J. Bradford DeLong's Blog, page 94

Yes, play your position is good advice. But concern for t...

Yes, play your position is good advice. But concern for the health of the public sphere���the willingness to call out lies, and so filter out of the discourse liars and their enablers���is now part of playing your position for everyone. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is not willing to do that. But he is at least willing to say he will ban "political" ads. And in the process of announcing the decision, he slags Facebook. But Jack will have difficulties: what is a "political" ad?: Jack Dorsey: 'Internet political ads https://twitter.com/jack/status/1189634369016586240: present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: We���ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons: A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet. Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimized and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money. While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions. Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale. These challenges will affect ALL internet communication, not just political ads. Best to focus our efforts on the root problems, without the additional burden and complexity taking money brings. Trying to fix both means fixing neither well, and harms our credibility. For instance, it���s not credible for us to say: ���We���re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad... well... they can say whatever they want!��� We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn���t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too. We���re well aware we���re a small part of a much larger political advertising ecosystem. Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow. In addition, we need more forward-looking political ad regulation (very difficult to do). Ad transparency requirements are progress, but not enough. The internet provides entirely new capabilities, and regulators need to think past the present day to ensure a level playing field. We���ll share the final policy by 11/15, including a few exceptions (ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed, for instance). We���ll start enforcing our new policy on 11/22 to provide current advertisers a notice period before this change goes into effect. A final note. This isn���t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today���s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle. It���s worth stepping back in order to address...

#noted #2019-11-19

Very Briefly Noted 2019-11-19:The Littlest JupyterHub:...

Very Briefly Noted 2019-11-19:

The Littlest JupyterHub: Distributing Materials to Users with nbgitpuller http://tljh.jupyter.org/en/latest/howto/content/nbgitpuller.html: Generate nbgitpuller links for your JupyterHub https://hub-binder.mybinder.ovh/user/jupyterhub-nbgitpuller-kl3p5hox/apps/binder/link_generator.ipynb...

Navy Safety Center: Photo of the Day: The Fridge https://www.public.navy.mil/navsafecen/Documents/Photo/601-650/648.pdf...

Wikipedia: Mars Cycler https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_cycler...

Morgan Kelly: The Standard Errors of Persistence https://delong.typepad.com/files/persistence.pdf...

John Scalzi: Oh, Look, Another Silly Kvetch About Me: "This is where I renew my amused exasperation that Heinlein has been claimed as a plaster idol by the sort of fellow who thinks that in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, he wouldn���t have been marched out of an airlock by now, and commensurately, that no one other than he and his little pals can claim him. Surprise, m-----------s, I get to claim him, too. Heinlein was edgy, brilliant, cranky, problematic, inconsistent, inspirational and influential. Lots of what he wrote hasn���t aged well at all, and lots of what he wrote still works a treat...

Michael Schwarz (2018): Rise of the Machines: The Economic Implications of Autonomous Vehicles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teo0Emdy1ME...

Michelle Pacansky-Brock: Benefits of a Liquid Syllabus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDpO5hIpBBE...

md2pdf: Markdown to PDF https://md2pdf.netlify.com/...

Sci-Hub: Removing barriers in the way of science https://sci-hub.tw/...

Library Genesis http://gen.lib.rus.ec/...

Pandoc: About Pandoc https://pandoc.org/...

Isidore of Seville: Herodotus on the Web https://web.archive.org/web/20150318135740/http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/herodotus/...

Bayes' Rule: Guide https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/?l=1zq...

Wikipedia: Yoweri Museveni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoweri_Museveni...

Amazon: Jabra Speak 510 MS: Professional Unified Communicaton Speakerphone https://www.amazon.com/Jabra-Speak-510-Professional-Communicaton/dp/B06X15NDTV/ref=asc_df_B06X15NDTV/...

Karl Marx (1847): Wage Labor and Capital https://delong.typepad.com/files/wage-labour.pdf...

Karl Marx (1853-6): The Eastern Question https://delong.typepad.com/files/marx-eastern.pdf...

