We study whether Democratic college professors make their students more liberal. We link voter data to salary records from 33 state flagships and show that faculty skew Democratic, especially in the humanities and social sciences. We then use student transcripts from one flagship to estimate causal effects. Students become more liberal during college regardless of major and sort toward ideologically similar instructors. Exploiting plausibly random variation in when instructors teach courses, we find no effect of faculty partisanship on student partisanship. Text analysis shows exposure to liberal topics reflects student demand rather than instructor supply, leaving little room for indoctrination.

That is from a new paper by Micah Baum, Joaquín Endara, and Annaliese Paulson. Via Jay Fan Bavel.

The post Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Cove77. Most likely nowhere; most likely just ... by Criens
• In reply to Action Figure. Where did you encounter this ? by Cove77
• > exposure to liberal topics reflects student demand rather ... by Action Figure

Related Stories

• My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe
• The AEA presidential election
• Solve for the (Refine) equilibrium

 

So I have a simple request.  If you are worried, and wish to persuade the doubters, try the methods of science.  I would like to see the following:

1. Your outline of how, say two or three years from now, we might estimate the additional cybersecurity costs from the AI break-ins.  I am convinced that number is not zero, but give me your method please.  If it helps, here is an estimate of past cybersecurity costs, done by top economists.

2. Your current numerical estimate of what those costs might end up being, of course to be tested against what actually happens over time.  Obviously, you can do this for a few different regulatory/safety scenarios.  This is one simple way to prove yourself largely correct, albeit with a lag.  (NB: you do not have to take this as a substitute for your preferred safety measurres.  But please try to be specific in your predictions.)

3. A list of what stocks or other assets you have shorted, now.  Obviously if your answer to #2 is sufficiently low, you could answer here zero, as I would do.  I expect costs, but not so high that we cannot muddle through and have expected positive stock returns.

This would all help to make the discourse more scientific and less like an extended exercise in personal anxiety management.

If it is all so important, surely this exercise is worth the effort?

The post Act like it is science appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• “try the methods of science.” That's a bit rich from the ... by dearieme
• one small quibble is that even sophisticated actors will have a ... by david cramer
• I am seeing so many doom prognostications, or least severe ... by MikeP
• Tyler, isn’t your third test really about revealed ... by Kaz Stanczak
• > A list of what stocks or other assets you have shorted, now ... by AI Doomer
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• Solve for the (Refine) equilibrium
• The future of warfare? (from my email)
• *Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety*

 

2. Modernist Gothic in Copenhagen.

3. AI-generated Odyssey in Vietnam.

4. Questions from Seb Krier.

5. Time magazine has a special version that only the AIs can read.

6. Tymofiy Mylovanov has a good summary of my greatest fear.

The post Sunday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. They have a weird way of ... by M
• In reply to stickler boy. Thank you, stickler boy, for ... by Kaz Stanczak
• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. > “Ask Osama” . . . ? I ... by vmsmith
• In reply to Glenn Mercer. This is the correct assumption. by Paulo
• #6. What exactly is your fear? If it's the fear of cheap and ... by Dummy
• Plus 10 more...

 

• “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
• “Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
• “United, there is little we cannot do… Divided, there is little we can do.”
• “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

and from the 1962 moon speech at Rice University;

• We choose to do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.

and from Lyndon Johnson’s inaugural speech:

• John Kennedy’s death commands what his life conveyed—that America must move forward.
• On the 20th day of January, in 1961, John F. Kennedy told his countrymen that our national work would not be finished ‘in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.’ But, he said, ‘let us begin.’ Today, in this moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, let us continue.

Sound familiar?

Were John F. Kennedy’s speeches written by an AI? Probably not. But were AI’s trained on the speech writer Ted Sorensen? It would appear so. Or to be more accurate, AIs have absorbed the Sorensen toolkit: symmetry, parallelism, antithesis, repetition, and the neatly turned reversal.

Sorensen is considered a great stylist, and these are iconic lines. The problem with AI voice is not the techniques themselves. It is the overuse of them—their deployment to describe a trip to 7-Eleven with the same rhetorical flourishes once used to send men to the moon.

