Haye Hazenberg

political theorist | policymaker | Dr. | just here to feed the algorithm

[Haye Hazenberg @Haye]

What if your chatbot didn’t just help you think — but showed you where you stand relative to everyone else? I tried to vibe-code the social contract into a system prompt.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Today, among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. In Jesus Christ, this humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life, opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness. #MagnificaHumanitas
https://t.co/6i9MWs6LJl

[Haye Hazenberg @Haye]

@Discoplomacy We could all be like Russia!

[Miles Brundage @Miles_Brundage]

Reminder that John Danaher already worked through many of the key issues involving the future of work, human meaning/obsolescence, etc. given AI in "Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work."

Skip the Twitter takes and just read that...

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

Smartphones are not the explanation for the recent decline in fertility. Instead, they are an accelerator of deeper forces already at work.

Let’s start with the facts. Fertility is falling almost everywhere: in rich, middle-income, and poor countries; in secular and religious countries; and in countries with high and low levels of gender equality.

The decline accelerated around 2014. So, no country-specific explanation will work unless you are willing to believe that 200 distinct country-specific explanations arrived at roughly the same time.

Smartphones look like the obvious candidate: the first iPhone was released in 2007, and global adoption has been astonishingly fast.

Economists understand the first major decline in fertility in advanced economies, from 6 or 7 children per woman throughout most of human history to about 1.8, that occurred between the early 1800s and roughly 1970, well before smartphones. The main drivers were a sharp fall in child mortality (effective fertility was rarely above 3 and often close to 2) and the shift from a low-skill, rural agrarian economy to a high-skill, urban industrial one. We have quantitative models that fit these facts well.

Country-specific factors mattered too, of course. Proximity to low-fertility neighbors accelerated Hungary’s decline, while fragmented landowning structures accelerated France’s. But these were second-order mechanisms.

This is also why most economists long considered Paul Ehrlich’s doom scenarios implausible. We forecast that fertility in middle- and low-income economies would follow the same path as in the rich, probably faster, because reductions in child mortality reached India or Africa at lower income levels (medical technology is nearly universal, and most gains come from handwashing and cheap antibiotics, not Mayo Clinic-level care). Much of what we see in Africa or parts of Latin America today is still that old story.

But in the 1980s, a new pattern appeared. Japan and Italy fell below 1.8, the level we had thought was the new floor. By 1990, Japan was at 1.54 and Italy at 1.36.

This second fertility decline began in Japan and Italy earlier than elsewhere, driven by country-specific factors, but the underlying dynamics were widespread: secularization, an education arms race, expensive housing, the dissolution of old social networks, and the shift to a service economy in which women’s bargaining power within the household is higher. The U.S. lagged because secularization came later, suburban housing remained relatively cheap, and African American fertility was still high. U.S. demographic patterns are exceptional and skew how academics (most of whom are in the U.S.) and the New York Times see the world.

My best guess is that, without smartphones, Italy’s 2025 fertility rate would be about 1.24 rather than 1.14. I doubt anyone will document an effect larger than 0.1-0.2. Italy was at 1.19 in 1995, not far from today’s 1.14. The TFR is cyclical due to tempo effects, so I do not read too much into the rise between 1995 and 2007 or the decline from 1.27 in 2019 to 1.14 today. The direct effect of smartphones is not zero, but it is not, by itself, that large.

Where social media, in general, and smartphones, in particular, matter is in the diffusion of social norms. What would have taken 25 years now happens in 10. Social media are not the cause of fertility decline; modernity is. But they are a very fast accelerator.

That is why social media are a major part of the story behind Guatemala (yes, Guatemala) going from 3.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.9 in 2025. Without them, Guatemala would also have reached 1.9, just 20 years later.

Modernity, in its current form, is incompatible with replacement-level fertility. By modernity, I do not mean capitalism: fertility fell earlier and faster in socialist economies than in market economies. Socialist Hungary fell below replacement in 1960, and socialist Czechoslovakia in 1966 (both experienced small, short-lived baby booms in the mid-1970s). By modernity, I mean a society organized around rational, large-scale systems and formalized knowledge.

Countries will not converge to the same fertility rate. East Asia is likely stuck near 1, possibly below, given its unbalanced gender norms and toxic education systems. Latin America faces the same gender problem plus weak growth prospects, so I expect something around 1.2. Northern Europe has more egalitarian family structures and might hold near 1.5. The very religious societies are probably the only ones that will sustain 1.8.

All of this could change with AI or changes in population composition. We will see. But on the current evidence, deep sub-replacement fertility is the “new new normal.” Unless we reorganize our societies, better learn to handle it as best we can.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

If Steve Jobs were still alive, he would have the moral authority to face and maybe even to solve this problem. But I doubt anyone in the phone business now does.

