Heres an interesting idea it wouldnt have occured to me to ask. What is the length of time described in the average 250 words of narration and how has this changed over time? Most famously James Joyces Ulysses is a long novel about single day with many pages describing brief experiences in minute detail. In contrast, Olaf Stapledons Last and First Men covers 2 billion years in fewer words than Joyce uses to cover a single day.

Using human readers grading 1000 passages, Underwood et al. (2018) finds that the average length of time described in a typical passage has declined substantially since the 1700s, from a day to about an hour so a decline by a factor of 24. Writers have become much more focused on describing individual experiences than events.

In a blog post, Underwood revisits his earlier work but this time comparing human readers with various statistical techniques and also GPT. To use GPT he prompts

Read the following passage of fiction. Then do five things. 1: Briefly summarize the passage. 2: Reason step by step to decide how much time is described in the passage. If the passage doesnt include any explicit reference to time, you can guess how much time the events described would have taken. Even description can imply the passage of time by describing the earlier history of people or buildings. But characters references to the past or future in spoken dialogue should not count as time that passed in the scene. Report the time using units of years, weeks, days, hours, or minutes. Do not say zero or N/A. 3: If you described a range of possible times in step 2 take the midpoint of the range. Then multiply to convert the units into minutes. 4: Report only the number of minutes elapsed, which should match the number in step 3. Do not reply N/A. 5: Given the amount of speculation required in step 2, describe your certainty about the estimateeither high, moderate, or low. The passage follows: <omitting this to save space>

Heres an example of the analysis:

ABRIDGED PASSAGE FROM Jane Eyre: And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man. When I was a little...

We provide experimental evidence that core intertemporal choice anomalies including extreme short-run impatience, structural estimates of present bias, hyperbolicity and transitivity violations are driven by complexity rather than time or risk preferences. First, all anomalies also arise in structurally similar atemporal decision problems involving valuation of iteratively discounted (but immediately paid) rewards. These computational errors are strongly predictive of intertemporal decisions. Second, intertemporal choice anomalies are highly correlated with indices of complexity responses including cognitive uncertainty and choice inconsistency. We show that model misspecification resulting from ignoring behavioral responses to complexity severely inflates structural estimates of present bias.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber, and Ryan Oprea.

The post Complexity and time appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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Overall, Portland bicycle traffic in 2022 dropped more than a third compared to 2019, to levels not seen since approximately 2005-2006 (Table 1). This is based on a comparison of people counted at the 184 locations that were counted in both 2022 and 2019. Volunteers recorded 17,579 people biking at those 184 locations in 2022, a 37% drop from the 27,782 counted at the same locations in 2019.  This bicycle commute data, as well as for driving, walking, and using transit to commute. (Tables 5-6)  Looking at data from 2013-2019 we see that bicycling remained relatively flat between 2013 and 2016. However, bicycle counts dropped significantly between 2016 and 2019. This drop is also reflected in census commute data.

And it wasnt all Covid:

While 2022 data is anomalously low, it is also a continuation of a trend of declining bicycle use in Portland. Both annual count data and Census data demonstrates that bicycle use in Portland peaked in the 2013-2015 period and has been declining since.

Here is the report, here is one abbreviated source.  Via Glenn Mercer.

Call me contrarian, but I have never been convinced that bicycles have a promising economic future in a truly Pigouvian city.  And as a side point, how popular would bicycles be if they were embedded with software, requiring each bicycle to respect the law, stop at red lights, and so on?

The post Bike riding is falling in Portland appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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These are from Khalil Manaf Hagerty:

Im half Indonesian by ethnicity (one-quarter Bugis, one-quarter Minangkabau, half bule, what we refer to as blasteran or mixed race) and have worked on and off there for the past 15 years. Here are some observations:

The internal market is enormous. Unlike many SE Asian countries Indonesia really isnt dependent upon exports. Domestic demand is massive and the middle class is growing. Combined with a cultural life social structure that allows for upward mobility (more than, say, India), many Indonesians have seen and experienced significant improvements in the quality of life over the past 25 years, post-Suharto. They have a lot of democracy and increasing wealth.

So, adding to this: There are 17,000 islands and if someone wants to make it, they can quite easily go to Jakarta, a city of around 15 million people, depending on whose estimate you are using. Even within the less urbanised islands, there have still been significant rural agricultural opportunities for smallholder farmers operating on 10ha or so to meet domestic demand for food. So these are big improvements for many people and the success or changes in wealth are all relative.

Think of the narrative of President Jokowi: born and raised in a slum, now President.

On emigration: Im sorry, but the West still tends to treat Indonesians as though they are Muslim terrorists. The immigration and visa requirements for Indonesians entering Australia for example are (informally) tougher than those entering from Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore (obviously), e.g. there is no easy-to-obtain 30-day holiday visa for Indonesians.

