Wednesday assorted links
1. Palo Alto Networks (cybersecurity firm, check out YTD).
2. OAI doing math again. Quasi-Riemann! And just one metric of import.
3. The AI agents pitching literary magazines.
4. Redux of my 2022 post on the effective altruists.
Against Laissez-Faire Democracy
In a new paper, Brennan and Freiman argue persuasively that:
the arguments against laissez-faire capitalism apply in a rather straight way against laissez-faire democracy. This should be a rather startling result, considering that laissez-faire capitalism is widely rejected, yet laissez-faire democracy is widely accepted.
All the typical market failure arguments–externalities, asymmetric information, principal-agent problems, behavioral issues–apply to democracy. For example:
democracies also suffer from obvious externality problems. Indeed, this is the key difference between markets and politics. Market decisions are usually and mostly internalized; negative externalities are seen as an anomaly to be corrected. Political decisions are by nature public. For instance, about 37% of the eligible
voting public, and 26% of the entire population of the UK voted in favour of Brexit, but the effects of Brexit are borne by everyone else, including losing voters, eligible voters who abstained, children and other citizens ineligible to vote, future generations, and foreigners.…The problem is similar to the pollution of individual automobile drivers or airline passengers. We drive too much and pollute too much because we bear the benefits of these actions but pass the costs onto others. Individually we matter little but collectively we matter a great deal. If externality regulation is prima facie justified in the case of pollution, it is prima facie justified in the case of voting.
They go on to suggest regulations that might apply to democracy. Noting first that:
…pretty much everyone already accepts some government actions which are plausibly seen as vote or democratic regulation. For instance, some issues are put directly to voters, while others are left to elected leaders, while others are left to judges and bureaucracies, and still others are removed from political consideration entirely. The timing and place of elections, who is permitted to vote (at what age), who is permitted to run for office, and so on are kinds of regulation. Government funding of public education is in part meant to be a non-laissez-faire subsidy meant to increase voter competence. Many readers are likely comfortable with government regulation of campaign donations, campaign expenditures and even which kinds of speech are permitted. Probably almost all readers reject straight up markets in votes (Freiman 2014). Each of these things is a kind of government regulation of democracy which inhibits laissez-faire democracy.
The authors sketch possible regulations while stipulating, for the sake of argument, universal, equal suffrage—no weighted votes or knowledge tests for voting eligibility. Possibilities include paying citizens to pass a voluntary civics exam; tracking campaign promises and fining deceptive claims; regulating political advertisements more like drug advertisements; and requiring supermajorities for certain decisions. See the paper for more.
You may object that these regulations would be captured by special interests, be administered by biased officials, or have unintended consequences. Indeed, welcome to the argument for laissez-faire.
Texas-Canada Fact of the Day
Texas produces more than Canada with three quarters of the population. Rough numbers for 2025:
| Texas | Canada | Texas / Canada | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Population | 31.7 million | 41.7 million | 0.76 |
| GDP, nominal (US$) | $2.9 trillion | $2.3 trillion | 1.27 |
| GDP per capita, nominal | $91,500 | $55,700 | 1.64 |
| GDP per capita, PPP | $94,000 | $66,700 | 1.41 |
| GDP, PPP (int’l $) | $3.0 trillion | $2.75 trillion | 1.09 |
Sources: BEA (Texas GDP, preliminary 2025; regional price parity), Census Bureau (Texas population), World Bank and IMF (Canada). Texas PPP figures divide nominal GDP by the BEA regional price parity.
Hat tip: Chris Powers.
Why most stereotypes are negative
Stereotypes are a foundational construct in psychological science, often defined as beliefs concerning characteristic group attributes. We present a cognitive-ecological theory of social perception that predicts and explains why such characteristic attributes are likely negative, that is, why most stereotypes are negative. The theory assumes that, cognitively, people characterize groups by attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Ecologically, positive social information is more frequent (i.e., positivity prevalence), and negative social information is more diverse (i.e., negativity diversity. If negative attributes are less frequent and more diverse relative to positive attributes, then they must be more likely to distinguish one group from another. Consequently, the attributes people see as characteristic of a group are likely to be negative. We illustrate the predicted stereotype negativity across two studies and two existing data sets. We then formalize the theory and illustrate it with simulations showing that rare attributes can be highly diagnostic of group membership while applying to only a minority of group members. Thus, the theory explains why most stereotype content is likely negative, despite the well-documented positivity prevalence, and why stereotypes may be diagnostic and comparatively accurate, despite being descriptively inaccurate. The theory explains stereotype negativity without requiring motivational derogation, essentialist group differences, or a general negativity bias, and it clarifies when positive stereotypes should occur. We also discuss the theory’s relation to dimensional models of stereotype content and consequences for interventions aimed at reducing stereotype negativity.