I suspect that will be an easy problem to fix, so don’t expect AI voice to continue.

Hat tip: murgh

The post JFK’s AI Voice appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Etalon d'Silomar. Not to defend Mr Rubio, as ... by M
• In reply to j r. Called bathos, more generally, in literary ... by M
• We choose to do these things not because they are easy but ... by AM
• In reply to Steve Sailer. It's impressive that one of ... by Moral Panic
• In reply to Mike in TX. I don't know. I'm not a computer ... by Hadur
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe
• *Rome’s Age of Revolution*
• Rothko show in Florence

 

I agree with Tyler’s earlier review: A truly excellent movie, one of the best of the year.  Specifically, it concerns the meteorological forecasts (!) leading up to the D-Day invasion.  Thematically, it is about the differences between Americans and Brits, how bureaucracy operates, the nature of leadership, and the proper role of science in government.  It is like an old-style Hollywood movie.  Most of the action takes place in only a few rooms, and with superb dialogue and performances.  Although you all know how D-Day turns out, the movie still generates suspense on some of the major plot points.

The post Pressure appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• Did they have climate change back then? Seems to be the answer ... by Mort Main
• Is it time for a 1984 on how the press would have covered D-Day ... by Kaleberg
• In reply to Bill Allen. And, eventually, a mare will give ... by Kaleberg
• In reply to rayward. Commies, Nazis – all flavors of ... by TMC
• In reply to Echarles. Unfortunately I will place more weight ... by Franzish
• Plus 7 more...

 

The post One of the better pro-natalist Lieder appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Norman Quick. Her expression at 1:24 cracked me ... by Norman Quick
• Love this. Super cute but also amazing voices. by Norman Quick
• In reply to JWC. This is a Studio recording not a concert. by Norman Quick
• In reply to JWC. JWC, You're being way too ticklish. This ... by Manfred
• In reply to JWC. They are supposed to be a cartoonish comic ... by Tjl
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• The Queen song ’39

 

The Balkans may be the only region other than central Asia where fertility has increased from 2015 to 2026.*

All of the highest fertility rates in Europe are in the Balkans. As of 2024: Montenegro (1.8), Bulgaria (1.73) Moldova (1.73), and Serbia (1.64) are top four. France was next at 1.61.

Other balkan countries were generally about 1.5 (Slovenia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Slovakia), comparable to the highest non-gallic TFRs in Western Europe: Britain (1.55) and Ireland (1.47).

The lowest Balkan countries (Macedonia, Romania, Albania, and Hungary) sit at ~1.35-1.4, which would be lowish for Western Europe, but extremely high for Southern Europe or the former Warsaw pact/USSR.

During the post-soviet nadir, the Balkans had perhaps the lowest fertility in Europe. The rates rose circa 2010, and have recently continued to slowly rise.

Ostensibly similar cultures/economies have no parallel increase (Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and the Baltics).

I don’t have any theory that would explain this pattern. Balkan men are famously unhelpful husbands and fathers, and the Balkans aren’t any more religious than Poland, Italy and Belarus.

What could possibly be the deal?

That is from Thomas Hanes.

The post Is there a Balkan fertility paradox? (from my email) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• The Balkans had a post war baby boom. Like the US and Europe ... by Peter
• From working with men from Balkan and other ex Warsaw ... by D
• In reply to Steve Sailer. Satellite imagery can see roofs. ... by Cyrus
• Cycled through the Balkans (and those non-Balkan states named ... by Mark
• In reply to AB. And Slovakia is even further north than ... by J.A.E.
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• The Binmen of Birmingham
• Will U.S. cities face a knock-on fiscal crisis from the feds?
• Taiwan fact of the day

 

As weapon systems increase in effectiveness, they will generally target one another rather than humans. Lower loss of life will ease conflict entry and hinder exit.

Warfare will veer further from industrial competition into techno-industrial; the current appearance of parity between low tech and advanced actors reflects near zero deployment of advanced systems. As these deploy, their martial advantages will present clearly.

The need for advanced ecosystems will lead to blocs able to combine human capital, techno-industrial capacity, and inputs. Logistics may be contested at elevated levels, changing the incentives around geographic size and increasing the value of inputs.

