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In a previous post, I argued that AGI would not make human labor worthless. One of the most common responses was to ask about the horses. Technology resulted in mass unemployment and population collapse for horses even though they must have had some comparative advantage with more advanced engines. Why...
The discovery and use of machinery may be … injurious to the labouring class, as some of their number will be thrown out of employment, and population will become redundant. - David Ricardo Fears about human labor getting replaced by machines go back hundreds if not thousands of years. These...
On the heels of Donald Trump’s election and his promises to end the Department of Education, you may have seen claims like these spreading around X. Source This claim is based on two datapoints. First, is the literacy rate of around 99% in 1979 which was measured by the US...
The offense-defense balance is a concept that compares how easy it is to protect vs conquer or destroy resources. For example, autonomous weapons and AI systems might make attacks easier and more scalable compared to defensive measures. The balance matters because when offense has the advantage, it can create instability...
A man has just robbed a train. A Rock Island Rail car was held up in the desert of North Texas on route from Chicago carrying dozens of passengers and tens of thousands of dollars in a Wells Fargo express compartment. The men were slain and the women and children...
I recently wrote a twitter thread for Works In Progress summarizing their article on gene drives as a tool to end malaria. There’s a section in that piece that I didn’t get to highlight in the thread which I want to talk about here: the offense-defense balance of gene drives....
You may have seen this recent paper on the financial effects of legal online sports betting floating around econ twitter a few weeks ago: Gambling Away Stability: Sports Betting's Impact on Vulnerable Households by Baker, Balthrop, Johnson, Kotter, and Pisciotta (2024). The headline result: legalizing online betting increases betting by...