Interessant3 #142 | 💥AI Boom, 🧠Truth Shifts, 🧬Caste-by-Choice
Three Interesting Things for W/C 2025-05-25
The posts for June will be released over the next couple days, with regular programming resuming from Sunday onwards.
1. Tamay Besiroglu & Lennart Heim – “Explosive Growth from AI? A Review of the Arguments”
🚀 Can AI trigger tenfold economic growth? This review parses the case for a world where “digital labour” scales output like never before.
🧮 Classic growth models predict acceleration if AI automates labour, capital, and R&D - removing the last bottlenecks to scale.
⚠️ However, alignment problems, regulatory drag, and diminishing returns in R&D could slow or stall this trajectory.
🪙 Physical constraints (like energy and land) seem overstated- there’s room to grow, especially with efficiency gains.
🎯 The authors estimate even odds for explosive growth this century - but emphasise deep uncertainty and a need for more empirical study.
🔗 Explosive Growth from AI? A Review of the Arguments – Epoch AI
2. Segun T. Aroyehun et al. – “Computational Analysis of US Congressional Speeches Reveals a Shift from Evidence to Intuition”
🧾 Analysing 145 years of US Congressional speeches, this study finds a long-term decline in evidence-based language since the 1970s.
⚖️ The shift towards intuition - language rooted in belief, emotion, and subjective judgement - correlates with rising polarisation and inequality.
📉 The ‘EMI’ score (evidence-minus-intuition) sharply drops after a 1975 peak, tracking a fall in legislative productivity.
📊 Regression models show that lower EMI scores precede higher inequality, hinting at a feedback loop of poor discourse and policy inaction.
📺 Media logic and performative politics may be replacing deliberative reason -potentially weakening democratic institutions.
🔗 Computational Analysis of US Congressional Speeches Reveals a Shift from Evidence to Intuition – Nature Human Behaviour
3. Arctotherium – “Non-Linear Ethnic Niches: The emerging Western caste system”
🧬 Across industries like motels, nail salons, and trucking, tight-knit immigrant groups dominate sectors with no natural ethnic affinity.
💰 Success hinges on informal finance, family labour, and language-based hiring - creating de facto ethnic cartels in fragmented low-margin markets.
🔁 These niches often stifle competition and innovation, leading to economic efficiency in the short run but stagnation in the long term.
🧱 The broader critique: non-linear ethnic niches fracture national markets and revive kin-based economies - a regression from Western individualism.
🌐 Comparing to India, the article warns that continued immigration could entrench caste-like economic structures in the West.
🔗 Non-Linear Ethnic Niches – Aporia
Join us next week for three more intriguing topics that challenge the norm and expand your horizons! ✌️
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