How much truth is there to these statements? (The ones before the revision!) My prior belief is that religion will have nonexistent or weak effects on the variables of interest. Religion is often intertwined with social class, and/or ethnicity, and so one has to look at diverse breakdowns of the data and compare if possible across time and countries. (Edit: This post looks at both individual level and aggregate levels. At the individual level it is easier to discern causality, while the aggregate level help…

Collection of papers and articles that I’ve spotted since my previous links post that seem interesting. Before the usual links post, the yearly statistics, as usual. One more year, Nintil has received more views than the previous year: Only one post I've written this year is among the most read: On the constancy of the rate of GDP growth, the rest are basically the Soviet Series and some very old posts in spanish. Visits this year (not counting visits that came from search engines) came mostly from twitter…

I had the chance to meet Glen Weyl a few weeks ago, and I promised him that at some point, if no one had penned a critique of Radical Markets that I deem good enough, I would write one. But this post is not about that. Here I will just compile the discussion so far. I'll skip the praise and cut straight to critical reviews, in no particular order. The book was published in April this year, so there should have been enough time for people to engage with the book. In my opinion, the weakest part of the book i…

Collection of papers and articles that I’ve spotted since my previous links post that seem interesting. Female Genital Mutilation rates have fallen massively in Africa Suicide is declining almost everywhere Some international regulators have been captured by producer interests Quantum neural networks may be coming Progress in longevity research: scientists discover a way to destroy cells that are senescent, one of the pillars of an effective life-extension protocol as outlined by Aubrey de Grey back 17 yea…

[Epistemic status: Highly likely] Why is GDP growth in the US so oddly constant, asks Patrick Collison. If you look at log US GDP over the past 150-or-so years, it is very weirdly smooth. Why? What determines the slope? Would it be correct to conclude that "almost nothing will affect the economy over the long run"? This phenomenon may even extend back further in the US. But it's not like nothing matters; GDP growth between countries does vary a lot, in both the short and the long run. So... what …

Collection of papers and articles that I’ve spotted since my previous links post that seem interesting. Technology Chengdu to build an artificial moon satellite(!). Engineering never goes too far. More technical details Battery-free HD video streaming DARPA~~doing research on~~ throwing money at Quantized Inertia, an obscure theory of physics that among other things, says that the Emdrive actually works. Unlikely to be true, but awesome if it is. Economics It used to be believed that poorer countries…