J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 105

Comment of the Day: Phil Koop https://www.bradford-delong...

Comment of the Day: Phil Koop https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/09/quantum-supremacy.html#tpe-action-resize-355 on Quantum Supremacy in reply to Kaleberg: "Your objection is mistaken, as Scott Aaronson explains:

Q12. Even so, there are countless examples of materials and chemical reactions that are hard to classically simulate, as well as special-purpose quantum simulators (like those of Lukin���s group at Harvard). Why don���t these already count as quantum computational supremacy?

Under some people���s definitions of ���quantum computational supremacy,��� they do! The key difference with Google���s effort is that they have a fully programmable device���one that you can program with an arbitrary sequence of nearest-neighbor 2-qubit gates, just by sending the appropriate signals from your classical computer. In other words, it���s no longer open to the QC skeptics to sneer that, sure, there are quantum systems that are hard to simulate classically, but that���s just because nature is hard to simulate, and you don���t get to arbitrarily redefine whatever random chemical you find in the wild to be a ���computer for simulating itself.��� Under any sane definition, the superconducting devices that Google, IBM, and others are now building are indeed ���computers.���...

#commentoftheday #2019-10-13

This, from the smart Nick Rowe, is just misleading from a...

This, from the smart Nick Rowe, is just misleading from any sensible point of view. The burden of a debt on a generation in any sensible social welfare function is proportional to the proportional reduction in that generation's consumption needed to finance the debt, and all generations are on an equal footing. When r < g, you can boost the relative well-being of a current generation at a very low cost in terms of the reduced well-being of a far-future generation. So even though debt is not a free lunch when r < g, it is a very, very cheap lunch indeed:

Nick Rowe: Hilbert's Hotel and the National Debt when r < g https://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2019/10/hilberts-hotel-and-the-national-debt-when-rg.html: "Hilbert's Hotel has infinitely many rooms. Even if every room is full, you can still make room for one more guest in room 1, by moving the guest currently in room 1 to room 2, moving the guest currently in room 2 to room 3, and so on forever. When the rate of interest r is less than the growth rate of GDP g ("r < g"), the national debt in an infinitely-lived economy is a bit like Hilbert's Hotel. The government prints some bonds, which it gives (as a freebie) to generation 1 (this is like giving generation 1 a deficit-financed transfer payment, or tax cut). When they get old, generation 1 sells those bonds to the young in generation 2, in exchange for apples. So generation 1 eats more apples when old, and generation 2 eats fewer apples when young.... If r < g, the government never needs to raise taxes to service the debt.... A national debt makes all generations better off.... But it won't work if the economy has a finite life.... The last generation is stuck with bonds it can't sell, and no compensation for consuming fewer apples when old. So they wouldn't buy the bonds... unless the government raises taxes to retire the debt before the economy ends, but then those taxes would make the generations that pay them worse off...

#noted #2019-10-13

Interstate 80 is the wrong way to go from San Francisco t...

Interstate 80 is the wrong way to go from San Francisco to Chicago. Vastly superior, scenery wise, is 580-205-120-6-305-93-319-50-70-55:

Kevin Drum: Friday Cat Blogging https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/10/friday-cat-blogging-11-october-2019/: "I���m on the road today... helping Dr. Marc drive his cats to Chicago..... Interstate 80 Isn���t Very Interesting https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/10/interstate-80-isnt-very-interesting/: "Our mission to get Professor M���s cats to Chicago proceeds apace. We���re basically covering one state per day, and today we drove across Wyoming...

#noted #2019-10-13

Ruth Schuster: Oldest Shipwreck in World May Have Been Ca...

Ruth Schuster: Oldest Shipwreck in World May Have Been Carrying Copper to Minoans: "The hull of the merchant vessel found off Antalya by Hakan Oniz and team is long gone, but the shape of the copper ingots is unmistakably the same as found in Minoan palaces, and depicted in ancient Egyptian tombs...

#noted #2019-10-13

From 2011: Matthew Yglesias is trying to understand how t...

From 2011: Matthew Yglesias is trying to understand how there can be an ethnicism that calls itself "Christian". In the4 United States you can trace it to the emergence of the Peculiar Institution. In Britain���and among Britons and ex-Britons���I confess I am at a loss:

Matthew Yglesias (2011): John Derbyshire of National Review Wants To ���Let Britain��Burn���: "It���s one thing if you want to call 'deracinated moral universalism' a 'sick' principle. But it���s very strange to combine this with table-pounding about Christianity. I���m no Christian, personally, but deracinated moral universalism is one of Christianity���s best and most worthy contributions to human thought. I, for example, am not British nor am I descended from British people. But despite the lack of ties of blood, it seems to me that it���s sad if British people get hurt or killed or have their property damaged in rioting. You can see that as being because we���re all God���s children and equal in His eyes, or as a non-theological statement of human equality. In either case, I think it would be very sad for the country to burn...

#noted #2019-10-13

In addition to today's American conservatives regarding p...

