when_creaks's comments

Encouraging. However, it isn't clear from the article at first glance (or the deeper analysis being referenced) how electricity consumption by power source is changing.

In other words, as an example, a 10% increase in solar power generation does not necessarily mean that there was a 10% increase in electricity consumption where that electricity was generated via solar.

i.e. It is entirely possible for a growing solar fleet to generate more power during the middle of the day than previously, and simultaneously for not all of that increased power to be used / usable.

The article makes reference to the Jevons paradox.

This paper about LLM economics seems relevant:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34608

Quote: "Fifth, we estimate preliminary short-run price elasticities just above one, suggesting limited scope for Jevons-Paradox effects"

In your opinion which society / nation / government in human history is closest to your ideal of how things should be?

For ease of reference the author cites the following studies in his article in support of his argument that elites shape political views, culture and norms:

1. "Elite Influence on General Political Preferences"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266731932...

2. "Exploring the direct and indirect effects of elite influence on public opinion"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

3. "Trickle-Down Preferences: Preferential Conformity to High Status Peers in Fashion Choices"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Not the OP. Just want to add that it takes years of work to become an Eagle Scout. Usually at least two, but often three to five. Don't want to assume too much without clarification but feels a little uncharitable to imply that that level of effort is without value and/or not worthy of recognition.

I worked for a higher-ed startup that was heavily involved in the textbook space for a little over 5 years. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to the high price of textbooks. Some of those factors are:

• The principle / agent problem - Instructors naturally select the course materials for their own courses but typically never need to pay for their own instructor copies. In essence instructors are making decisions for which they generally bear no cost, but which do impact costs for students. Compounding this problem is that, surprisingly often, instructors did not actually know the cost of the materials they selected.

• The cost structure problem - Instructors will sometimes select a textbook to use for a course for only a year, but often they'll use a textbook for longer than a year. Using the same textbook for two to three years for a course isn't uncommon. This has implications re: how much revenue is at stake for a publisher for each textbook sale.

For example - if an instructor is teaching a particular course twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall), and they use the same textbook for 2 years in a row, and each course has roughly 30 students - then a publisher selling an instructor on a $200 textbook has a value of:

4 courses * 30 students * $200 = $24,000

Or, roughly the cost of some cars. With this kind of revenue on the line for each sale it makes sense for publishers to develop a nation-wide, high touch, hands on, sales force. And a friendly, knowledgeable sales person can be more persuasive during the course materials selection process than a worthy (but distant) affordable textbook initiative that doesn't have an in-person advocate.

• The content discovery problem - Part of the reason why publishers resort to sales teams is because they don't really have any good alternatives. There isn't a great platform for higher ed content discovery. Instructors who want to survey what content might be available for their course have a limited amount of time to make a decision, that decision has large consequences (their entire course might have to be redone for example), and there often isn't very good info about higher ed content (what are the learning outcomes associated with this content? what is the resale value of this content for the student? what do other instructors think about this content? etc.).

• The transient pain problem - Most students complete their college education in 4 - 6 years, which means that (for most) the pain of high textbook prices is temporary. In other words - the pain is temporary for the cohort that would probably be most motivated to solve the problem.

That newscientist article is a bit old (from 2007) but seems to support sz4kerto's claim that income is correlated with IQ.

“Each point increase in IQ test scores is associated with $202 to $616 more income per year,”

That study claims that the income increase associated with higher IQ doesn't necessarily translate into increased average wealth though as other life style factors may offset the increased average income.

This study isn't dispositive but I think it's reaching towards the sort of empiricism you're looking for.

"If It's Hard to Read, It's Hard to Do: Processing Fluency Affects Effort Prediction and Motivation"

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.200...

This post is well written, sourced, and highlights some of the tricky issues involved. Why is this post down voted?

+1

As societies become more wealthy fertility rate tends to drop below replacement levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

Quote: "The higher the degree of education and GDP per capita of a human population, subpopulation or social stratum, the fewer children are born in any industrialized country"

Although not an expert I've never seen a realistic individual and/or corporate tax rate that would generate enough revenue to enable UBI. Is there one?

"We've got about 400 people in this room.... Imagine if dinner was carted into this room, and four people got half the food. The night would end in violence," Anand Giridharadas told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed at a public event hosted by the Samara Centre for Democracy."

Effective altruism is clearly an important topic but this is a pretty bad analogy. If we're discussing billionaires a (slightly) better reformulation of the analogy would be something like:

"We've got about 400 people in this room... Imagine if there were 40,000 meals carted into this room and four people got 39,000 of those meals"

However, this reformulation is also pretty bad. The way both of these are phrased "dinners" are basically a stand in for "dollars" (or whatever your currency of choice is) - and while "dinners" are generally perishable, "dollars" are not.

Setting those quibbles aside - how did Anand come to his diagnosis of the problem, and what is Anand's proposed solution? There's so little detail in this article that I'm honestly scratching my head.

As a thought exercise - how would Anand fill in the blank for a statement like "The world should follow the shared government, community, and decision making model of <insert_location_here>"?