May 2026 links

I'm going back to a monthly format for these, as with my conversion to writing on the browser version, I can now make multiple drafts.

1. But I thought smart kids turn out to be lonely recluses...

2. AGI is coming. If anything I revise my expected date for when it will arrive to late 2026.

3. Barleycorn chess.

4. On the other hand many claim this is a bullish signal for AI progress…

5. Arguably worse than the Great Leap Forward, which would hence place this policy as amongst the most evil ever in history.

6. Moral hazard: AI and studying edition?

7. An underrated yet important point.

8. Yes. Adoption is not instant given the social coordination dynamics within a firm. Think Coasian!

9. Is sychophancy actually a feature of alignment training?

10. This presumably limits the economic fallout from the Iran shock?

11. Congestion pricing goes to court?

12. A vaccine for pancreatic cancer? AI delivers live-saving biotechnologies as well as potentially bioweapons. We survived Covid and worse pandemics, then prospered, so humanity will survive an AI-generated pandemic if such actually occurs.

13. Today's good news: the end of Guinea worm.

14. "Arrests made near the end of an officer's shift typically require overtime work, and officers respond by reducing arrest frequency but increasing arrest quality. Days in which an officer works a second job after their police shift have higher opportunity cost, also reducing late-shift arrests."

15. Much of the decline in L share of Y can be explained via digital platforms compensating our data production with access. In particular, "the marginal utility of interface time can be non-decreasing". GDP understates the welfare gains of the internet.

16. A prediction market for pundits. Glad to see that those I follow are performing well.

17. I think it's the level of granular detail involved that makes Raphael stand out, and why renaissance art in general is popular. This lends credence to theories of aesthetics emphasising the role of creative skill? Likewise, the controversy that Duchamp generates downgrades theories of art as necessarily encoding social statements? Art isn't activism; beauty exists independent of such? (Picabia is one of the most talented I've seen though - it doesn't come close!)

18. A paper leaning towards our natural adaptation processes at the cellular level being the primary explanation for drug resistance, as opposed to mutation.