Michael Yao
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on the atlas · 45
- Economics in the Age of Algorithms | Sendhil Mullainathan1 savers
- How AI Revolutionized Protein Science, but Didn’t End It | Quanta Magazine2 savers
- The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest5 savers
- Chinglish1 savers
- Westernised Chinese language1 savers
- Pseudo-Chinese1 savers
- Consider the Lobster: 2000s Archive : gourmet.com1 savers
- Igor Levit Is Like No Other Pianist | The New Yorker1 savers
- Strong Silent Types | Princeton Alumni Weekly1 savers
- The Chinese origins of Sāmoa’s most popular dish, chop suey | The Spinoff1 savers
- Money, Justice, and Effective Altruism - Liberties1 savers
- Book Release: Guide to Chinese Climate Policy 2019 by David Sandalow on Livestream1 savers
- Alexandre Lefebvre on X: "On the front page of his personal copy of A Theory of Justice, John Rawls wrote in a joke by hand. (And then, Rawls-style, explained it.) Optimist: “This is the best of all possible worlds.” Pessimist: “I know.” https://t.co/LY7l1p5CFW" / X1 savers
- derek guy on X: "If this style looks familiar it's because it has now become mainstream, even wore by the loudest of anti-LGBTQ+ voices. Tight work clothes signal this is not about function but identity. But since so many people wear it nowadays, the in-group LGBTQ+ signal is now lost. https://t.co/p41MKcF6Ss" / X1 savers
- derek guy on X: "Why is Tokyo so fashionable? Some theories. 🧵" / X1 savers
- Extra virgin olive oil is the flavour of mechanisation | Aeon Essays1 savers
- Jason Abaluck on X: "I thought I'd try to reconstruct Bryan's discussion with a 13-year-old about the minimum wage based on the below tweet: (@bryan_caplan let me know if anything is inaccurate)" / X1 savers
- Honesty and the Human Body | Melting Asphalt5 savers
- Inside Auckland’s Ōtara Market: Community, taonga and taro1 savers
- From revolution to pandemic: the life of a social anthropologist - The University of Auckland1 savers
- Silicon Valley, the New Lobbying Monster | The New Yorker2 savers
- A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Reflects on Winning the Nobel Prize - The New York Times4 savers
- Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates - The Verge1 savers
- How Snacks Took Over American Life - The Atlantic1 savers
- August 2024 – Neologism Poetry Journal1 savers
- Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford Academic1 savers
- On the importance of partial progress | What's new1 savers
- The "uncertainty loop" haunting our climate models | Vox1 savers
- Why has climate economics failed us? - by Noah Smith1 savers
- How to understand AI: it’s a tragedy of the commons, not an arms race | Vox1 savers
- How poor Kenyans became economists’ guinea pigs1 savers
- Why the Left Can’t Stand The New York Times - Columbia Journalism Review3 savers
- Open House for Butterflies: Ruth Krauss’s Final and Loveliest Collaboration with Maurice Sendak – The Marginalian2 savers
- The Paradise Notebooks: A Poet and a Geologist’s Love Letter to Life Lensed Through a Mountain – The Marginalian2 savers
- Laziness Does Not Exist. Psychological research is clear: when… | by Devon Price | Human Parts4 savers
- Job Displacement and Mortality: An Analysis Using Administrative Data* | The Quarterly Journal of Economics | Oxford Academic2 savers
- What Does It Mean to Align AI With Human Values? | Quanta Magazine3 savers
- Nostalgia | Svetlana Boym4 savers
- THE MICROSOFT EFFECT. — Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.2 savers
- no good alone - by rayne fisher-quann - internet princess46 savers
- Pain is not the unit of Effort38 savers
- The Lesson of Grace in Teaching, by Francis Su12 savers
- Knuth versus Email6 savers
- Positivism4 savers
- The Professor of Parody | The New Republic2 savers
highlights · 227
(2) It enables kinesthetic learning by connecting abstract ideas (especially ones of great social significance) to bodily experiences, and vice versa. And (3) it allows members of a group to send honest signals of their commitment, especially when the rituals involve an element of sacrifice (whether time, energy, or material resources).
