FT: “The first management lesson [Hayes] Barnard says he learnt was that “leadership is measured by followship”. But when he set out this plan, an unnerving number of the people he led did not follow. “About half the organisation thought ‘this guy’s out of his mind’ and left,” he recalls. Most people dislike change, he argues, and “it was too bold of an idea”. The fact that hundreds of people who had worked with Barnard for years could not see the opportunity that he did raised a question: how does someone with his entrepreneurial drive make it infectious? “The truth is, you don’t,” he says bluntly, estimating that 80 per cent of people “don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in their body”. “I used to try to shake them up and push them to be like me,” he admits, “and the reality is, no, that’s not what they want to do. They want security.””
What will GPT-2030 look like? byJacob Steinhardt. “How can we be less surprised by developments in machine learning? Our brains often implicitly make a zeroth-order forecast: looking at the current state of the art, and adding on improvements that “feel reasonable”. But what “seems reasonable” is prone to cognitive bias, and will underestimate progress in a fast-moving field like ML. A more effective approach is first-order forecasting: quantifying the historical rate of progress and extrapolating it forward, while also considering reasons for possible slowdowns or speedups.”
Dilip Mandal: “What was happening in Europe and the US when the Mughals were ruling large parts of India, between 1526 and 1757? Our shahenshahs, kings, and nawabs were preoccupied with consolidating their power, fighting battles, and constructing magnificent palaces, forts, and mausoleums. But there was no big scientific leap in the Mughal era. In sharp contrast, Europe experienced seismic shifts during the same period. The Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment reshaped the continent, heralding unprecedented advancements in the natural sciences, technology, political thought, and philosophy. The advent of the printing press in the 15th century democratised knowledge, fostering literacy, and stimulating intellectual and scientific exchanges. The Reformation and the rise of humanism encouraged critical thinking and promoted empirical methods of inquiry. Regrettably, the Mughal Empire, while artistically vibrant, did not witness a similar scientific revolution.”
Jane Shaw Stroup: “The elevation out of poverty did not come about because of “take-off” or “balanced growth” or any such thing. As Connors, Gwartney, and Montesinos make clear, cost-reducing innovations—from the container ship to the internet—created a transportation-communication revolution that boosted the volume and extent of trade around the world. Trade itself increases wealth, but more trade had other effects as well: It led to greater labor specialization, rewarded entrepreneurship and good business management, and pressured governments to adopt better policies. And it even led to a “virtuous cycle of economic development.” As wages increased, families had fewer children (the opportunity cost of bringing them up had risen). This meant that a higher proportion of the population was in the prime working ages and had greater interest in developing human capital through education and skills training. These improvements built upon themselves. So, while prominent economists were spinning their unsatisfying theories and lamenting the vicious cycle of poverty, the world got better—on its own.”
Edward Chancellor: “Why were the credit systems of so many different countries, from Australia to Iceland, so vulnerable at the time [of the 2007-09 recession]? The unifying factor appears to be the low-interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve at the turn of the century, which, owing to the special position of the dollar as the global reserve currency, created conditions for a credit boom that engulfed much of the world’s economy. Prior to the crisis, global interest rates were negative in real terms and far below the growth rate of the world’s economy…. There is no need to appeal to ad hoc explanations: easy money produced the boom and the boom was followed by the inevitable bust.” [via CafeHayek]