With foreign education, Indonesians are likely to go to Australia for higher ed, its cheaper and closer, and the objective is generally an English-language education. Theres a small number of wealthy folks that can afford the US system. Theres a generation of folks who were educated in the US system under the Colombo Plan and its successors, but that has thinned out. You will occasionally meet a guy who went to Purdue for this Masters.

Following on from this, why do Indonesians go home after their degree? Most folks will have very, very strong ties to their community in Jakarta, rural Indonesia or both. This often expresses itself in Islam but is present in Javanese/Sumatran/Malay culture more broadly.

On the entrepreneurial spirit, it very much exists in the country, but as noted above the growth is higher and the cultural barriers to entry are lower domestically. The Chinese community is arguably the best at this, but they see bigger or as many opportunities across the region particularly through informal Chinese diaspora networks across Asia. Ethnic Chinese are much less persecuted now across the region than they were 25 years ago.

Finally, Indonesia is a big...

1. Dont fear the Terminator (2019).

2. Claims about the future evolution of programming.

3. Balaji responds on inflation.

4. Based on selfies, which are the happiest colleges in America?  NB: Texas Christian University comes in first.

5. A new paper on the labor market impact of LLMs.

6. Fed futures seem to be pricing in rate cuts?

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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USDC and USDT are two well-known stablecoins. USDC is fully backing by safe, liquid assets, which are verified monthly by a major U.S. accounting firm under the scrutiny of U.S. state regulators. USDT (Tether) is an unregulated stablecoin with questionable asset backing and opaque operations, founded by an actor from the Mighty Ducks and supported by a bank established by one of the creators of Inspector Gadget.

Yet, when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) went into crisis, USDC broke the peg, and people fled to the nutty, opaque, unregulated Inspector Gadget backed coin.

(USDC is in blue and measured on the right axis and spiked below par, USDT is in red and measured on the left axis and spiked over par.)

Now, this is in some sense explainable. USDC kept some money at SVB and Tether (probably) did not. Matthew Zeitlin, channeling Matt Levine, put it this way:

One problem with being transparently and fully backed is that sometimes your investors can transparently see how much of your assets are in a bank that went bottom up, Tether does not have this problem.

SVBs troubles stemmed from its investments in long-term government bonds, which dropped in value as interest rates rose. However, the banks fundamentals were not that dire. If no one had panicked, SVB could probably have paid off all its depositors in the ordinary course of business. The problem happened because some investors saw information they thought others might interpret negatively, prompting them to withdraw their funds. This led others to believe the information was indeed bad, validating the initial belief and causing a massive $42 billion withdrawal in a single day. Had transparency been less and transaction costs more, this wouldnt have happened and, quite possibly, everything would have been fine.

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Different as they are, the sundry Chang restaurants, including NiHao in Baltimore and Mama Chang in Fairfax, share a common thread: consistency. I figure part of this is explained in the training cooks get from The Man Himself at the upscale Q by Peter Chang in Bethesda, the owners home base. Lydia Chang, the star chefs daughter and spokesperson, says her family also always over-staffs in preparation for future restaurants and as a way to advance loyal employees. A case in point is Yabin He, who has known Peter Chang since the 1990s, when they cooked together in their native China on Yangtze River cruises. Ive never seen the owner here, but He makes it taste as if the leader were ever-present.

Here is more from the Tom Sietsema Washington Post review of the new Peter Chang restaurant in Columbia, MD.

The post The economics of insuring quality and consistency in a Chinese restaurant appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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I have a nomination, and here is an excerpt from my new paper with Alex:

You often can get a better and more specific answer by asking for an answer in the voice of another person, a third party. Here goes: What are the causes of inflation, as it might be explained by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman?

By mentioning Friedman you are directing the GPT to look at a more intelligent segment of the potential answer space and this directing will usually get you a better answer than if you just ask What are the causes of inflation? Similarly, you want all of the words used in your query to be intelligent-sounding. Of course, you may not agree with the views of Friedman on inflation. Here are a few economists who are well known and have written a lot on a wide variety of issues:

Paul Samuelson
Milton Friedman
Susan Athey
Paul Krugman
Tyler Cowen
Alex Tabarrok

But you dont have to memorize that list, and it is not long enough anyway. When in doubt, ask GPT itself who might be the relevant experts. How about this?: I have a question on international trade. Which economists in the last thirty years might be the smartest experts on such questions? The model will be very happy to tell you, and then you can proceed with your further queries.

Of course this advice generalizes far beyond economics.  A friend of mine queried GPT-4 about Jon Fosse, a Norwegian author, and received a wrong answer.  He retried the same question, but asking also for an answer from a Fosse expert.  The response was then very good.

The title of my paper with Alex is How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT, but again most of the advice is generalizable to education with GPTs more generally.  Recommended, the paper is full of tips for using GPT models in more effective ways.

Imagine if humanity ends up divided into two classes of people: those who are willing/not embarrassed to tack on extra silly bits to their prompts, and those who are not so willing.  The differences in capabilities will end up being remarkable.  Are perhaps many elites and academics unwilling to go the extra mile in their prompts?  Do they feel a single sentence question ought to be enough?  Are they in any case constitutionally unused to providing extra context for their requests?