Hansard (27 April 1863): Cotton Manufacturing Districts https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1863-04-27/debates/a442b93f-ac48-4665-8706-33f6782960d2/CottonManufacturingDistricts...

Isidore of Seville: Herodotus on the Web https://web.archive.org/web/20150318135740/http://www.isidore-of-seville.com/herodotus/...

Wikipedia: Russian Reversal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reversal: 'Here in America, is very good, everyone watch television. In old country, television watch you...

Imprisonment by Malthus and "Negative Liberty" https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/03/imprisonment-by-malthus-and-negative-liberty.html: 'it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day���s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes...

Noah Smith: Harvard and Top Private Schools Should Increase Admissions a Lot: "Harvard Is Doing America���s Best Students No Favors: Top private schools��should��increase admissions a��lot. Don���t worry:��Quality won���t suffer...

Sarah Frier: "Behold Mark Zuckerberg���s revised origin story for Facebook, https://twitter.com/sarahfrier/status/1184908897196429314?s=12 as a way to give people voice during the Iraq war. (And compare to the Harvard Crimson on Zuckerberg���s hot-or-not tool in 2003...

#noted #verybrieflynoted #2019-11-19

Abraham Lincoln: The Gettysburg Address: "Four score and ...

Abraham Lincoln: The Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this...

...But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

#noted #2019-11-19

Three Great Books to Have Read���But Not Nefessarily to Read

I have been remiss in posting here because I have had the unexpected load of getting together lectures for the last 40% of: Economics 105: The History of Economic Thought: Smith, Marx, Keynes.

So let me apologize for the dearth of material by stepping through my lecture notes:

1) Smith, Marx, Keynes: The aim of this course it to examine the history of economic thought through the lens of three major economic thinkers: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes, each of whom wrote one long, difficult, but undeniably great book. Adam Smith in 1776 published his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Karl Marx in 1867 published his Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (volume 1). John Maynard Keynes in 1936 published his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (note the absence of the Oxford comma from Keynes���s title: Keynes was a British academic but not one from Oxford but rather from the University of Cambridge). In addition, read Robert Heilbroner���s excellent (if old) The Worldly Philosophers, a short survey of the history of economic thought, for context and background.

Smith���s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Marx���s Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, and Keynes���s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money are great books to have read, if not easy books to read. They are, in fact, downright painful. (Heilbroner���s The Worldly Philosophers is, by contrast, painless, easy, and still great.) Learning how to read great but difficult books and make sense of them on your own is a very valuable skill to learn, but a difficult one to teach in any way but by doing it. Moreover, a great book is a great book only if the reader is ready and prepared to read it���and so learning to figure out how to become the kind of reader to appreciate a particular great book is another important skill to learn as well.

Here the full files are���unfinished: https://www.icloud.com/pages/0howtV7CndvjkSCCLmtjmq_SA

And the course slides:

https://www.icloud.com/keynote/0osOOsPvSrTaiK4__D5MghPVA

#books #highlighted #history #historyofeconomicthought #moralphilosophy #politicaleconomy #2019-11-18

Lecture Notes: Smith, Marx, Keynes: A View of the History of Economic Thought (UNFINISHED)

Well, I have wound up, by surprise, giving the last third of the lectures in Economics 105: The History of Economic Thought: Smith, Marx, Keynes. I admit I was not as averse to being imposed on by the Department as I might have been because I thought it might push me to get my head and my thoughts together.

Here they are���unfinished. But I should give the students an opportunity to see how I think about these thinkers and their works: https://www.icloud.com/pages/0howtV7CndvjkSCCLmtjmq_SA

#books #highlighted #history #historyofeconomicthought #moralphilosophy #politicaleconomy #2019-11-09


This File: https://www.bradford-delong.com/2019/11/lecture-notes-105.html

Edit This File: https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f0800388340240a4e9468c200b/edit

The calculations I was doing for the first-year graduate ...