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltI now maintain almost the exact opposite. Religion is a thin dross of verbal confabulation clinging to a bedrock of embodied practices. Talk is cheap. Behavior speaks louder than beliefs. And beliefs about the supernatural and/or esoteric are especially cheap, because those are precisely the domains where holding false beliefs doesn't cost anything. Say whatever you like about the afterlife, but be careful what you believe about tigers.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltReligion has baffled me for nearly all of my adult life. Then, about a year ago, I had a realization: religion is not about beliefs. In hindsight this should have been obvious. In trying to understand the phenomenon of religion, how could the (specific) beliefs matter? They're what makes each religion unique, different from all the others. But I grew up in the West, and a hazard of the Western (disembodied) sensibility is to focus on the beliefs — those verbal, propositional units that yield to analysis. Either gods exist, or they don't. That's what religion is about, right? Who cares about th…
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltConsider how unnatural classroom-based education is for a human creature. It's a comprehensive exercise in restraint, in training the mind to exert control over the body. We force our children to sit still for hours upon hours; to focus on boring, repetitive tasks; to control their impulses; to delay gratification; to use words and reasons instead of violence; to wake up at prescribed times; to move from place to place when a bell rings; to ask permission before going to the bathroom (think about that for a second). We systematically reward children for exerting control over their bodies and p…
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltThis way of looking at the world produces a disembodied consciousness. It's an abstract, analytical, representational, cerebral mode of experience, one in which our bodies (and the world beyond them) are incidental — mere tools for our minds to manipulate. In contrast, an embodied consciousness is concrete, empathic, enactive, and visceral — the awareness of being a creature with a body situated and enmeshed in the world.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltThe body is also important because it is primary. It comes first — both in phylogeny and ontogeny.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltWhich is a more honest signal of your value to a company: when your boss says, "Great job!" or when she gives you a raise? Talk, as they say, is cheap.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltHonesty is thus, in part, an economic proposition.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltThat's why the best signals — the most honest ones — are expensive. More precisely, they are differentially expensive: costly to produce, but even more costly to fake.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltSignals are said to be honest when they reliably correspond to an underlying trait or fact about the world. Otherwise they are dishonest or deceptive.
Honesty and the Human Body | Melting AsphaltIs it odd that you have received this award for physics? If there was a Nobel Prize for computer science, our work would clearly be more appropriate for that. But there isn’t one.
A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Reflects on Winning the Nobel Prize - The New York TimesI am reminded of what the physicist Richard Feynman said when he received the Nobel Prize. A journalist asked him, “Professor Feynman, can you explain — in just a couple of minutes — what you won the Nobel Prize for?” Feynman apparently replied, “Listen, buddy, if I could explain it in a couple of minutes, it wouldn’t be worth the Nobel Prize.” Sorry. The BBC is calling again. Bye.
A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Reflects on Winning the Nobel Prize - The New York TimesWe didn’t connect. I am in a cheap hotel room with no internet.
A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Reflects on Winning the Nobel Prize - The New York TimesSorry, I can’t talk. I am about to go on with the BBC. Bye.
A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton Reflects on Winning the Nobel Prize - The New York TimesToday, Native Americans disproportionately live in credit deserts, with some communities still 50–70 miles from the nearest bank (Ahtone, 2018). Until credit is more accessible, our analysis foreshadows the likely economic trajectory for Indigenous or other undercapitalized communities who are impacted by economic shocks, like climate change, structural change, or other unforeseen circumstances.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicCattle ranching, a plausible alternative use of skills and land for many bison peoples, was initially difficult to enter because of resistance from Indian Agents or credit constraints (Trosper, 1978; Iverson, 1997). Agriculture was effectively the only economic activity supported or promoted by North American governments despite the cultural norms and limited historical experience among the formerly bison-reliant nations (Iverson, 1997; Ostler, 2001; Gwynne, 2010).