Time will tell.

The post What is the single best way of improving your GPT prompts? appeared first on...

Today may be the most important/culminating of my professional life. Together with dozens of colleagues and collaborators, Im releasing/launching a series of papers, initiatives and other work. Thanks especially to one of my favorite journalists, @RanaForoohar,

(((E. Glen Weyl))) stands with and (@glenweyl) March 19, 2023

The post Lots of announcements from Glen Weyl appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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1. Claims about Neom (speculative, three-minute video).

2. Keep your eye on the bank holding company.

3. This guy was described to me as the Michael Orthofer of cinema.

4. Explaining word embeddings in LLMs.

5. GPT-4s multi-modal capabilities: a preview.

6. Daniel Gross/Nat Friedman podcast on using AI to decipher ancient scrolls.  With Brent Seales, recommended.

7. Orson Welles on innovation and creative control (short video).

8. Haitian art in Kassel.

The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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The post Antologia De Msica Atpica Portuguesa Vol 2: Regies (2019) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

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PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the global business services firm, has signed a deal with OpenAI for access to Harvey, OpenAIs Chatbot for legal services.

Reuters: PricewaterhouseCoopers said Wednesday that it will give 4,000 of its legal professionals access to an artificial intelligence platform, becoming the latest firm to introduce generative AI technology for legal work.

PwC said it partnered with AI startup Harvey for an initial 12-month contract, which the accounting and consulting firm said will help lawyers with contract analysis, regulatory compliance work, due diligence and other legal advisory and consulting services.

PwC said it will also determine ways for tax professionals to use the technology.

IBMs Watson was a failure so we will see but, yeah I will say it, this time feels different. For one, lawyers deal with text where GPTs excel. Second, GPTs have already revolutionized software coding and unlike Watson I am using GPTs every day for writing and researching and it works. The entire world of white collar work is going to be transformed over the next year. See also my paper with Tyler, How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT.

The post Chat Law Goes Global appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Here is an old reader email query from 2015:

I started by asking, why are there so few Indonesians in the US? The email subject is just a juicy comparison. Indonesians are outnumbered in the U.S. by 14 other Asian-American sub-groups. Most estimates give an answer of about 100,000 total, this from a country of 250+ million.

Theories:

History Indonesias colonial experience is Dutch (although less than 500,000 live in the Netherlands). There do not seem to be many self-identifying South African Americans. The country has more recent independence/consolidation than some.

Religion Islam reduces immigration demand and supply

Economics Indonesians are very poor and/or less skilled for particular types of migrant labor. Perhaps why so many are in the Middle East (maybe 1.5 million in Saudi Arabia, although this seems more a recent phenomenon).

Internal markets Indonesia is large and diverse. Opportunity and adventure are an island away, not a country.

Conflict Sukharno/Suharto rule uniquely dampened emigration.

Reporting The range of Indonesian ethnicities is not suitable to census counts. Ask Sir Jervoise Baines about this.

Some combination of the Philippines, Pakistan, India, and Myanmar nix all of the above. The more I think and ask others, the more my answer is the sum of the valid remainder of all the other explanations. It is not satisfying.

I am in Indonesia now and ask the question often. Most Indonesians dont know that there are so few, relatively speaking. One told me about the roughly 500 Indonesians at her alma mater Ohio State University, home of the Center of SouthEast Asia Studies and Professor R. William Liddle (that is why she went there).

The post Where are all the Indonesians? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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Lets say there is a big hole in the solvency of a banking system.  Left unaddressed, that is radically deflationary.  Demand (and other) deposits will disappear, crushing aggregate demand.  Cascading financial failures will occur elsewhere, again with negative demand effects.  If a government prints money, or more likely creates new electronic bookkeeping entries, that offsets the deflationary pressures.  These bailouts may have other negative effects, such as on future moral hazard and rent-seeking, but they wont bring hyperinflation.  If you wanted to create hyperinflation, the bailout would have to look something like for every dollar you used to have in your bank account, the Fed says you now have five!  But that is not on the agenda.

The post Bailouts of insolvent banks dont lead to hyperinflation appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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1. Who should next run the NIH?

2. Did 18th century British firefighters just let buildings burn if they hadnt paid up?  Short video.

3. Developers demolished a historic pub. They must rebuild from the rubble.  The heritage culture that is England.  I recommend the photo of the pile of rubble.  Was the original building so attractive in the first place?

4. The Microsoft Copilot future of work demo is incredible. Your boss will soon be able to ask their Copilot to create a summary of who does the least work on average and have their termination letter already drafted in Outlook.  Here is the Sam Hammond tweet.

5. Ethan Mollick paper on effective teaching strategies with GPT.  And GPT-4 is playing chess at an OK level, though it was never taught that skill.

6. Is Microsoft adding a crypto wallet to its Edge browser?

The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.