In addition to today's American conservatives regarding politics not as the enactment of policies but rather the identification of enemies, there is also this strange current which seems aimed at convincing people that high ideals are only for fools. Once again, our politics does not know how to deal with this. One again, our role is to play our position. But that does not make this less disturbing:

Jacob Levy: The Weight of the Words: "The power of elite speech in a democracy is only partly that of giving partisan cues to one���s supporters. It���s also the power to channel and direct the dangerous but real desire for collective national direction and aspiration. Humans are tribal animals, and our tribal psychology is a political resource.... Whether... presidents are named 'Reagan and George W. Bush' or 'JFK and Barack Obama'... all... put forward a public rhetorical face that was better than their worst acts.... They kept the public aspirations of American political culture pointed toward Reagan���s 'shining city on a hill'... a free and fair liberal democratic order, the protection of civil liberties, openness toward the world, rejection of racism at home, and defiance against tyranny abroad. And their words were part of the process of persuading each generation of Americans that those were constitutively American ideals. Trump���s apologists are now reduced to saying that his speech has been worse than his actions so far, the reverse of this usual pattern. The effect is the reverse, too.... The norm against publicly legitimizing Klan-type explicit racism was built up over a long time, calling on white Americans to be better than they were, partly by convincing them that they were better. The norm is still strong enough that Trump grudgingly kind of walked back his comments after the Charlottesville protests last year. But a norm that was built up through speech, persuasion, and belief can be undermined the same way. Trump���s own racism, his embrace of white nationalist discourse, and his encouragement of the alt-right over the past two years have, through words, made a start on that transformation...

#noted #2019-10-13

Aristotle: The Necessity of Slavery: "Let us first speak ...

Aristotle: The Necessity of Slavery: "Let us first speak of master and slave, looking to the needs of practical life.... [Some] affirm that the rule of a master over slaves is contrary to nature.... Property is a part of the household... no man can live well, or indeed live at all, unless he be provided with necessaries.... [T]he workers must have their own proper instruments... of various sorts; some are living, others lifeless; in the rudder, the pilot of a ship has a lifeless, in the look-out man, a living instrument.... [I]f every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus... the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.... But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right?... There is no difficulty in answering this question... that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule...

#noted #2019-10-13

Diane Coyle: The Puzzle of Economic Progress: "Do we know...

Diane Coyle: The Puzzle of Economic Progress: "Do we know how economies develop? Obviously not, it seems, or otherwise every country would be doing better than it currently is in these low-growth times.... Yet when Patrick Collison of software infrastructure company Stripe and Tyler Cowen of George Mason University recently wrote an article in The Atlantic calling for a bold new interdisciplinary 'science of progress', they stirred up a flurry of righteous indignation among academics. Many pointed to the vast amount of academic and applied research that already addresses what Collison and Cowen propose to include in a new discipline.... Gina Neff... remarked... [that] the Industrial Revolution even gave birth to sociology, or what she called 'Progress Studies 1.0'. This is all true, and yet Collison and Cowen are on to something. Academic researchers clearly find it hard to work together across disciplinary boundaries, despite repeated calls for them to do so more often. This is largely the result of incentives that encourage academics to specialize....

Researchers need to distill their findings.... Most academics are poor communicators.... Today, the role of research in changing behavior���whether that of government officials or of businesses and citizens���is part of the broader crisis of legitimacy in Western democracies.... With real incomes stagnating for many, and ���deaths of despair��� increasing, it is not surprising that expertise has lost its luster for much of the public...

#noted

Weekend Reading: Harry S Truman: Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces (1948)

Harry Truman (1948): Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces: "Establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity In the Armed Forces...

...WHEREAS it is essential that there be maintained in the armed services of the United States the highest standards of democracy, with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country's defense:

NOW THEREFORE, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, by the Constitution and the statutes of the United States, and as Commander in Chief of the armed services, it is hereby ordered as follows:

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale...

#history #racism #weekendreading #2019-10-13

Very Briefly Noted 2019-10-13:Scott Waldman: POLITICS:...

Very Briefly Noted 2019-10-13:

Scott Waldman: POLITICS: Cato Closes Its Climate Shop; Pat Michaels Is Out https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060419123_: "The Cato Institute quietly shut down a program that for years sought to raise uncertainty about climate science, leaving the libertarian think tank co-founded by Charles Koch without an office dedicated to global warming...

Li Yang, Filip Novokmet, and Branko Milanovic: Chinese Urban Elite Transformation between 1988 and 2013 https://voxeu.org/article/chinese-urban-elite-transformation-between-1988-and-2013_: "Compared to the 1980s, the elite today consists mainly of professionals, self-employed, and smaller and larger business people, they are much better educated, and they receive a much greater share of total urban income. This is reflected also in the composition of the Communist Party of China...

Bloomberg: Guohui Shi and his Lesotho Wool Centre were awarded a monopoly over the wool and mohair trade in the Southern African mountain kingdom, meaning Moteane and other small brokers would have to shut down. Since then,��thousands of farmers have had to wait a year or more to be paid by Shi���s brokerage; some say they���ve��been underpaid, and others not��paid at all.��Approximately 75% of Lesotho���s population lives in rural areas and relies on wool and mohair for income. Some herders have been forced to eat their flocks to survive...

Colin Marshall: Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Million Years of Human Evolution Visualized in Six Minutes http://www.openculture.com/2019/10/7-million-years-of-human-evolution-visualized-in-six-minutes.html...

5.Open Culture: The Best Free Cultural & Educational Media on the Web http://www.openculture.com/...

Thomas J. Sargent, John Stachurski, and Brandon Kaplowit: The Cass-Koopmans Optimal Growth Model https://python.quantecon.org/cass_koopmans.html...

Thomas J. Sargent and John Stachurski: Linear Regression in Python https://python.quantecon.org/ols.html...

#noted #verybrieflynoted #2019-10-13