Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 501
June 3, 2012
Is popular music becoming sadder?
Over the past half-century, pop hits have become longer, slower and sadder, and they increasingly convey “mixed emotional cues,” according to a study just published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.
“As the lyrics of popular music became more self-focused and negative over time, the music itself became sadder-sounding and more emotionally ambiguous,” according to psychologist E. Glenn Schellenberg and sociologist Christian von Scheve.
Analyzing Top 40 hits from the mid-1960s through the first decade of the 2000s, they find an increasing percentage of pop songs are written using minor modes, which most listeners—including children—associate with gloom and despair. In what may or may not be a coincidence, they also found the percentage of female artists at the top of the charts rose steadily through the 1990s before retreating a bit in the 2000s.
…Strikingly, they found “the proportion of minor songs doubled over five decades.” In the second half of the 1960s, 85 percent of songs that made it to the top of the pop charts were written in a major mode. By the second half of the 2000s, that figure was down to 43.5 percent.
In addition, the songs’ average tempo has decreased over the decades, although this measure is a bit more complicated. “In absolute terms, the slowest-tempo recordings were from the 1990s,” they note, “which suggests that the trend may have leveled out, or started to reverse direction.”
The researchers found this slowdown was more pronounced for major-mode (that is, joyful) songs. This points to “a general reduction in unambiguously happy-sounding recordings,” they write, “as well as an increase in recordings with ambiguous emotional states.”
By the way, the Turtles song “Happy Together” is mostly in a minor key. There is more here, and for the pointer I thank Janice and also Brad Plumer.
June 2, 2012
Thomas Schelling’s Middle East peace plan
With Shlomo Ben-Ami and Jerome Siegal and Javier Solana:
• The U.N. Security Council (or the General Assembly if the United States does not support this approach) will establish a special committee composed of distinguished international figures acting in their own capacity. Possibly it would be headed by a former American statesman or senator.
• UNSCOP-2’s first task would be to determine if there is any possible peace agreement that would be acceptable to a majority of both the Israeli and Palestinian people.
• The committee would go to the region where, over a period of several months, it would conduct a transparent inquiry into the possibility of genuine peace.
First and foremost, it would listen to the Israelis and the Palestinians. Its hearings would be televised. It would conduct public opinion research and study the record of past Israeli-Palestinian negotiations — in particular, the Clinton Parameters and the progress made at Taba and in the Olmert-Abbas round. UNSCOP-2 would seek new ideas for resolving the most difficult issues, such as refugees.
• Assuming the committee concludes that there is sufficient popular support on both sides for a specific peace agreement, it would then develop a draft treaty which it would forward to the Security Council for further action.
• In a departure from 1947, no effort would be made to impose this treaty. Rather, the Security Council would call on Israel and the Palestinians to use the UNSCOP-2 proposal as the starting point for negotiations in which the two sides would seek to determine if they can agree on any mutually acceptable improvements. The United States could be invited into the process to play the role of honest broker.
Here is more. Elliott Abrams doesn’t seem to like it.
Why do humans play chess in such a risk-averse manner?
Today I ask why computers playing among themselves have produced livelier games than recent matches of humans equipped with computer preparation.
That is from Kenneth Regan, much more at the link. And here is part of his answer:
The reason may literally be that the computers have greater contempt for each other. The contempt factor is a term in a program’s evaluation function that makes it pretend to be a couple tenths of a pawn better off than it is, in situations where a drawing or drawish continuation is available.
The computers also have no awareness of high stakes that puts “staying in the game” ahead of maximizing one’s chance of winning.
The context of course, is the recent Anand-Gelfand world chess championship match, which featured unprecedented levels of computer preparation, and, arguably, a lot of very boring games of “theoretical interest” only.
So will iPhones make us all more boring?
*Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher*
I very much enjoyed the new biography of Eric Hoffer, here is one excerpt:
Reminding us of Immanuel Kant, Hoffer went on solitary walks, did not marry, had a stomach that often gave him trouble, and (after he moved to San Francisco) rarely traveled. (Kant, it seems, never did.) Remarkably, we know more about Kant’s early life than we do about Hoffer’s. A professor of geography, Kant early on was more interested in science than in philosophy; Hoffer was the same. After moving to skid row in Los Angeles, he said, he taught himself chemistry and botany.
…Hoffer’s hundreds of three-by-five-inch index cards carried quotations from Aristotle, Bagehot, Clemenceau, Disraeli, Gandhi, Hobbes, Kant, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Pascal, Spinoza, and a hundred others, compiled over many years. Was there any precedent for this in the life of the nation? An apparently unschooled laborer who became a longshoreman and made an attempt to compile the wisdom of the ages on his own? he was filling them out by the 1940s and he continued adding to them until near the end of his life. the later dates are conspicuous because his handwriting becomes ever more shaky.
