2026-03-11 00:08:48
1. Metropolitan Opera is trying to raise money (NYT).
2. How to write a LOTR bestseller (short video, with profanity).
3. Good WSJ review of the new Macca movie.
The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-03-10 19:15:44
I tweeted: Should I be worried or reassured that my taxi driver isn’t wearing a seat belt? An econ puzzle.
Most replies said I should be worried. I think that is correct and it reveals something of importance. First note that there is an incentive and a selection effect. All else equal, a driver without a seat belt should drive more carefully—that’s the rational response to increased personal risk. But drivers who forgo seat belts are probably more risk-loving or less safety-conscious across many dimensions. I think the replies were correct, the second effect, the selection effect, dominates: be worried.
What makes this an economics puzzle is that it reveals a failure of the standard adverse selection story. Adverse selection predicts that if someone wants to buy a lot of life insurance, the seller should be suspicious—fearing the buyer knows something about their own health that the seller doesn’t. Unusually healthy people, by the same logic, should buy less life insurance.
Notice the parallel to the taxi driver: the driver is buying less insurance (by not wearing a seat belt) and so, by adverse selection logic, should be the safer type. But that’s exactly backwards.
In reality, people who buy a lot of life insurance tend to be the kind of people who take care of themselves on many margins—they eat well, exercise, go to the doctor. Insurers know this, which is why the per-unit price of life insurance falls with quantity. Big buyers are the good risk, not the bad one.
The taxi driver puzzle is a clean real-world case where the selection effect runs opposite to what adverse selection theory predicts. Adverse selection theory is correct that information asymmetries can challenge markets but it’s often not obvious which way the asymmetry runs (who know more about your life expectancy, you or an insurance company with millions of data points?). Moreover, preferences and norms can make the selection run the opposite way so be worried about the taxi driver without a seat belt and be happy when someone demands a lot of life insurance.
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2026-03-10 15:57:32
That is the theme of my latest Free Press column, excerpt:
If you are a Dubai resident, the chance that you will die in this conflict is very small. But you no longer can treat safety as something you do not have to think about. And you may face some uncertainty about when and how you can leave the country, a question that formerly was never in doubt. So two major advantages have vanished, even if the current conflict is settled soon. Another problem is that a substantial part of your supply of desalinated fresh water can be taken out by a well-placed missile.
More generally, the war underlines how tenuous the position of a place like Dubai is in the geopolitical order. I have enjoyed my three trips to Dubai, but I never felt entirely safe there on anything beyond a day-to-day basis. I always knew the place relied on protection from the United States and a certain degree of forbearance from its larger neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. Both Dubai and its larger encompassing unit, the United Arab Emirates, are extremely small.
And:
In most daily life, the small tax havens will feel safer than Cape Town. In the longer run, I am not entirely sure. My longer-run plans might be more robust in Cape Town. Or in Brazil. Or in Mexico. Those are all fairly dangerous places that nonetheless seem to have considerable macro stability in the longer run. South Africa has a pre-1930 history of taking in persecuted Jews from Europe and giving them an environment where they can thrive. Even the coming and going of apartheid, in 1948 and 1994, did not change South Africa’s high degree of security from foreign threats.
Dare I suggest that these larger places are more fun and also have more soul?
Worth a ponder.
I would much rather be exiled to Cape Town than to Dubai, all things considered, even assuming away the current conflict in the Middle East.
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2026-03-10 12:48:43
From my podcast with Nebular:
Cowen: Mainly what they have done is tricked people. The Apollo program was a big trick. It was not intended as a trick. I’m pretty sure almost everyone behind it was quite sincere that it would lead to whatever. It was vague all along, but everyone was truly excited back then. I even remember those times, but it didn’t lead to what we were promised at all.
And you see that when you compare science fiction over time. So I think the norm is that new technology comes and people are tricked. Again, it doesn’t have to be a sinister, devious, conspiracy laden thing, but in fact, they’re tricked. And then it happens anyway. And then we clean up the mess and deal with it and move on to the next set of problems.
And that’s what I think it will be with AI as well.
Murphy: What is the trick with AI?
Cowen: It’s the old paradox. When you add grains of sugar to your coffee. Every extra grain is fine, or it may even taste better, but at some point, you’ve just added too many grains. So that’s the way it is with change. People use ChatGPT. It diagnoses your dog. Do I need to take the dog to the vet? What’s with this rash?
You take the photo…You get a great answer. Everyone’s happy. They’re not actually going to be happy at all the changes that will bring. And here I’m talking about positive ones. I’m not saying, oh, it’s going to kill us all. People just don’t like change that much. So they’ll be sold on the immediate, concrete things and end up seeing things happen where they feel there’s too much change because it will devalue their human capital, and we’ll adjust and get over it and move on to the next set of tricks. That’s my forecast.
Murphy: People don’t like change, but also people are bad at long term planning. Yeah. You’ve spoken before about how faith is a key requirement in terms of being able to plan over the long term. How do you bring that idea to policymakers?
Cowen: I don’t know, I think things will get pushed through for myopic reasons, like we must outpace China, which might even be true, to be clear, but it’s a somewhat myopic reason, and that will be the selling point. You know, I’ve read a lot of texts from the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Adam Smith is one of them, but there’s many others, and a lot of people are for what’s going on, they understand they will be richer, maybe healthier.
They do see the downsides, but they have a pretty decent perspective. But no one from then understood. You’d have this second order fossil fuel revolution, say the 1880s where just things explode and the world is very much different. And whether they would have liked that, you can debate, but they just didn’t see it at all.
We’re probably in a somewhat analogous position. I would say that the Second Industrial Revolution was the more important one. It was a very good thing, even though climate change is a big problem, but it really built the modern world. And with something like AI or any advance, there’s probably some second order version of it that’s coming in our equivalent of 1880 that we just don’t see, and it will be wonderful for us.
But if you told us, we’d be terrified. So how should you feel about myopia? I think as an intellectual, you should be willing to talk about it openly and honestly. But at the end of the day, I think myopia still will rule. And I’m not in a big panic about that.
To recap:
We’ve just published the video on YouTube, X, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. We also published some extended show notes and the transcript on Substack.
The post The trajectories of science and AI appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
2026-03-10 02:11:58
The Marek Janowski box of Bruckner symphonies I find to be the best Bruckner overall. And yes I do know many other versions, even Hermann Abendroth, though I cannot hold a candle to one MR reader I met recently who may know seventy or more versions of Bruckner’s 8th.
Vladimir Jurowski has recorded Maher 1, 2, 4, 8, and with 9 on the way and I read somewhere he will be doing the entire cycle. I expect these will end up as my set of choice.
Both are worthy of your notice, and they put to rest the myth that all the best conductors and orchestras operated in the now somewhat distant past.
On a related note, I flew to Pittsburgh recently to hear Honeck conduct Bruckner’s 8th (it is there I met the MR reader). I was amazed how good the overall performance was, and arguably Pittsburgh is now one of the two or three best orchestras in this country, at least for their favored repertoire. Go hear them if you can, Bruckner being their specialty.
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2026-03-10 00:22:16
1. What people get wrong about women’s rights (Alice Evans, The Economist).
2. The case against liberal interventionism.
3. More government by GPT (NYT).
4. “In 2013, museum management considered introducing a scheme to suction dust off tourists as they walked down the corridor leading to the Sistine Chapel while blasting them with cold air to reduce their body temperature and perspiration. The plan was aborted, presumably for logistical reasons.” (FT)
5. The ongoing migration of Kiwis.
6. Roger Garrison, RIP. And an obituary.
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