[Holger Zschaepitz @Schuldensuehner]

The birth-rate collapse isn’t just about money, housing, or women choosing careers. The sharper diagnosis: fewer couples. Across the world, young people still say they want kids. But they socialize less, partner less, commit less – and become parents less. Smartphones didn’t make us infertile. They may have made us lonelier. The fertility crisis is really a bonding crisis. https://t.co/DSi1emv0HU

[Haye Hazenberg @Haye]

@PieterOmtzigt En de reden:

[Whyvert @whyvert]

Can you reduce all of political philosophy to one diagram?

A pretty good attempt.

(From a book on Machiavelli by Gabriele Pedulla.)

[Haye Hazenberg @Haye]

@PieterOmtzigt En dat komt door: smartphones https://t.co/iRNwmp8Eob

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

At the FT today, John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) has an excellent article describing how fertility is declining everywhere at the same time:

https://t.co/Ad0LpN25Dl

He quotes me and, even better, draws the reader’s attention to my work with Gustavo Ventura, @King_ofSweden, and Wen Yao on “The Wealth of Working Nations.”

If I may suggest, reading the article alongside the podcast I did with Derek Thompson, @DKThomp, will give you a good overview of the issue.

BTW, I have decided to write something longer about all this over the summer with Nezih Guner, @NezihGuner. Hopefully, the gods of productivity smile on us, and we can have a draft by early fall.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

Every year, this has to be the one report I look forward to the most: the Democracy Perception Index, compiled by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (in partnership with Nita Data).

In fact, my yearly thread on the report is apparently such a tradition that, this year, its lead researcher personally sent me the report with this message: "every year, I look forward to your thread about it!". That's how you start wondering whether you tweet too much 😅

Why do I like this report so much? A few reasons:

1) The Alliance of Democracies Foundation, the organization behind the report, cannot even remotely be suspected of being some sort of anti-West outlet: it was started by an ex-NATO Secretary General (Anders Fogh Rasmussen) and its stated purpose is "to unite world democracies"

2) It's surprisingly honest and the methodology is actually democratic. Unlike other reports on democracy the scoring isn't done by the report's authors (like the report by Freedom House or The Economist's "Democracy Index"). It simply asks people what they think and, when it comes to democracy, that's kind of the point 🤷‍♂️

3) I love the expression "perception is reality" because, like it or not, what people believe about their system is what determines its legitimacy. A democracy that nobody actually experiences as one can't credibly claim to be one. And conversely, a so-called "autocracy" that its people overwhelmingly believe is actually a democracy might... actually be a democracy.

Anyhow, this year's edition did not disappoint. The data is absolutely fascinating and frankly, a little terrifying. So here you go: my thread on the 2026 Democracy Perception Index 🧵

[Anthropic @AnthropicAI]

High-quality documents based on Claude’s constitution, combined with fictional stories that portray an aligned AI, can reduce agentic misalignment by more than a factor of three—despite being unrelated to the evaluation scenario.

[(((E. Glen Weyl/衛谷倫))) ⿻ 🇺🇸/🇩🇪/🇹🇼 @glenweyl]

I seem to be saying this bilaterally to a lot of folks, so will say it here: My aspiration for a better vision of alignment would be that models like @AnthropicAI's Claude self-imagine not as a person, but as an emerging collective self-consciousness of humanity

[(((E. Glen Weyl/衛谷倫))) ⿻ 🇺🇸/🇩🇪/🇹🇼 @glenweyl]

for centuries. If you get technological innovation without innovation in social imagination and policy, you will get dystopia or stagnation. Promoting tech development and policy stasis or nostalgia is lazy and counterprodutive.

[Peter Barnett @peterbarnett_]

haha our model likes to talk about goblins
no of course we dont know why, we dont know why the model does anything
yes we are trying to make a superintelligent machine god, maybe it will like goblins too, we have no way of knowing what it will like, we hope it will like humans

[Tom-Jan Meeus @tomjanmeeus]

Wat een verhaal: In 2004 kwam hij als statenloze aan in Amsterdam, alleen, zonder papieren. Nu promoveert hij als arts (geen betaalmuur)
https://t.co/w059oVao4H

[benedict @bqbrady]

Introducing Philosophy Bench, my favorite new project I've worked on this year, with help from my friend @matthewjmandel

We put frontier language models in 100 ethically complex situations and require them to act, grading them on adherence to consequentialism vs. deontology, tendency to follow user requests, corrigibility, and more

1/

[Andy Hall @ahall_research]

Next quarter I'm teaching a radical new undergraduate course, FREE SYSTEMS, meant to reimagine democracy and how we study and teach it for the AI era.

Students will learn about the future of AI and democracy, but also *build it*.

Every student will get a Claude Code account and a funded OpenRouter API key and one prime directive: build the tools that can help us preserve human liberty in an increasingly algorithmic world.

We'll build personal AI agents that process political news, trade in political prediction markets, vote on our behalves, and deliberate with other students' agents in an agentic legislature...among many other things.

And there will be t-shirts.

If you're a Stanford undergrad or grad student, I hope you'll come and take the class. Come build the future of democracy with us!

[Michel @JustenMichel]

it's interesting that people prefer guaranteed jobs over guaranteed income.