~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (560)

A fun book, I enjoyed the read.  Here is one bit: There is another contribution to my productivity.  While sitting at my desk at home doing physics or preparing classes, or doing some science writing, I picked up the habit of watching classic movies or the History Channel on television.  My TV is always turned […] The post *Steven Weinberg: A Life in Physics*...

Germany has lost almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs since the start of the Covid pandemic as companies and politicians sound the alarm that Europe’s industrial heartland is suffering an irreversible decline… The contraction of Germany’s industry is evident in the fall of market value in the sector. Together, Dax constituents Volkswagen, Thyssenkrupp […] The post Germany facts of the day appeared...

Scientific projects that carry a high degree of risk may be more likely to lead to breakthroughs yet also face challenges in winning the support necessary to be carried out. We analyze the determinants of renewal for more than 100,000 R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health between 1980 and 2015. We use four […] The post Does Peer Review Penalize Scientific Risk...

1. Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Bans are life-enhancing for the blind (WSJ). 2. Removal of all NEPA regulations? 3. New betting odds for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire. 4. Capybaras face vasectomies. 5. Stock market data for Estonia. 6. Andrej on Grok 3.  And Ethan Mollick.  So far I like it. The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments# 2…Good idea to reform government,...

A very good dialogue, here is the YouTube: Johnathan discusses it here on Twitter, plus it is on all the usual podcast services.  This is an inaugural video for the Cosmos Institute, other people will follow in the series. The post Talking with Johnathan Bi about AI appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI'm totally prepared for hearing gasbags blow wind about the ......

My three-part essay for Liberty Fund continues, here is the opener: In the previous article, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer’s epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I also noted that what most strikes me about The Odyssey is Homer’s treatment of comparative political regimes. Looking at the wide variety of regimes Odysseus encounters is the […] The post An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey:...

1. What is the meaning of life? 2. Rohit gets The Boss to write a science fiction novel. 3. AI and the Sisyphus Myth. 4. Are there workable mechanisms for fiscal discipline in the current eurozone? 5. Click on the first link here for an incredible account of a romance. 6. Who has cancelled at […] The post Monday assorted links appeared first on...

The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code. In an email to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool […] The post It’s happening at The New York...

Luis Garicano has an amazing post on “one of the dumbest fiscal policies in recent memory.” Launched in Italy during COVID by Prime Minister Conte, the “Superbonus” scheme subsidized 110% of housing renovation costs. Now if one were to use outdated, simplistic, Econ 101 type reasoning one would predict that such a scheme would be […] The post Italy’s Superbonus: The Dumbest Fiscal Policy...

Are you confused by all the model names and terminology running around?  Here is a simple guide to what I call them: o1 pro — The Boss 4o — Little Boss o3 mini — The Mini Boss GPT 4o with scheduled tasks — Boss come back later o1 — Cheapskates’ boss Deep Research — My […] The post Naming AI models correctly appeared first...

Here is one of them, in part: Here in brief is the method I’ve honed to optimize a two-week vacation: When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. If there is a small village, remote spa, a friend’s farm, […] The post Kevin Kelly’s fifty travel tips appeared...

It seems the Trump proposal to simply cut overhead to fifteen percent will not stand up in the courts, at least not without Congressional approval?  Nonetheless a few of you have asked me what I think of the idea. My preferred reforms for the NIH include the following: 1. Cap pre-specified overhead at 25 percent, […] The post Reforming the NIH appeared first on...

Yes, David Robertson the conductor.  He studied with Boulez and Messiaen, and arguably is the second best Boulez conductor ever.  He also is famous for his recordings of John Adams.  I find him consistently excellent, for instance his Unsuk Chin, Milhaud, or Porgy and Bess.  Here is his Wikipedia page.  Here is his TEDx talk […] The post What should I ask David Robertson?...

I have now read through the very impressive paper on AI tasks to have come out of Anthropic, with Kunal Handa as the lead author, including Dario, Jack, and quite a few others as well.  Here is the paper and part of the abstract: We leverage a recent privacy-preserving system [Tamkin et al., 2024] to […] The post Which economic tasks are performed with...

Akhil Kumar, 19, Toronto, global health issues and general career development. Janet Shin, Berkeley, neurotech and brain imaging. Diana Leung, San Francisco, AI and bio and machine learning. Kyle MacLeod, Oxford University, economics videos on YouTube. Aarav Sharma, Singapore, high school, to work on exoskeletons and AI. Megan Gafford, NYC, writings on aesthetics, Substack. Alice […] The post Emergent Ventures winners, 40th cohort appeared...

1. Dwarkesh and Toby Ord on inference and AI governance. 2. Gwern on Greenland. 3. Bill Gates and Patrick Collison in conversation. 4. George Selgin is retiring. 5. Was there a Soviet DOGE under Gorbachev? 6. New results on clouds and global warming? The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Tamerlane. It didn't take long for this...

The IMF estimates that Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a tariff of 45 per cent for manufacturing and 110 per cent for services. These effectively shrink the market in which European companies operate: trade across EU countries is less than half the level of trade across US states. And as activity shifts more towards […] The post European Union fact of the day...

That is my recent Bloomberg column on this all-important topic.  Here is one part: The risk is that Trump would hoard the most sensitive information and disclose selectively, to manipulate the news cycle or to distract attention from other events. It also could give him more political weapons to use against what he calls the […] The post How should government disclosure be done?...

Human capital—encompassing cognitive skills and personality traits—is critical for labor market success, yet the personality component remains difficult to measure at scale. Leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and comprehensive LinkedIn microdata, we extract the Big 5 personality traits from facial images of 96,000 MBA graduates, and demonstrate that this novel “Photo Big 5” predicts school […] The post AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor...

In the previous post, I cited data showing that Ukrainian bond prices had fallen over the last few months.  But it seems that data source was faulty, and the value of Ukrainian bonds has been rising, including recently.  You can find some sources here.  Apologies for the error! I thank JoshB. for drawing this to […] The post Ukrainian bond data correction appeared first...

Right now in the neighborhood of 46%.  Right before the election they were roughly at 34%.  That is for the one-year bond. The post Ukraine bond yields appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to Reason. Yup. This is a weird instance where the ... by Lord ActionIn reply to Donald Pretari. Hey dumbass, they weren’t ... by Shower of SmegmaIn reply to...

1. New blood test for pancreatic cancer. 2. More on IRBs and the law. 3. Freedom Cities for America: the White Paper. 4. Nina Jankowicz corrects the record on US AID funding of her. 5. DOGE website is live. 6. Social Stockfish. 7. Free Exchange at The Economist covers Deep Research. 8. Google sheet from […] The post Friday assorted links appeared first on...

Charles Mann is worried that so few of us have any notion of the giant, interconnected systems that keep us alive and thriving. His new series, How the System Works at the The New Atlantis, is a primer to civilization. As you might expect from Mann, it’s beautifully written with arresting facts and images: The great […] The post How the System Works appeared first...

I have been reading the new Liz Pelly book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist.  It is a very intelligent and well done book, though it is more pessimistic than I am about the future of music. One central lesson of the book is just how many “passive” […] The post Passive listeners on Spotify appeared first...