Andrew Whitby

Data scientist, author THE SUM OF THE PEOPLE. Prev. @worldbank, @nesta_uk, @UniOfOxford. I'm interested in things.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

Twitter hiatus. No plan to return soon. Not going anywhere else instead. Contact details in profile. Reasons, in part: https://t.co/d4G7JZJr1a

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@jscarto @CoreyHermanson Even so, since the change of ownership the range of voices that I find valuable declined greatly. This impression is greatly amplified in “for you,” which the app just randomly switches to every so often.

While it might be a neutral platform in theory the result is not.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

Air conditioning yes, but how much do you want to bet “heat deaths” are recorded differently in each place.

It’s not like you can autopsy a body, find some “heat” in a major organ and make your finding. Unlike, say, gun deaths.

[Werner Zagrebbi🇦🇿 @zagrebbi]

As summer comes into view, always remember that more Europeans regularly die in heat waves than Americans die in guns violence.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@lymanstoneky I like that your justification feels more resistant to coercive policy, but ultimately I find the macro/religious/mystical arguments for more kids stronger on their own terms.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@lymanstoneky I admire your consistency on this individualist justification, but then: people don’t have as much, money, housing, PTO, free time, exercise as they want (the latter couple, /because/ I have children). They’re optimising under a finite budget. So why focus on children especially?

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@lymanstoneky @tylercowen @AlexNowrasteh “Steady” is doing a lot of work here. There *is* a long decline on this chart. There is a long term trend in this chart. You can decompose it into segments with separate explanations: fine that’s the science. But to assume that in describing the data is begging the question.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@BradWilcoxIFS It doesn’t match actual risk taking behaviors does it?

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@BradWilcoxIFS Does this series previously being lowest in the late 1970s pass any kind of cultural gut check? Unless it’s some kind of Vietnam effect, but then what about the girls?

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@phl43 @itaisher I’m just wondering what his tea pot is doing back on earth.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@lymanstoneky You make this sound very black and white. But don’t you think that whatever measures you would support to close the (outcome-preference) gap would also change preferences? (Even if only through peer effects.)

So is it only ok for policy to influence preferences unintentionally?

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@DKThomp Yup. This is why I don’t really buy that “realized fertility < desired fertility” is a special policy problem to be solved. People also have less housing, holidays, lifespan etc than desired. Things have opportunity costs. People make trade offs.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

“Written by Jessica Winter and read by an automated voice”

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

Jessica Winter has been raising her children to detest A.I. Then her daughter’s public middle school began receiving Google Chromebooks, which came pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini, a suite of A.I. tools. “When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: ‘Help me write,’ ” Winter writes. “If she is starting work on a slide-show presentation, the prompt is ‘Help me visualize.’ She shoos away these interruptions, but they persist: ‘Help me edit.’ ‘Beautify this slide.’ ”

Proponents of generative A.I. in elementary and middle schools argue that such early exposure will foster digital-media literacy, and prepare them for a future in which most professions are steeped in A.I. But the technology also poses significant cognitive and social-emotional risks to young people. Read Winter’s report about A.I.’s infiltration into schools—and what it could mean for young minds: https://t.co/xaIqbeGRnl

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@MattZeitlin FWIW before it was a company Google was project BackRub.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@mrianleslie Software development is particularly amenable to agent workflows because over the last few decades “every change requires review” has been pretty institutionalised, but that is by far not the case across all of business.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@mrianleslie Take an example like the “security questions” flow. Secure systems probably do not display the answers to the rep, but I’ll bet many do, because it’s a phone conversation so needs to tolerate misspellings etc. Do you give that discretion to a manipulable agent?

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

Twitter, 2025. Glad the bots problem got solved.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

Twitter hiatus. No plan to return soon. Not going anywhere else instead. Contact details in profile. Reasons, in part: https://t.co/d4G7JZJr1a

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@jscarto @CoreyHermanson Even so, since the change of ownership the range of voices that I find valuable declined greatly. This impression is greatly amplified in “for you,” which the app just randomly switches to every so often.

While it might be a neutral platform in theory the result is not.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@maththrills No thanks

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@robinhanson @dasanil You could make an argument that cancer treatment either is itself, or creates the market demand for, cancer research.

Much like current deployed AI is pretty wasteful (and often useless) but may be the path by which we get to better AI.

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

Sigh. https://t.co/j6CLLqVeFw

[Andrew Whitby @EconAndrew]

@mattyglesias I kind of wonder: if we cut, say, maintenance of the nuclear arsenal by 35%, do we live to fight another day? Most of us, I guess, sure. That’s a pretty low bar.