Blocs may well engage in near constant warfare of various intensity levels. Bloc composition will be necessity driven, perhaps with increased fluidity.

That is from an anonymous reader.

The post The future of warfare? (from my email) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to surfie. >> Where is Carthage? << It's a suburb ... by Old Programmer
• In reply to Mishkilji. We are unquestionably in a clash of ... by Anti-Gnostic
• In reply to Mishkilji. Outer space becomes territory as soon ... by Anti-Gnostic
• In reply to Mishkilji. Of course that’s an abstraction, but ... by Kaz Stanczak
• In reply to Anti-Gnostic. Always? Is outer space “land” ... by Mishkilji
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• Act like it is science
• *Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety*
• Solve for the (Refine) equilibrium

 

2. HuggingFace co-founder on what happened, very good post.

3. What do private insurers want from a Hormuz agreement?

4. GPT Pro on burrito price worries.

5. NoVa vs. MD, once again.

6. Do people listen to female economists more?

7. North Korea might be growing at 3.5% (Bloomberg).

The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to rayward. Do people listen to any economists, ... by TWBC
• In reply to Annanas. source? by anon
• In reply to Hazel Meade. GLP-1 agonists will also reduce ... by M
• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. Oh, no doubt. I am an ... by Hazel Meade
• In reply to Peter. Could you point me at the responses from ... by Hazel Meade
• Plus 10 more...

 

In preparation for this chapter, I spent weeks poring over the research literature pretaining to smartphones, social media, and teen mental health.  It is clear to me that there is something close to a consensus among scientists most immersed in this research, which includes the following three conclusions: (1) Extensive research refutes the theory that effects of smartphones and social media account for a meaningful portion of the decline in teen mental health in the years following 2010.  (2) Smartphones and social media can have both beneficial and harmful effects on teens’ mental health, which tend to cancel out when averaging.  (3) Future research should focus on understanding better the ways teens use these tools and how to help them maximize the benefits and minimize the harm.

Note that teen suffering also hit a peak around 1990 by many measures, yet that cannot have been caused by phones or social media.  And European teen suicide rates were falling just as those in the United States were rising.  This evidence is considered in further detail of course.

Recommended, it is both easy to read and substantive.

The post *Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to MNL. Note that it's my quote, not Haidt's, and ... by Drea
• Children are confused by confused parents. by Mort Main
• The phones and other screens are just what we all use to pass ... by chuck
• In reply to anonprof. In case you didn't notice. Jon Haidt is ... by patrick
• Its the cars. Outside is dangerous for children, teenagers have ... by Matt
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• Act like it is science
• The future of warfare? (from my email)
• What I’ve been reading

 

2. Vasily Grossman, From the Front Line, Stalingrad-Treblinka-Berlin 1941-1945.  Self-recommending, the best third of this volume is just stunningly good.  You do not have to read the whole thing, as there is some degree of repetition.

3. Forough Farrokhzad, Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season.  She died in a car crash in 1967 at the age of thirty-three, but it turns out she was an amazing poet.  I usually do not enjoy poetry in translation, but this is so fiery and full of passion that I am happy to recommend it.  Surely in the original Farsi it is better (and quite different?) yet.

4. André Breton, Nadja.  It is short, and fun enough to read.  But one learns most books from the past are not masterpieces, and that surrealism as a movement — most of all in painting — was more important than the literary outputs of surrealism.  Nadja, to me, sounds like a drag.  Which is fine.  But.  What does Breton really think he is immortalizing here?  At the end he writes “Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or not at all.”  I do appreciate Breton for his understanding of Mexico, and for his cultivation of Haitian art.

5. Emma Southon, Servus: How Slavery Made the Roman Empire.  A very good and aggressively readable book about how terrible slavery was in the Roman Empire.  A useful corrective to other sources as well.  While my general view is that interpretative disputes over antiquity are difficult to resolve, I find her interpretations more intuitive and more convincing than the other side of the debate.