That is from a recent paper by Christian Unkelbach, Anne Irena Weitzel, and Hans Alves, via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Effective altruism is useful at the margin
That is the theme of my latest Free Press essay, here is one excerpt:
I feel I am well aware of the limitations of effective altruism, and I have outlined many others in an hour-long dialogue I had with MacAskill, arguably the father of the movement, in 2022.
Nonetheless, at the margin I think more effective altruism would be a good thing.
First, I am not worried that the desires of current human beings will be devalued or ignored. Such desires rule the politics of all Western nations and many others as well. If anyone tried to pass a bill to advance shrimp welfare, I do not think it would get a single vote in Congress. In the meantime, we still do treat animals with excessive cruelty, relative to improvements we might make (you could start by eating less chicken and more beef, because a demand for beef kills fewer cows, given the larger size of the cow.) It would be better if people paid at least partial heed to the strictures of effective altruism on this and many other points.
What about the AIs? Well, artificial intelligence is going to fundamentally transform our world. Many connected to effective altruism may exaggerate its effects, or perceive a high risk of doom without sufficient evidence. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing if we paid more attention to AI issues, and to AI safety in particular. Score another point for effective altruism, at least if you make marginal rather than fully extreme adjustments.
As for aid to Africa and poor nations everywhere, I am not sure of the exact policy to pursue, but foreign aid is currently well below 1 percent of the U.S. federal budget, and the Trump administration pared it back. We are hardly sacrificing our seed corn in America to elevate the rest of the world. In the meantime, if you support some charitable public health programs in Africa and save some lives instead of donating to Harvard, that is probably a better decision.
Again, effective altruism is directionally correct, even if you should not follow its recommendations all the way.
Recommended.
Brazil election notes (from my email)
From Diego Costa:
“Hi Tyler,
If you’re still interested in the fallout from Brazil’s elections, here are some observations that add texture to the usual narratives:
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Nine of the 10 candidates who received the most votes for the Lower Chamber are under 40. The exception is 41. Their average age is 31.6. They’re all very online and cultural-war centered. Four are pro-woke and six are anti-woke. The biggest vote-winner, anti-woke Nikolas Ferreira, will still be too young to run for president in 2030.
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There is a divergence between evangelical influencers and the big evangelical churches. While evangelical politicians with strong personal followings did well, several major big church machines lost seats, particularly in Rio.
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Brazil is expected to have its most female Senate ever, with 18 of 81 senators, driven by women on the right. All three senators representing the Federal District will be right-wing, including Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro.
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This might be the end of Lulismo. Lula or his chosen candidate has run in every presidential election since 1989, but he has no obvious successor. If he loses the runoff, his personal presidential record will stand at three wins and four losses. Several historical PT historical figures also lost their bids. And Lula, who began his career with votes from the educated middle class in Brazil’s industrial Southeast, is ending it by leading only in the poorest income bracket and the poorer Northeast region.
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Flávio Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party won 121 seats in the Chamber and should hold 28 in the Senate, a record for any party since the 1988 Constitution. It will nevertheless remain short of a majority in both houses. The Chamber will feature 20 parties, down from the 30 elected in 2018.
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The Bolsonaro family elected two senators (Jair’s wife Michelle and son Carlos) and two federal deputies (his son Jair Renan and brother Renato). His son Flávio is leading going into the presidential runoff, while his other son Eduardo might become minister. That is possibly the highest concentration of national political power in one immediate family since the Brazilian Republic was founded in 1889.
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Lava Jato’s leading figures made a strong electoral comeback. Sergio Moro, the former judge who convicted Lula, won the governorship of Paraná in the first round. Deltan Dallagnol, who led the prosecution, won enough votes for a Senate seat, although his eligibility may be contested in the superior courts.