The author is Tom Bethell, you can buy the book here.
June 1, 2012
One scenario for the eurozone
Not a prediction, but I have been thinking through one possible path. Germany supports a phased-in backstop of eurozone bank deposits, but with intermediate goals and targets along the way. They’re not simply going to write a blank check. Some of the goals and targets are fiscal, while others involve turning over bank supervision to the EU. Obviously, none of this can be done quickly, thus there is no immediate done deal, but it might calm the markets. Germany also requires that Spain commit “the Irish mistake,” namely guaranteeing the returns to bondholders and funding that guarantee through “austerity.” Since Germany would also be backstopping Italy, France, and others, it doesn’t want a bondholder run, even if Spain, taken alone, might be better off forcing the bondholders to take losses.
Spain will claim it accepts the agreement, but in fact it won’t. It won’t over time, and it won’t pledge up front to fully protect the bondholders. Spain wants to see the money first. Capital flight continues and eventually intensifies. The deal does not get made in time and arguably there was no deal there in the first place, since Spain never had the willingness, or perhaps not even the ability, to meet the intermediate targets along the way.
One current option for Spain is to announce preemptively that it will accept significant EU supervision for their banks, with or without a broader deal. Arguably this would help ease their way into an agreement with Germany. In fact they are doing the opposite, by playing to the domestic audience and stonewalling on transparency about the nature and extent of their banking problems.
A new age of religious “austerity”
In an announcement posted Feb. 15 on the government’s website, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said he would seek legislation requiring the church to pay taxes on all its commercial holdings. About one-third of the 100,000 properties owned by the church in Italy are used for commercial ventures, according to Italy’s Radical Party, which has long campaigned against the tax exemption.
Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Mark Thorson.
Assorted links
1. Update on India’s gdp growth. Not good, 5.3%.
2. CrookedTimber runs book event on Spufford’s Red Plenty.
3. What is driving the growth in U.S. exports?, and here are some numbers and estimates for a manufacturing renaissance in the Midwest.
*Peter Singer and Christian Ethics*
The author is Charles C. Camosy and the subtitle is Beyond Polarization, you can buy it here.
Most philosophies draw heavily from religion, as Ross Douthat suggested recently. Peter Singer is no exception, as Camosy ably demonstrates. There should be more books like this.
My new question for visitors to the lunch table is: “What is it you really believe in?”
Public Choice Outreach!
Students are invited to apply to the Public Choice Outreach Conference. The Conference is an intensive lecture series on public choice and constitutional economics that will be held at George Mason from Friday August 10 to Sunday August 12. Speakers will include Tyler Cowen, Robin Hanson, Peter Boettke, Nobelist Jim Buchanan and many others. It will be a lot of fun!
Graduate students and advanced undergraduates majoring in economics, history, international studies, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, public administration, religious studies, and sociology have attended past conferences. Applicants unfamiliar with Public Choice and students from outside of George Mason University are especially encouraged. A small stipend is available and meals and rooms will be provided by the conference (for non-locals). Space, however, is very limited.
Applications are due June 22. You can find more information here. Contact Lisa Hill-Corley if you have further questions about applications.
May 31, 2012
#tylertweets
Tyler’s twitter account was hacked yesterday for the most pedestrian of motives:
An amazing new weight loss product! It worked for me and I didnt even change my diet! [link redacted]
— tylercowen (@tylercowen) May 31, 2012
Justin Wolfers tweeted that this was rather unimaginative and following a challenge from Eric Crampton at Offsetting Behaviour a new meme was born, #tylertweets. First the honorable mentions:
Although gas station tacos are generally excellent you should never get carnitas at a gas station that has clean squeegee water #tylertweets
— Gabriel Rossman @GabrielRossman
#tylertweets New in my pile: “50 Shades of Grey”. Self-recommending.
— Robert Guico @lpangelrob
@ModeledBehavior truly rose to the challenge:
Its hard to imagine spoons will exist in their current form in 30 years. What does this tell us about the social discount rate? #tylertweets
— Modeled Behavior (@ModeledBehavior)
Given what we know about the money illusion, should the moon be destroyed or doubled? The answer is not clear to me. #tylertweets
— Modeled Behavior (@ModeledBehavior)
#tylertweets cannibalism is wrong, but not for the reasons it’s critics say. We ignore the wisdom of cannibals at our peril.
— Modeled Behavior (@ModeledBehavior)
#tylertweets careful viewers will note Big Momma’s House 3 is biting satire of modern central banking. Most underappreciated drama of 2011?
— Modeled Behavior (@ModeledBehavior)

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