The post What I’ve been reading appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Jr. I was troubled by the use of the execrable ... by Anonymous
• In reply to Mother of three. “Aggressively readable” is ... by mkt42
• In reply to Dino Sauron. It has indeed been inexcusably ... by dearieme
• Interesting tangent to 5… the story of Pope Callistus I ... by Student
• In reply to Dino Sauron. Also, his comments about the book ... by Mother of three
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• *Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety*
• My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe
• *Rome’s Age of Revolution*

 

I had never before listened carefully to the lyrics.  I heard the “’39” reference at the beginning, the mention of volunteeers sailing away, and the general nostalgic British music hall mood to the piece, and assumed it concerned the Second World War.  But no, the volunteers sailing away are going to the stars, and their eventual return to the Earth will be for them a sad and tragic event, as everything they had known will be gone.  You can listen to the song here.

Here is one of the most direct excerpts:

In the year of ’39 came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the Earth is old and grey, little darling, we’ll away
But my love, this cannot be
Oh, so many years have gone though I’m older but a year
Your mother’s eyes, from your eyes, cry to me

Here are the full lyrics.  Brian May, who wrote the song, is not only a wonderful guitarist but he has a PhD in astrophysics.

p.s. no synthesizers!

The post The Queen song ’39 appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to mkt42. P.S.  Bad Religion's song “Los Angeles ... by mkt42
• “he has a PhD in astrophysics” A non-trivial number of ... by mkt42
• In reply to Steve Sailer. I never thought of them as ... by Elad
• In reply to Steve Sailer. Another he might have read was The ... by John
• In reply to Jumfrey Tuckins, President of Tonality. I think ... by Michael Stack
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• One of the better pro-natalist Lieder
• My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe
• Solve for the (Refine) equilibrium

 

2. “Books that Tyler Cowen probably would like.”

3. The tenure dismissal of Sanjay Reddy (NYT).

4. Dell and Rambachan NBER video on the economics of AI.  I have yet to view, but “self-recommending.”

5. Anton Leicht on AI and how the concentration of power will evolve.  Very good piece.

6. Universities would prefer not to.

7. Which polities can you really trust?

8. GPT 5.6 is working on social choice theory.

9. OpenAI 37-minute talk on the Book of Exodus.

The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to JK Brown. Thanks for the quotes! by Grizzled Econ 101 Prof
• AI will continue as a threat to all schooling, not just ... by JK Brown
• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. Gravel production has ... by JK Brown
• In reply to Grizzled Econ 101 Prof. “Real education must ... by JK Brown
• 9. The OpenAI video discussing the Hugging Face attack in great ... by Brian Villanueva
• Plus 10 more...

 

This paper studies the environmental effects of a specialised AI aeration-control system deployed across French wastewater treatment plants operated by a global leader in water supply services. Exploiting quasi-experimental variation in both the timing of adoption and outages, we estimate the causal impact of AI on electricity use, carbon emissions, and energy expenditures. We find that full-time AI control reduces plants’ electricity consumption and carbon emissions by 5.4% and 6% respectively, and energy expenditures by 8.2%, resulting in negative abatement costs, while also improving water effluent quality. The additional electricity demand generated by AI models represents less than 1% of these savings. Beyond these effects, AI-equipped plants prove more resilient to high operational stress during extreme meteorological events and chemical pollutant peaks. They also improve load management by reallocating electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours. Finally, we use the DICE model to assess the aggregate implications of our findings
in three diffusion scenarios. We find substantial global welfare gains from the CO2 reductions associated with this industrial AI use case.

One annoyance: The authors frame the paper as a contrast to worries about AI’s energy use and environmental impact. But those objections are almost entirely innumerate and pretextual and casting the paper as a rebuttal lends them more credibility than they deserve.

One note: Don’t misread the “less than 1%” line as being in the same units as the 5.4%, 6%, and 8.2% figures above it — it isn’t a comparable percentage-point offset. It means the AI system’s own electricity draw is a rounding error next to the savings it generates.

More generally, the effect of AI will be through many, many improvements of this nature.