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Anger over corruption and power grabs by Supreme Court justices was a defining factor in the first-round result. I expect a confrontation between the new Senate and the court over limits on its powers to become a major story in 2027. Brazil’s Supreme Court issued over 100,000 decisions in 2025 alone.”
Tuesday assorted links
1. What is the real rate of Chinese economic growth?
2. An Abundance caucus rolls out a bipartisan agenda.
3. Canada fell to 18th from 9th in global ranking of economic freedom.
4. Will there ever be a Latin Bomb?
7. Seb Krier!
8. Good review of the new Kevin Roose book (NYT).
9. Research taste in foundation models is rising rapidly.
10. “Shares of South Korean cybersecurity companies surged by as much as 30% Tuesday.” (WSJ)
Paul Graham Versus the Pope
Pope Leo XIV recently tweeted that there is “an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others.”
As a description of how today’s models work, that’s fair enough. AI learned to paint by looking at our paintings.
Paul Graham (also a painter!) notes that this is about to change. Robots wired into the world will soon perceive it for themselves. A robot or AI that learns from its own sensors isn’t borrowing images from others. LLMs were founded on our words but their words will dominate the future.
So picture a robot on a beach at dusk. It watches the sun go down, then paints what it saw. Is it art? The Pope would no doubt still assert an ontological difference. But once the factual distinction between borrowing and perceiving fades, what makes that more than a statement of faith?
The Great Accretion and the Great Depression
A very old idea, returning with a vengeance:
The Second Industrial Revolution sparked a wave of new products and industrial processes, fueling an optimistic Roaring Twenties. But did excitement about technological progress contribute to an over accumulation of investment, despite a slowdown in new product development and satiated demand during the 1920s? And, was this over investment worsened by continuous process innovation? Could these factors have played a role in triggering the Great Depression? To explore these questions, a macroeconomic model that incorporates both process and product innovation is proposed. Proof-of-concept simulations are performed to assess whether these factors can help explain the Great Depression. The answer is yes.
That is from a recent NBER working paper by
Rising concentration for economics awards
We analyze the academic affiliations of nearly 6,000 award-winning researchers in 18 major fields in the natural sciences, engineering, and social sciences from the 1820s to the 2020s, focusing on the 1960s onward. The analysis reveals a trend of declining concentration in the institutional affiliations of award-winning researchers, shifting from a few science-strong universities in high-income countries to a more diverse set of institutions across the world. The decline in concentration is observed in all fields except one: economics. The institutional affiliations of prizewinning economists have become more concentrated over time, making economics the most concentrated field. We associate the higher concentration of prizewinning work in economics with the field’s stronger sorting by institutional prestige, its lower reliance on specialized equipment and instruments, and its assessment of findings based on a synthesis of evidence rather than on decisive experiments or proofs. We discuss the benefits and costs of this high and rising institutional concentration of prizewinning economists.
Here is more from
Monday assorted links
“Authenticity is exactly the same as phoniness.”
Authenticity doesn’t interest me. It’s a way of marketing subpar material: this might not be any good, but at least it’s sincere. You can always tell when a book is going to be dogshit because the blurb copy describes it as ‘raw’ or ‘unflinchingly honest.’ In my personal experience, the writers who make a big show of authentically portraying themselves in their writing, warts and all, raw and authentic, are all actually portraying an entirely separate set of more interesting personality defects that they wish they had. In person, they’re unbearable. Authenticity is exactly the same as phoniness. Good writing is never authentic to the self, because a good writer needs to know that the self is fundamentally unknowable: it’s the ‘wedge-shaped core of darkness’ that Virginia Woolf saw humming beneath the surface of daily life, and definitely not anything you can write autofiction about.
From Sam Kriss, there is more of interest at the link, on varied topics, some of the remarks being quite “off.” Via Isaac.
The Greg Clark Symposium
Earlier I wrote “Greg Clark may well be the most important social scientist of the 21st century.” Thus, the symposium in Econ Journal Watch on Clark’s new but perhaps not forthcoming book is very welcome. The symposium includes serious critics, most notably Stuhler and Benning, but I suspect even the critics would agree with Arden and Plomin who write:
We agree wholeheartedly with Clark’s overall message that genetics accounts for outcomes long assumed to be due to nurture. Like other books in his trilogy, Clark marshals evidence from diverse sources to support his argument.