The calculations I was doing for the first-year graduate students yesterday were that, in terms of the proportional rate of increase in our stock of productive ideas about technology and organization, we are now creating them at a proportional rate 100 times the rate at which useful ideas were being created as recently as 1500. Is that going to speed up as ideas increasingly need instantiation not in large clunky macro arrangements of atoms but as patterns of information? Quite possibly...

Doug Jones: Copernicus Versus the Scientific Method https...

Doug Jones: Copernicus Versus the Scientific Method https://logarithmichistory.wordpress.com/2019/11/02/copernicus-versus-the-scientific-method-5/: 'Ptolemy needed to assume that the five planets (not counting the sun and moon) have both cycles (the big circles) and epicycles (the little circles).... Some of the cycles and epicycles vary independently, while others are exactly tied to the motions of the sun. For Mercury and Venus, the epicycles vary independently, taking different periods of time (88 days, 225 days) to complete a circuit. Their cycles, by contrast, take exactly one Earth year to complete a circuit. Furthermore, the deferent, the point at center of each epicycle, is always exactly in line with the sun. For Mars, Jupiter and Saturn on the other hand, it���s the other way around. The cycles vary independently (1.88, 11.86, and 29.46 years to make a complete circuit). But the epicycles take exactly one Earth year... [and] the line from deferent to planet is exactly parallel to the line from Earth to Sun.... Copernicus���s model, by contrast, doesn���t just replace five circles (the cycles for Mercury and Venus, and the epicycles for Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) with one (for the Earth going around the Sun). It also automatically explains why the five superfluous cycles show an otherwise unexplained synchronic parallelism. People who read Copernicus 1543 book carefully (not many at first) could see he had a real explanation for something that���s just a mysterious coincidence in Ptolemy.... Solomonoff induction... can explain why Copernicanism is a better theory.... Bayes��� Rule.... And where do scientists get their prior probabilities?... Solomonoff... He argues that we can use the theory of algorithmic complexity, as developed by Kolmogorov.... If your theory were turned into a computer program, how long would the program be? The longer the program, the lower the prior probability, where probabilities fall off exponentially with length of program...

#noted #notebookecon135 #notebookcognitionandscience #2019-11-02

https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f0800388340240a4e6bf74200b/edit

Mark Knopfler: Good On You Son: For the Weekend

Mark Knopfler: Good On You Son https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIBCHh-fMUE:

#fortheweekend #music #2019-11-01

Jeremiah Dittmar and Kipper Seabold: New Media and Compet...

Jeremiah Dittmar and Kipper Seabold: New Media and Competition: Printing and Europe's Transformation after Gutenberg http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1600.pdf: "We study the role of book content in economic, religious, and institutional development after the introduction of printing, and the role of competition in determining the amount and content of local printing. We focus on (1) business education content and (2) religious ideas during the Protestant Reformation. We construct data on printing output and competition in European cities 1454-1600.We document positive relationships between business education content and city growth, and Protestant content and institutional change. We find competition predicts content. We confirm the relationships between competition, content, and outcomes using printer deaths as a source of exogenous variation...

#noted #2019-10-31 #notebookecon135


https://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00e551f08003883400e551f080068834/post/6a00e551f0800388340240a4b9567e200d/edit

Matthew Chapman: Uber and Lyft Put Up $60 million for Bal...

Matthew Chapman: Uber and Lyft Put Up $60 million for Ballot Fight: 'On Thursday, Bloomberg News reported that ride-sharing giants Uber and Lyft are prepared to spend 60 million in support of a potential California ballot question in 2020 that would prevent their workers from being classified as employees. The push comes as the California legislature advances AB 5, which would require any workers who perform functions that aren���t outside the course of their employer���s business to be classified as an employee���codifying a decision last year by the California Supreme Court. Uber and Lyft have kept their margins low by classifying their workers as self-employed contractors who just happen to use their app as a social network to find passengers. This means that they are not covered by a number of protections that employees receive, like the right to unionize or to receive overtime pay...

#noted #politicaleconomy #siliconvalley #2019-10-31