure investments after his decade of deficit.

In other words, the Peronistas simply do not believe that too much spending leads to a crisis. They will always spend if allowed to. Argentina still lacks the institutions to prevent this.

Looking at the recent history of fiscal deficit, Milei can make two contributions:

Short-term: Cut spending before things explode. The Peronistas would’ve continued to print + spend, deepening the problems. Milei is already succeeding at this and will likely succeed while he remains in power. For example, he has cut some of the funding to the provinces, which will be forced to cut their spending. Some of them are already considering printing their own currency (paper bonds like the LECOP or Patacones from 2001). 

Long-term: Prevent future spending. This is what the Libertarians promise: remove the people that spend us to the ground for good. We should measure “historical success” by this measure. This is why dollarization is attractive: it prevents the state from printing money to fund its deficit. 

I have my hopes up but I don’t understand Argentinian institutions or history well enough to know if he can make progress on this. As a comparison, the Bank of England was founded in 1694 and became formally independent a few centuries later in 1997 (including an IMF intervention into fiscal spending as recent as 1976).”

How is AI education going to work?

by  Tyler Cowen in

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is the first part of the argument:

Two kinds of AI-driven education are likely to take off, and they will have very different effects. Both approaches have real promise, but neither will make everyone happy.

The first category will resemble learning platforms such as Khan Academy, Duolingo, GPT-4, and many other services. Over time, these sources will become more multimedia, quicker in response, deeper in their answers, and better at in creating quizzes, exercises and other feedback. For those with a highly individualized learning style — preferring videos to text, say, or wanting lessons slower or faster — the AIs will oblige. The price will be relatively low; Khan Academy currently is free and GPT-4 costs $20 a month, and those markets will become more competitive.

For those who want it, they will be able to access a kind of universal tutor as envisioned by Neal Stephenson in his novel The Diamond Age. But how many people will really want to go this route? My guess is that it will be a clear minority of the population, well below 50%, whether at younger or older age groups…

Chatbots will probably make education more fun, but for most people there is a limit to just how fun instruction can be.

And the second part:

There is, however, another way AI education could go — and it may end up far more widespread, even if it makes some people uneasy. Imagine a chatbot programmed to be your child’s friend. It would be exactly the kind of friend your kid wants, even (you hope) the kind of friend your kid needs. Your child might talk with this chatbot for hours each day.

Over time, these chatbots would indeed teach children valuable things, including about math and science. But it would happen slowly, subtly. When I was in high school, I had two close (human) friends with whom I often talked economics. We learned a lot from each other, but we were friends first and foremost, and the conversations grew out of that. As it turns out, all three of us ended up becoming professional economists.

This could be the path the most popular and effective AI chatbots follow: the “friendship first” model. Under that scenario, an AI chatbot doesn’t have to be more fun than spending time with friends, because it is itself a kind of friend. Through a kind of osmosis, the child could grow interested in some topics raised by the AI chatbot, and the chatbot could feed the child more information and inspiration in those areas. But friendship would still come first.

Worth a ponder.

Tyler Cowen on Undertone podcast

by  Tyler Cowen in

Dan Schulz is a very good interviewer.

Tuesday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. My Feb.21 Arsht Center live event with Peter Thiel, “Political Theology,” register here.

2. One account of Russia’s game-theoretic strategy to come (speculative).

3. “Yemen now has more births per year than Russia, far more than Germany or Japan. In a few decades it must end up with a larger population than Russia. The future is Yemeni.”  Tweet here.

4. Taiwanese short stories.

5. Patrick Luciani reviews GOAT.

6. “The Indianapolis airport actually installed a full-length basketball court in the terminal in honor of NBA All-Star.”

7. Short interview with Paul McCartney’s school teacher (1965 video).  Of course he sees Paul as a regional thinker.

Saturday assorted links

by  Tyler Cowen

1. Why do women travel more than men?

2. Gates and Altman play Desert Island Discs (short YouTube).

3. Try not to let moose lick your car (Canada).

4. Luring top scientists out of universities (NYT).

5. AI will underwhelm, and a six-month pause?  And it’s time to learn something serious about private equity.  Adam is right throughout.

6. “30% or Portuguese people between the ages of 15 and 39 have left the country.”

7. Ho hum.  I’ve been watching the other post-briefing interviews as well.

Is Tom Cruise actor GOAT?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Yes says I, and here is Wikipedia for reference.  Adam Ozimek (from my email) agrees:

Rewatching Oblivion tonight and it really holds up. Cinematography and CGI that hasn’t aged at all. And Edge of Tomorrow is a sci fi classic for the ages now, made when he was 52.

Those metacritic scores on the recent Mission Impossible films and Top Gun are extraordinary for action blockbusters.