The data reach in this book—1600–2026—is jaw-dropping. Clark (and his colleague Neil Cummins) turned to wedding-register marks, probate courts, Huguenot wills, Oxbridge matriculation rolls, Sandhurst cadet lists, Wedgwood servants, and the Guild of One-Name Studies, to name a few. These data are imaginative, arresting, and inspiring. The analyses conducted, given the manifest complexities of harmonising across data types, time, and place, are impressive.
…This audacious scholarly book properly lights a fire under important questions. We look forward to following the work, its critics, and its rebuttals. It’s a terrific scientific contribution; because it is so thoroughly interdisciplinary, it will enrich and enliven the conversation about social status, its causes, and malleability.
One thing I am struck with from the critics (not just those in the symposium) is that most acknowledge that twin and adoption studies have badly undermined the claim that parental investments are big determinants of adult ability and earnings. The critics are correct that more elaborate environmental models can reproduce genetic-looking correlations but keeping an environmental explanation alive is not the same as vindicating the explanation people originally believed. Clark and many others have pushed the debate far into new territory.
There is also a basic asymmetry between the competing explanations. Genetics supplies independently established inheritance rules. When an environmental model reproduces the same patterns by choosing transmission rules precisely because they mimic genetic inheritance, it is accommodating the evidence, not independently predicting it. True, Clark also requires some free parameter choices, but he is clear that these can and need to be independently estimated.
The kinds of parental effects being demonstrated also matter. The nurture effects the environmentalists point to often seem to be for optional, steerable, or transferable choices than for more fundamental abilities, that is, changing what a child chooses to do with a given set of abilities, versus changing those abilities. Parents, for example, have more influence over religious identification than over religiosity, more influence over wealth than income, more influence over educational attainment than IQ.
The genetic arguments in the book draw the most criticism and yet the book has much else offer as Clark notes. For example:
Social status is inherited as strongly as height. Even relatives as distant as nine generations apart, 270 years, still show significant correlation in social status.
That is a very striking finding–especially given the intervening industrial revolution, multiple wars, huge changes in social mores etc.–but if it stands, it does so independent of the genetic explanation.
The fact that this monumental and challenging book–right or wrong–cannot find a major academic publisher is an intellectual scandal. The editors at Princeton University Press and the University of Chicago Press should be ashamed.
Addendum: See previous MR posts on Clark including Tyler’s Conversation.
China fact of the day
With surrogacy illegal in China, an industry of agencies, consultants and fertility clinics has emerged to connect clients with women overseas willing to carry their children. While there is no data on the number of children born to Chinese parents via surrogacy, a recent study showed nearly a third of intended parents for surrogate babies in the US were international and some 40 per cent of those were from China.
Early demand largely came from couples struggling with fertility. But there was growing interest from younger women physically capable of becoming pregnant but reluctant to accept its impact on their bodies and careers, said consultants, clients and doctors interviewed by the FT…
Other destinations include Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, where packages can cost as little as $63,000.
Here is more from Eleanor Olcott at the FT.
Crime in Covid Times
What caused the historically unique volatility in American homicides since 2019, driven by gun homicides? While there is no shortage of candidate explanations, a coherent understanding has been elusive because of the widely held view that gun violence, like other crimes, stems from a rational weighing of benefits and costs as in Becker (1968). This model does a generally poor job of explaining recent trends in homicide. Behavioral economics helps explain what the Becker model cannot. This view starts with the fact that most shootings don’t further some larger goal like robbery or gang wars over drug turf (“instrumental violence”); they’re arguments settled with guns (“expressive violence”). Why do arguments start or escalate? The behavioral model points to automatic cognition that is fast, effortless but sometimes prone to error. The pandemic increased automaticity by increasing distress – a cognitive “bandwidth tax.” Recent homicide trends, driven by changes in expressive violence, are mirrored by similar trends for deaths from drug overdose, car crashes, and suicide (especially for Black Americans, the group most affected by violence) – “deaths of decision-making.” Also relevant is a large rise and fall in gun carrying, which might partially stem from Becker-like mechanisms: Large changes in handgun sales and police stops, both of which may also have been affected by the killing of George Floyd. Since American gun violence is mostly arguments with guns, no wonder homicide trends are due mostly to changes in the number of arguments and the odds a given argument had a gun present.