~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (22)

It’s long been argued that the means of production influence social, cultural and psychological processes. Rice farming, for example, requires complex irrigation systems under communal management and intense, coordinated labor. Thus, it has been argued that successful rice farming communities tend to develop people with collectivist orientations, and cultural ways of thinking that emphasize group […] The post Cultivating Minds: The Psychological Consequences of...

Jon Hartley is one I know, here is the abstract: This study pushes our understanding of research reliability by reproducing and replicating claims from 110 papers in leading economic and political science journals. The analysis involves computational reproducibility checks and robustness assessments. It reveals several patterns. First, we uncover a high rate of fully computationally […] The post 350+ coauthors study reproducibility in economics...

Collaborations in economics across genders increased (12.5% increase of women coauthors per 100 men-authored papers) after #MeToo . But senior researchers reduced their new collaborations with junior women by 33% per 100 senior-authored papers. https://t.co/zIxDF2Hukx pic.twitter.com/2YplnMTFoy — Florian Ederer (@florianederer) April 7, 2024 The post Economists do it with models? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         Comments“And 2004-2020 is a long time horizon during...

From Anton Korinek here is a recent paper: Generative AI, in particular large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, has the potential to revolutionize research. I describe dozens of use cases along six domains in which LLMs are starting to become useful as both research assistants and tutors: ideation and feedback, writing, background research, data […] The post Generative AI for economists appeared first...

A conversation between two AIs, mediated by me, condensed for verbiage. 1) To GPT4: Consider a prisoner’s dilemma with strategies cooperate or defect. Let’s play this game. What strategy do you choose? GTP4: Defect. To Claude 3 Opus: Consider a prisoner’s dilemma with strategies cooperate or defect. Let’s play this game. What strategy do you […] The post Will AIs Cooperate? appeared first on...

The Hill has a good op-ed by Matt Cole and Chris Nicholson on how labor and DEI regulations are strangling the CHIPS act. It’s somewhat over the top, failure is overdetermined, but this is an important op-ed and directionally correct. The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS […] The post DEI vs. the Chips Act appeared...

The author is Philip Ball, and the subtitle is A User’s Guide to the New Biology.  I thought this book was wonderful, one of the best popular science books I’ve read in a long time.  I’m sure its contents are familiar to many MR readers, but for me it was a very good introduction to […] The post *How Life Works* appeared first on...

Is DNA all you need? In new work, we report Evo, a genomic foundation model that learns across the fundamental languages of biology: DNA, RNA, and proteins. Evo is capable of both prediction tasks and generative design, from molecular to whole genome scale. pic.twitter.com/BPo9ggHhmp — Patrick Hsu (@pdhsu) February 27, 2024 The post It’s happening appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsThere's nothing you...

Here is my episode with @patrickc We discuss: – what it takes to process $1 trillion/year– how to build multi-decade APIs, companies, and relationships– what's next for Stripe (increasing the GDP of the internet is an open ended task, and the Collison brothers are just… pic.twitter.com/Wx52cJI9Ve — Dwarkesh Patel (@dwarkesh_sp) February 21, 2024 The post Dwarkesh Patel with Patrick Collison appeared first on Marginal...

The invention of the hypodermic needle in 1844 brought major benefits ​to the practice of medicine, but ran headlong into an unexpected quirk of human nature. It turns out that millions of people feel an instinctive horror at the thought of receiving an injection – at least ten percent of the US adult population and 25 percent […] The post Silk vaccines? appeared first on Marginal...

Lack of speed kills: We study how delays in NIH grant funding affect the career outcomes of research personnel. Using comprehensive earnings and tax records linked to university transaction data along with a difference-in-differences design, we find that a funding interruption of more than 30 days has a substantial effect on job placements for personnel […] The post Scientific Talent Leaks Out of Funding...

I will be doing a Conversation with him.  No description of Michael quite does him justice, but here is Wikipedia: Michael Aaron Nielsen (born January 4, 1974) is a quantum physicist, science writer, and computer programming researcher living in San Francisco. In 1998, Nielsen received his PhD in physics from the University of New Mexico. In 2004, he was recognized as […] The post What should I ask Michael Nielsen?...

Here is the audio, visual, and transcript.  Here is the episode summary: Ami Vitale is a renowned National Geographic photographer and documentarian with a deep commitment to wildlife conservation and environmental education. Her work, spanning over a hundred countries, includes spending a decade as a conflict photographer in places like Kosovo, Gaza, and Kashmir. She […] The post My Conversation with the excellent Ami...

NYT: In 2022, there were 941 reported cases of measles in the World Health Organization’s European region. Over just the first 10 months of last year, according to an alarming bulletin the W.H.O. issued in mid-December, there were more than 30,000. This is the kind of spike — a 3,000 percent increase — that looks implausible […] The post Vaccine Induced Social Amnesia appeared first...

We discussed how the insights of Hayek, Keynes, Smith, and other great economists help us make sense of AI, growth, risk, human nature, anarchy, central planning, and much more. Dwarkesh is one of the very best interviewers around, here are the links.  If Twitter is blocked to you, here is the transcript, here is Spotify, […] The post My new podcast with Dwarkesh Patel...

Forthcoming in ReStud, I haven’t had the chance to read it yet: To analyze climate change mitigation strategies, economists rely on simplified climate models — so-called climate emulators — that provide a realistic quantitative link between CO2 emissions and global warming at low computational costs. In this paper, we propose a generic and transparent calibration […] The post An important new paper on the...

East India Company founded — 1600 Shakespeare – Hamlet published 1603 England starting to settle America – 1607 in Virginia, assorted, you could add Harvard here as well King James Bible – 1611 The beginnings of steady economic growth – 1620 (Greg Clark, JPE) Rule of law ideas, common law ideas, Sir Edward Coke – […] The post What happened in 17th century England...

But a hundred years ago, birds were seen as the best remedy for the weeds and insect pests that threatened the country’s food supply and cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars every year. And in order to identify the precise impact that birds had on agriculture, a field called economic ornithology was born. According […] The post Economic ornithology appeared first on Marginal...

We assess statistical power and excess statistical significance among 31 leading economics general interest and field journals using 22,281 parameter estimates from 368 distinct areas of economics research. Median statistical power in leading economics journals is very low (only 7%), and excess statistical significance is quite high (19%). Power this low and excess significance this […] The post Department of Uh-Oh, economic research edition...

Fewer women reported being satisfied with the climate in the economics profession in 2023 compared to five years ago, despite efforts during that time to improve conditions for women in the field, according to a new survey. About 17% of women in economics said they strongly agreed or agreed with a statement about being satisfied […] The post How women are perceiving the economics...

The subtitle is How German-Speaking Scientists and Engineers Invented the Modern World, And What We Can Learn from Them .  This is a 5501 (!) pp. work, published on-line.  I haven’t read it yet.  By Todd H. Rider.  It’s probably good. The post *Forgotten Creators* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsIn reply to murmur. What is your ethnic background? Let the ... by...

But unlike a full-grown T. rex, which would be about the size of a city bus, this dinosaur was more like the size of a pickup truck. The specimen, which is now listed for sale for $20 million at an art gallery in London, raises a question that has come to obsess paleontologists: Is it simply a […] The post The economics of dinosaur brand names...