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicEconomic activity and mobility were severely constrained during this time period and left few dimensions along which Native Americans could adjust, at least initially.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicBy the early 1880s, there were no bison, little game, and inadequate or non-existent government food supplies. Records from trading posts, Native leaders, Indian Affairs officials, and media outlets reported widespread malnutrition and hunger among the Native populations (Cameron et al., 2015). Communities resorted to eating horses, mules, soiled food, and old clothing to prevent starvation (Gwynne, 2010; Daschuk, 2013).
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicOne explanation for this is that after the slaughter began in the South, the American military saw it as an opportunity to weaken nations and their corresponding treaty rights and began to participate in the slaughter without commercial intentions.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicAs far as the Native nations were concerned, property rights existed through signed treaties and those rights were simply not protected. However, American military commanders believed that Native people would not be truly settled onto reservations until the bison were exterminated (Smits, 1994). Generals actively encouraged their troops to kill the bison for food, sport, or “practice.” MacInnes (1930) argues that American soldiers drove bison herds south into the region of the hide hunters.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicWhile early anthropologists often characterized bison hunting societies as egalitarian and lacking organizational complexity; recent work by anthropologists suggests that bison-reliant societies had well-defined systems of ownership over hunting grounds, permanent sites of residence, complex kinship networks, and economic power relationships designed to secure the best bison herds (Zedeño et al., 2014). Bison societies also cultivated the short grasses preferred by the bison to encourage its flourishing (Isenberg, 2000; Zedeño et al., 2014).
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicHowever, Europeans were not importing their institutions or bringing their human capital to a blank slate; Indigenous institutions, resources, and industries were undermined in the process.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicOur work also contributes to a growing literature that offers a counter-narrative regarding the colonization of North America.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicBy tracing the impacts of this exogenous loss of a crucial industry from the late 1800s through 2019, our results offer insights into how one-time economic shocks can influence the distribution of capital and labor, and how local populations for whom geographic mobility is individually undesirable or costly, may end up in impoverished regions over time.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicThe decline of the American coal and steel industries in the 1980s (Black et al., 2003; Obschonka et al., 2017), the collapse of the North Atlantic cod fishery in the 1990s (Milich, 1999; Haedrich and Hamilton, 2000), the regional loss of productivity during the Dust Bowl (Hornbeck, 2012), and the decline of the manufacturing sector in the early 2000s (Autor et al., 2016, 2019) all share similar characteristics.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicBison-reliant nations that had relatively accessible credit in the early years of the animal’s decline were able to partially adapt through occupational re-specialization and migration. We show that nations that had greater access to credit in 1870 were more likely to enter capital-intensive industries and less likely to enter agriculture
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicWe show that these income differences are not explained by differences in baseline characteristics, such as geography or culture, nor by differences in the timing of land cessions, war, railways, or white settlement. They are also not explained by differential application of the General Allotment Act, commonly known as the Dawes Act, agricultural productivity, or self-governance.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicWorking-age men in bison nations were 19 percentage points less likely to report an occupation on the 1900 Census of Population compared to Indigenous men that were not reliant on the bison.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford Academicwe find that bison-reliant nations had substantially higher rates of child mortality and skewed sex ratios, both of which indicate maternal deprivation
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicWe find that nations impacted by the slaughter suffered a 2–3 cm decline in height relative to nations that were not bison-reliant, effectively eliminating the initial height advantage of bison-reliant peoples before the slaughter.4
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford Academicwe merge our measures of bison reliance with data on the height, gender, and age of nearly 9000 Native Americans collected between 1889 and 1903 by physical anthropologist Franz Boas (Jantz, 1995).
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicHistorical and anthropometric evidence suggest that these bison-reliant societies had living standards comparable to or better than their European contemporaries (Steckel and Prince, 2001; Prince and Steckel, 2003; Carlos and Lewis, 2010; Steckel, 2010). When the bison were eliminated, the resource that had underpinned these societies vanished in under two decades.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicWe demonstrate that limited access to credit constrained the ability of bison nations to adjust through re-specialization and migration.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicThis persistent gap cannot be explained by differences in agricultural productivity, self-governance, or application of the Dawes Act.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicBy the early twentieth century, child mortality was 16 percentage points higher and the probability of reporting an occupation 19 percentage points lower in bison nations compared with nations that were never reliant on the bison. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and into the present, income per capita has remained 25% lower, on average, for bison nations.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicWe demonstrate that the loss of the bison had immediate, negative consequences for the Native Americans who relied on them and ultimately resulted in a persistent reversal of fortunes.
