Economics
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On empathizing with machines.
With sufficient power to pursue its goals, an AI might destroy the world. But then, we’d probably do it too.
AI, algorithm, apocalypse, artificial intelligence, Burt Helm, computer games, decision-making, empathy, end of the world, ethics, Facebook, Facebook advertising, Facebook algorithm, Frank Lantz, goals, GPS, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, Guantánamo, machines, money, morality, neural networks, paperclips, philosophy, the algorithm, tools
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On Sci-Hub, the Napster of science.
Can people really be “informed consumers” of modern healthcare when they can’t read the research their taxes pay for?
academic journals, Alexandra Elbakyan, autism, bad medical advice, biomedical research, concussion, folate, ghostwriting, health, healthcare, medicine, Napster, p-value, pop medicine, repair manual, replication crisis, research journals, Sci-Hub, science, scientific papers, scihub, statistical testing, superfoods, TBI, theft, traumatic brain injury
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
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On prosecution.
Prosecutors can wield their tough reputations to push problems elsewhere … but that’s not the same as fixing them.
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On Finn Murphy’s “The Long Haul” and our dying towns
U.S. economic inequality has caused much of the country to crumble … but the devastation won’t *stay* where it started.
A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road, addiction, ambulance fees, automation, Bloomington, capitalism, college town, drug addiction, drug use, drugs, Empire State, fentanyl, Finn Murphy, Flying J, free markets, government intervention, guaranteed basic income, heartless in the heartland, heroin, highways, homelessness, hospitalization, Indiana, inequality, Jason Shiga, marijuana, meth, meth labs, methamphetamine, opiates, overdose, poverty, property rights, public works program, Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism, seeing America, shooting up, spice, synthetic marijuana, The Long Haul, traveling by bus, unemployment, unhoused
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On theft and bullying.
Is it fair for the biggest kid on the playground to steal your lunch? What about the cleverest?
Bill Watterson, bullying, Calvin and Hobbes, Cathy O’Neil, civil war, contract theory, Darling I Love You, dumb money, equality, fairness, false belief, financial misconduct, graft, hedge funds, high-frequency traders, human nature, inequality, Leviathan, Ludwig Wittgenstein, might makes right?, Mutts, Patrick McDonnell, Philosophical Investigations, state violence, stealing, Syria, the natural world, theft, Thomas Hobbes, violence, Weapons of Math Destruction, white collar crime
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On wasted ingenuity.
Everyone strives, but we force some to waste their efforts reinventing the wheel – or the water heater, or the piano, or…
Albany, Attica, automation, Blood in the Water, capitalism, childhood trauma, criminal justice, Deirdre N McCloskey, Demetrius Cunningham, economics, Growth Not Forced Equality Saves the Poor, Heather Anne Thompson, imprisonment, injustice, jail, Learning to Hear on a Cardboard Piano, Lori Milks, New Yorker, one sheet per day, poverty, prison, prison writing, punishment, punitive justice
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On a guaranteed basic income.
No one among us created the world.
computers, consciousness, correspondence collaboration, creditworthiness, criticizing social studies of finance with Lazzarato, Digital subjectivation and financial markets, exhaustion, free will, guaranteed basic income, gut bugs, hireability, human augmentation, implicit violence, intestinal fauna, market design, microbiome, narrative explanation, neurological consequences of tools, neurology, no cloning theorem, philosophy, physics, prostitutes, quantum mechanics, sex work, stock market, testosterone, the human drive for storytelling, the perception of freedom might well be good enough, Tim Christiaens, tool use, toxoplasma, uncertainty principle, wealth tax, welfare, working parents
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On Robert Gordon’s ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth.’
What if technological innovations are a cause of, not a solution to, our post-1970s economic morass?
Amazon, artificial intelligence, automation, CAFO, clean water, concentration of wealth, delivery drones, distribution of wealth, driverless cars, economics, electric appliances, factory farming, feminism, future technologies, GDP, GDP is not an effective measure of quality of life, GDP undercounts the value of caregiving, guaranteed basic income, Impossible Foods, increasing gains to capital, invention, labor versus capital, negative tax, no one’s choices should be curtailed because of gender, parenting, Pat Brown, pessimism, poverty causes stress, productivity, quality of life, reparations, Rise and Fall of American Growth, Robert Gordon, robotics, slow growth, social breakdown, Steven Rattner, technological progress, the value of a stay-at-home parent, wealth tax, William D. Nordhaus, women’s work has been historically undervalued
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On free-market capitalism, political spending, and Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money.’
Everybody knew that politicians could be bought… well, academics can be, too.
campaign finance, climate change, Dark Money, David Koch, economic policy, environmental regulations, Evicted, fiscal policy, free markets, global warming, government intervention, Jane Mayer, Koch brothers, libertarianism, Matthew Desmond, negative externalities, political spending, progressive taxation, Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism, subsidies for the rich, tax, tragedy of the commons
Frank Brown Cloud 