Tyler Cowen: “By the end of 2025, it will be evident to most educated observers that the best AI models can beat most experts on intellectual tests. It will beat me on an economics test, I have no doubt. More than that, AI will outdo the experts in its use of expertise: It is already outperforming human doctors at medical diagnosis, for example. The bigger surprise will be how little all this matters, at least at first. Sadly, our society is not arranged in such a way that additional increments of intelligence, even if inexpensive, can be smartly deployed. Instead, this new intelligence bumps up against systems that are all too human, with their rules, regulations and need for permissions. As Matt Clifford puts it: “There is no AI-shaped hole in most organizations.””
FT: “According to the neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain In A Digital World, while our brains are primed for language acquisition, they are not innately programmed to read; reading is a learnt skill. But brain plasticity works both ways: use it or lose it, and we are increasingly choosing to lose it. The Oxford University Press word of 2024 was “brain rot”— meaning both the “low-quality, low-value content” found online and the intellectual deterioration from its overconsumption. First recorded in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden, this year’s uptick in usage is (ironically) attributed to references in TikTok videos.The easy dopamine hit of social media can make reading feel more effortful by comparison. But the rewards are worth the extra effort: regular readers report higher wellbeing and life satisfaction, benefiting from improved sleep, focus, connection and creativity. While just six minutes of reading has been shown to reduce stress levels by two-thirds, deep reading offers additional cognitive rewards of critical thinking, empathy and self-reflection.”
Donald Boudreaux: “The economic case for free trade boils down to this simple but profoundly important reality: Because trade restrictions artificially shrink the access that the people of a country have to goods, services, capital, and markets, the people of a country will be materially wealthier the freer they are to trade with foreigners. This truth holds regardless of the size of a nation’s imports relative to its GDP. Trade restrictions – in all but the most abstruse and unrealistic blackboard models – necessarily make the people of a country poorer in the same way as members of a family would be made poorer if the father, in a fit of insanity or cruelty, coercively obstructed the ability of his wife and children to shop at supermarkets and on Amazon.”
WSJ: “This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics…Part of the shift is the normal pendulum of politics swinging back and forth between established parties on the left and right. The difference this time is a strong strain of populism and a growing rejection of traditional parties.”
FT: “Mum, dad and the grandparents’ good fortune — and, of course, their hard work — means millennials and Gen-Z do have something to look forward to: a decent inheritance. In the next 25 years, over $100tn in assets — ranging from property, aged wines and artwork — will be transferred from the boomers and older generations to their heirs in the US alone, according to Cerulli Associates, a wealth manager. Vanguard — another such firm — recently projected that over $18tn in wealth will be handed down globally by 2030. It will be the largest intergenerational transfer of assets in history.”