Slaughter of the Bison and Reversal of Fortunes on the Great Plains | The Review of Economic Studies | Oxford AcademicIn short, Jack’s decision – and our decision, which can be made at any time – to embrace the original position is not just a thought experiment but a transformative spiritual practice.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysBy embodying impartiality and autonomy, Jack also cultivates resilience in the face of temptation and adversity. In a consumer culture where self-restraint and stalwartness are often tested, adherence to liberal principles instils moral fortitude. And if Jack gets good at navigating such ethical dilemmas, we might even say that he will become graceful. He will fulfil the requirements of justice with pleasure and relative ease.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysBy engaging in the original position, Jack embraces impartiality and autonomy as core virtues. This means liberating himself from the narrow confines of self-interest and positional bias. In a world rife with inequality and injustice, impartiality allows Jack to see beyond his own perspective, fostering empathy and understanding for others. Autonomy, on the other hand, empowers him to act in accordance with his values, free from external coercion or undue influence.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysFirst, it’s the right thing to do. But second, just as importantly, there are great spiritual goods – great joys – that come from living up to liberal principles.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysIn Australia, for example, politicians of all stripes insist on the importance of a ‘fair go’. That’s why the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation is accessible to a wide readership: not merely because Rawls’s readers ‘know’ or ‘understand’ what he’s talking about, but much more powerfully because they already affirm it as expressing something essential about themselves and their society
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysFairness is the most important concept of Rawls’s philosophy. It is, negatively speaking, the precise quality missing when a person like Ernie must toil endlessly at a job that a college student like Jack can quit after six weeks because he finds it difficult and demeaning. And decades later, when it came time to write A Theory of Justice, Rawls crowned it as the defining ideal of liberal democracy. Society, he states, should be conceived of and run as a fair system of cooperation.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysHow, they asked, can ordinary people in the modern world remain free and generous, despite all kinds of new temptations not to be? Capitalism, for example, entices us with shiny consumerism; democracy can lull us into conformity; and nationalism ensnares us in unearned partiality. These are social and political dangers to be sure. But early liberals also saw them as bedevilments apt to make us mean, restless, unhappy and just generally shitty people. Liberalism was the ethical and political doctrine they created to try to bring these new forces under political and psychological control.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon Essaysthey all conceive of liberalism first and foremost in ethical terms – a ‘moral adventure’, as Adam Gopnik has called it, for living well in the modern world.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysLiberals, in other words, fail to recognise not just what liberalism has become today (a worldview and comprehensive value system) but who they are as well: living and breathing incarnations of it.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysIn my book Liberalism as a Way of Life (2024), I argue that the unchurched in the Western world should point to liberalism as the source of who they are through and through. Liberalism – with its core values of personal freedom, fairness, reciprocity, tolerance and irony – is that society-or-civilisation-sized thing that may well underlie who we are, not just in our political opinions but in all walks of life, from the family to the workplace, from friendship to enmity, from humour to outrage, and everything in between.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysIf you, like me, are unchurched and don’t draw your values from a religion, then where do you get them from? From what broad tradition do you acquire your sense of what is good, normal and worthwhile in life, and – if I can put it this way – your general vibe too?
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysI believe Rawls found that thing in liberalism and the tradition of liberal moral and political thought he devoted his life to. He never stopped trying to work out how a life based on liberal ideals can be not only happy but worthy of happiness.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon Essaysto state a more fundamental question at the root of his life and thought: how is it possible for a human life – yours, mine, or any – to be worthwhile?
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon EssaysYet every single account I’ve heard from his students and colleagues attests to his genuine kindness. Decent is the word that comes up time and again, in the understated sense of unshowy goodness.
John Rawls, liberalism and what it means to live a good life | Aeon Essays