The Scientology stuff is not great for society, but the man tried to and maybe did save movie theaters. And don’t forget this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2021/05/11/tom-cruise-stands-his-expletive-laden-m-i-7-rant-over-covid-19/5041447001/

And no he hasn’t done a Rain Man style serious role in a while, but he’s shown plenty of range. Did you know how much of his tropic thunder character was his idea? https://youtu.be/a3fKXBNufy4?si=M4YPtGx8PJTHREB3

GOAT I say

Fair enough.  I would start with Risky Business, from 1982, which is genuinely funny and vital and which few other actor GOAT contenders can match.  A Few Good Men and Interview the Vampire I also find to his credit, all from the first decade of what is (so far) five (!) decades of being a dominant force in Hollywood.  Sadly, Jerry McGuire, like Rain Man, turns me off.

Perhaps Magnolia and Eyes Wide Shut are his finest achievements?  In any case they show he has a strong presence in art house cinema as well.  Minority Report is seminal and Vanilla Sky has a McCartney song in the soundtrack.

Cruise has worked with top directors, including Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann and John Woo.  He makes creative decisions in his movies as well.  Cruise has won plenty of awards, has longevity and variety in his repertoire, and still is important for pulling in the gross.  He has done many of his own stunts, even at advanced ages.  He also has married three actresses — Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes.  He has dated Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca De Mornay, Patti Scialfa, and Cher, among others.

One of Cruise’s co-stars, Emily Blunt, described him as “insatiably positive.”

Is he “the last great movie star“?  As Hegel once said, the owl of Minerva flies at dusk.

Addendum:

Harrison Ford seems to be the only serious competitor?  Cary Grant is a bit too tall, wooden, and British to win, but maybe he comes in third?  Jimmy Stewart didn’t have enough dramatic range.  Clint Eastwood is amazing, but somehow too much a self-contained bubble?  Rock Hudson has degenerated into “Straussian value” in too many of his movies.  Who else?

My pick for the best movie of the year, in which I share a bill with Kevin Spacey

by  Tyler Cowen in

Tyler Cowen, economist and author of Marginal Revolutions

May December

I found May December to be the most interesting movie of the year. It examines deep questions about who envies whom, what a meaningful life consists of, what about possession is satisfying, art versus artifice, the nature of celebrity, and how hard it is to live without worrying about what other people think. The stars are Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, and the director is Todd Haynes. The plotline (these are not spoilers) is that a grown woman had sex with a male seventh-grader, was sent to prison, and later ends up marrying him and having his children. Natalie Portman plays the role of a well-known actress who comes by to learn their story, so that she may better play the woman in a movie. The biggest cinematic influence is perhaps Bergman’s Persona, as we increasingly see different ways in which the two women are parallel or “twinned” in their stories. The movie poster reflects this. The highlight is when Natalie Portman explains to a group of teenagers what it is like to do a sex scene in a movie. In an era where Hollywood is supposed to be stale, this one resets the clock.

From The Spectator, there are many other (lesser) picks as well.

Mark Skousen reviews *GOAT*

by  Tyler Cowen in

An excellent review, here is one excerpt:

Oddly enough he leaves out several economists who many consider possible GOATs: From the British school, David Ricardo (Milton Friedman’s favorite); from the Monetarists, Irving Fisher (whom James Tobin ranked “the greatest economist America has produced”); from the Austrians, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard (which the Mises Institute would consider leaving out unforgiveable); from the Institutionalists, Thorstein Veblen (who Max Lerner called “the most creative American social thought has produced”) and Max Weber (the “one man” that Frank Knight admired); and from the Marxists, Karl Marx (which they would consider his omission a cardinal sin). Cowen tells me he may write a short monograph on Marx (email dated November 22, 2023).

He also excluded the big three of the Marginal Revolution of the 1870s: Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Leon Walras.

Do read the whole thing, and note I may write more on the Marginal Revolution as well, the revolution that is not the blog!

And here is Mark’s daughter, doing a skating back flip on ice.

Why is the quality of recorded classical music so rising? (from my email)

by  Tyler Cowen in

…hypotheses as to why we are blessed with the avalanche of fine new young musicians:

1. (I feel the evidence for this one is conclusive) Technology (e.g. YouTube) allows young musicians anywhere in the world to see what the world standard is. If you see someone performing at skill level X, which years ago you would have dismissed as out of reach, you know you, too, may be able to do it.  The bar has been raised. Members of the LA Phil famously declared Boulez’s music “unplayable” a few decades back. Now it is standard repertoire. The global standard is now local, and musicians rise to the challenge.

2. (I feel the evidence for this one is less conclusive, but still strong.)  The increasing pervasiveness of pedagogy. Decades ago, one assumed that the best teacher of violin playing (e.g.) was a great violinist. This is like assuming the best coach of running backs is a great running back. Over time, while the “exposure to a great player” tradition is still strong, a parallel tradition of “exposure to a great teacher” has emerged. These teachers understand biomechanics, clarity of terms in instruction, technical developments, etc. See e.g. Paul Rolland (RIP), another one of the Hungarian exiles, whose string teaching method is superb but who personally was not a major performer.

From anonymous, someone in the world of classical music…