For the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, we’re revisiting why Adam Smith’s ideas still matter today.
Two economists explore different lessons from Smith’s work:
@PeterBoettke highlights Smith’s insight that prosperity rests on institutions.
Donald Boudreaux explains why Smith’s critique of mercantilism remains relevant in modern debates about trade and wealth. 🧵
🚨BREAKING: MIT hooked people up to brain scanners while they used ChatGPT.
What they found should concern every single person reading this.
ChatGPT users showed 55% weaker brain connectivity than people who didn't use it. Not after years. After just four months.
Here's how they tested it. 54 people were split into three groups: one used ChatGPT to write essays, one used Google, and one used nothing but their own brain. They wore EEG monitors that tracked their brain activity in real time across four sessions over four months.
The brain-only group built the strongest, most widespread neural networks. Google users were in the middle. ChatGPT users had the weakest brains in the room. Every time.
Then the memory test hit. Participants were asked to recall what they'd just written minutes earlier. 83% of ChatGPT users couldn't quote a single line from their own essay. They wrote it. They couldn't remember it. The words passed through them like they were never there.
It gets worse. In the final session, ChatGPT users were told to write without AI. Their brains were measurably weaker than people who never used AI at all. 78% still couldn't recall their own writing. The damage didn't go away when the tool was removed.
Meanwhile, brain-only users who tried ChatGPT for the first time? Their brains lit up. They wrote better prompts. They retained more. Their brains were already strong enough to use AI as a tool instead of a crutch.
The researchers also found that every ChatGPT essay on the same topic looked almost identical. More facts, more dates, more names. But less original thinking. Everyone using ChatGPT produced the same generic output while believing it was their own.
MIT gave this a name: cognitive debt. Like financial debt, you borrow convenience now and pay with your thinking ability later. Except there's no way to pay it back.
The question isn't whether ChatGPT is useful. It's whether the price is your ability to think without it.
A remarkable repetition of history: HS Kimon, Hellenic Navy's new frigate now sent to Cyprus to protect it from Iranian drones with its missiles, is named after the Athenian general Kimon, son of Miltiades, who sailed to Cyprus in 450 b.C. with 200 triremes to fight the Persians.
Trump, Obama, Bush, Approval on February 12, Second Year of Second Term
🔴George Bush: 42.6%
🔵Barack Obama: 42.5%
🔴Donald Trump: 42.1%
RealClearPolitics Polling Average
VIDEO: DBU student's quick thinking helps stranger in Oak Lawn
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DALLAS - A Dallas Baptist University student's quick thinking may have saved a man's life in Oak Lawn Tuesday night.
Emma Dilley tells FOX 4's David Sentendrey she and her friends were driving through Oak Lawn in Dallas Tuesday night when they saw a man lying on the street with a crowd of people around him. The man was lying near the intersection of Lemmon Avenue and Douglas Avenue.
She pulled over and saw the man was unconscious and not breathing. "I got on the scene and I checked his pulse, and it was very faint. I actually thought he was dead when I got there, but I re-did the pulse, and it was just a very faint pulse," Dilley said.
"A bystander told me that he had been flagged down by this man saying he was having an asthma attack and just collapsed on the ground — and he had his inhaler next to him, so I figured that was the most logical explanation," she explained.
Dilley said she's known CPR since she was a high school freshman. Now a freshman at Dallas Baptist University, she said that training was quite useful on Tuesday night.
"I figured I needed to put others before myself, and so I just hopped out and did CPR," she told Sentendrey.
Cell phone video shows Dilley taking action moments after she hopped out of her car. She performed CPR on the man despite never having performed it on a human before.
"I want to go into healthcare, so I figured I’d use it at some point, but definitely didn’t think I’d use it in college," Dilley said. She's a pre-med biology major at DBU who hopes to be a doctor in the NICU one day.
The man revived during Dilley's second round of chest compressions. First responders arrived within minutes of Dilley performing CPR and took over medical care.
Does Dilley think she saved his life? "I think I did. I tried my best," she told Sentendrey. "But I’m just glad I was there to help and be there for him."
Dallas Fire & Rescue did not have an update on the man this evening. He was taken to a local hospital after the incident.
"There is one only physician, of flesh and of spirit, generate and in generate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and Son of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord" (Ignatius, "The the Ephesians").
Friends, I hope I can help someone with this. If you get a call, email, or text claiming you are in some kind of crisis or under a government penalty or owe a fine or whatever, go into maximum suspicion mode. Generally speaking, the government will communicate with you via mail. If the person speaking to you demands rapid action, they are almost surely committing fraud. If they tell you not to talk to anyone else, it's a fraud. If you feel you are under intense pressure, it is almost surely a fraud. If anything like this happens, pick someone shrewd and run it by them.