The post AI and Marginal Revolutions in Wastewater Treatment appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• Talking about AI writ large confused more than illuminates in ... by PAtwater
• In reply to Mitchell. I've been thinking that most cities ... by mkt42
• In reply to Brain. LLMs are forecasting ML models. by Kaleberg
• In reply to Wayfaring Stranger. In NYC, the issue was finding ... by Kaleberg
• In reply to BeachHockey. Coke ovens used to run for months ... by Kaleberg
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• Act like it is science
• Solve for the (Refine) equilibrium
• The Binmen of Birmingham

 

Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia’s great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women’s medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20^th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev’s plan to “replace the dead” institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more.

Excerpt:

COWEN: I’m sure you’ve noticed that quite a few American men will marry Russian or Soviet women, but not so many American women want to marry Russian or Soviet men. It’s a kind of market test, right? Why exactly are the men so bad? Why are they such louts? Maybe that’s a rude way to put it, but surely in one’s mind, one asks that question, right?

IOFFE: It’s a question that a lot of us who were living in Moscow in the late aughts and the teens were asking that all the time. I remember a friend of mine, a male Western TV correspondent, saying, “The women are so gorgeous here, but the men are so ugly and unfashionable.” He had lived all over the place and worked all over the place, and he said, “I’ve never seen such disparity,” and it was true.

The women like me, Western women who were living and working in Moscow at the time, said, “We’ll just wait till we get home.” I think it’s because of what I talked about before, or what you and I talked about before, which is that so many men were killed in the first half of the 20th century, and so few demands were placed on them because they were seen as an endangered species, in general. They were a resource to be fought over and protected.

In 1968, when the West was undergoing a sexual revolution, and women were fighting for more rights, more equality, the Soviets were talking about saving the men, protecting the men, and saying, “We’ve done enough for the women, but our men die young.” That’s after a lifetime of alcohol abuse, smoking, being largely irrelevant in the home, and obviously politically, because it’s a totalitarian system, so let’s work on protecting them.

Soviet men, and then Russian men, became these coddled, spoiled children essentially, where on one hand, so little was asked of them that it’s the bigotry of low expectations. So little was asked of them, and very little was expected of them, and they rose to meet those very low expectations.

On top of that, the idea of what made a man a manly man in Russia is he’s physically strong, but he dies a young death, or he dies an early death. He drinks a lot, he smokes a lot, he’s reckless, he’s careless, and takes a lot of risk, and that usually means an early death. If you have fewer men to begin with, and as a Russian woman, you see them dying early, and you’re fighting over them, what is the impetus for men to take care of themselves, to act better, be better, if there’s always going to be a beautiful, super competent woman to take him if you don’t want him?

COWEN: These points you’re raising, historically, do you feel it’s been quite different for Soviet and Russian Jews or the same?

IOFFE: I think it’s a little bit different. The caveat is, and I hate that I have to say this, Jews are people too, and subject to the same social forces that everybody else is, but culturally, Soviet Jews were more educated as a rule, more urban, and culturally came from a very family-centric tradition. Russian women, actually, for all the intense antisemitism in the Soviet Union, in Russia, Jewish men were actually a prized commodity for Russian women.

COWEN: With ethnic Russian women?

IOFFE: Yes. Ethnic Ukrainian women, you name it, because the cultural stereotype was that Jewish men don’t drink, they don’t hit you, they are family-focused, family-oriented, they’re involved fathers, they bring their money home, they don’t waste it at the bar or on bottles of vodka with their buddies. That’s the kind of man you would want as a husband. Ironically, the same polls that will tell you that Russians would want their daughters to marry a Jew will tell you that they don’t want their president to be a Jew.

One of my favorite episodes of the year, interesting throughout, and I very much enjoyed Julia’s book Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia.

The post My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

• In reply to Horhe. And so, you know, when Stalin came to ... by just listen to the audio instead of relying on a transcript nobody proofreads
• In reply to Cyrus. slightly more men then women are born as a ... by Agorabum
• Not a Ioffista, but this interview was good. “When Stalin ... by Horhe
• Lovely conversation. I have never thought about this subject ... by A Guy Online
• In reply to Tolstoy. It’s common knowledge that it’s ... by SJ
• Plus 10 more...

Related Stories

• What should I ask Jared Diamond?
• *Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic Intellect*
• Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship?