~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (546)

A Bloomberg profile of the excellent Steve Davis: Elon Musk’s deputy Steve Davis has spent more than 20 years helping the billionaire cut costs at businesses like SpaceX, the Boring Company and Twitter ….[now] Davis is helping recruit staff at DOGE, Musk’s effort to reduce government waste, in addition to his day job as president […] The post Steve Davis, Elon Musk’s Go-To Cost-Cutter...

An excellent appreciation, might this be the best thing written on him?  Here is one excerpt: It is hard to explain the aura of Zakir to someone who has not sat in the audience and felt it. You can try to break it down—rationalists will call it genius, the sort of brilliance that defies analysis. […] The post Shruti pays tribute to Zakir Hussain...

AI will know almost all of the academic literature, and will be better at modeling and solving most of the quantitative problems.  It will be better at specifying the model and running through the actual statistical exercises.  Humans likely will oversee these functions, but most of that will consist of nodding, or trying out some […] The post The future of the scientist in...

I am sad to hear about the passing of Manmohan Singh at age 92. Singh was perhaps the most influential Indian policymaker in the last five decades.  An Oxbridge educated trade economist, he became India’s most important technocrat in the 1980s and 1990s – occupying every top position in economic policy –  finance secretary; deputy […] The post Manmohan Singh, RIP appeared first on...

1. Why didn’t we get Ozempic sooner? (NYT) 2. An episode of the Aarthi and Sriram podcast. 3. David Cramer has questions for me.  Lots of them. 4. China fact of the day so much of the stimulus is in fact bank recapitalization. 5. The torture of an unphilosophical life. 6. Dean Ball on the […] The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on...

Very well done. The post Full-length documentary on the life and legacy of Rene Girard appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesJefferson’s DOGE (that was then, this is now)Incarceration sentences to ponder*TheTriumph of Politics* 

The FDA under President Trump and new FDA head Martin Makary should rapidly reverse the FDA’s powergrab on laboratory developed tests. To recap, laboratory developed tests (LDTs) are the kind your doctor orders, they are a service not a product and are not sold directly to patients. Congress has never given the FDA the authority […] The post The New FDA and the Regulation...

Here is the audio, video, and transcript.  Here is a short summary: On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year in the show and more, including covering the most popular and underrated episodes, fielding listener questions, reviewing Tyler’s pop culture picks from 2014, mulling over ideas for […] The post Year-end CWT episode with Jeff Holmes...

To track academic writing over time, The Economist analysed 347,000 PhD abstracts published between 1812 and 2023. The dataset was produced by the British Library and represents a majority of English-language doctoral theses awarded by British universities. We reviewed each abstract using the Flesch reading-ease test, which measures sentence and word length to gauge readability. A score of 100 roughly […] The post Is academic writing getting harder to...

1. AI and management tips. 2. What Sam Enright has been reading. 3. The usefulness of AI hallucinations (NYT). 4. Michael Brendan Dougherty on his ideological migration. 5. o3 and its perception abilities. 6. Ezra Klein on stuff (NYT). 7. Richard Perry, RIP (NYT). 8. The history of FRED (NYT). 9. This Little Babe. The post Christmas assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.        ...

Wishing all our readers a wonderful day and New Year! The post Merry Christmas! appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesJefferson’s DOGE (that was then, this is now)Stephan Miran nominated to head the CEAIs Indian food the world’s best? 

The post Merry Christmas from Spinoza! appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesRecreating the past isn’t easy (but is possible)My Conversation with the excellent Paula Byrne*A Boy’s Own Story* 

Recommended, interesting and humorous throughout. The post Dwarkesh Patel interviews me at the Progress Studies conference appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesThe new o3 model from OpenAIWhy you should be talking with gpt about philosophyThe epistemics of drone incursions 

No huge surprises here, but it is getting worse yet: Official statistics show Germany’s birth rate fell to 1.35 children per woman in 2023, below the UN’s “ultra-low” threshold of 1.4 — characterising a scenario where falling birth rates become tough to reverse. Estonia and Austria also passed under the 1.4 threshold, joining the nine […] The post EU facts of the day appeared...

1. Why is Trieste doing such a good job at mental health services? (FT) 2. We are losing squirrel mobility.  However Austan Goolsbee cautions us. 3. Claude analyzes this year’s CWTs. 4. More on the new Kiwi cosmology claims. 5. The economics of the Panama Canal. 6. Do all NBA teams play the same way? […] The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on...

o1 and o1-pro are a cut above other models at economic history writing. they can combine knowledge of historical facts with economic analysis in a *much* more creative and cogent way than earlier models. it’s not just math and code, folks. Here is the link. The post Dean Ball speaks appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesArtificial Intelligence in the Knowledge EconomyThe importance...

Emily Nussbaum, Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV.  Despite its excellent reviews, I resisted buying this book for a while, because most books on TV are not good.  It is intrinsically difficult to write about the medium, and also many of the people who want to just aren’t that smart.  But the Nussbaum […] The post What I’ve been reading appeared first...

We quantify the aggregate, regional and sectoral impacts of transportation productivity growth on the US economy over the period 1947-2017. Using a multi-region, multi-sector model that explicitly captures produced transportation services as a key input to interregional trade, we find that the calibrated change in transportation productivity had a sizable impact on aggregate welfare, magnified […] The post The importance of transportation for productivity...

New claims about cosmology.  Paper here.  Big if true.  It seems the key innovation is to make time pass at varying speeds in different parts of the galaxy? The post New claims about cosmology appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesJefferson’s DOGE (that was then, this is now)The show so far, DOGE editionIncarceration sentences to ponder 

1. The World Bank is backing mega-dams again. 2. Good review of the new McCartney biography. 3. Syllabi of great stuff. 4. Pick-up truck as Pakistani status symbol. 5. “We’re building Retainit, an AI-powered game for the podcasts you’re already listening to. We’d love to hear whether CWT listeners enjoy this AI-hosted game show for the […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

Yes, I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Here is from Wikipedia: Joe Boyd (born August 5, 1942) is an American record producer and writer. He formerly owned Hannibal Records. Boyd has worked on recordings of Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, R.E.M., Vashti Bunyan, John and Beverley Martyn, Maria Muldaur, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Billy Bragg, James Booker, 10,000 Maniacs, and Muzsikás. He was also one […] The post What should I ask Joe Boyd?...

Jefferson swiftly undid twelve years of Federalism.  He allowed the Sedition Act to expire and adopted a more catholic naturalization law.  He reduced the federal bureaucracy — small even by today’s standards — particularly in the Treasury Department (a slap at Hamilton, who had been Secretary under Washington), slashing the number of employees by 40 […] The post Jefferson’s DOGE (that was then, this...

By A.N. Wilson, an excellent book and worthy of being addended to the year’s best non-fiction list.  In addition to appreciating the work of Goethe, which one can never do enough of, Wilson argues (with reasonable evidence) that Goethe was bisexual, including with Jacobi (!).  Goethe also had, at the very least, alcoholic tendencies, at […] The post *Goethe: A Faustian Life* appeared first...

Here is Stephen on Twitter, Harvard PhD, mostly he has been in the private sector.  The NYT has further information. Via Jon Hartley. The post Stephen Miran nominated to head the CEA appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsCommentsRelated StoriesArtificial Intelligence in the Knowledge EconomyThe show so far, DOGE editionAI is Not Slowing Down, Except for Stop Lights