Michael Evans

I teach & conduct political science research, seeking a healthier democracy.

[Daron Acemoglu @DAcemogluMIT]

Dear followers,
I am delighted to share this Nature essay on the alternative to AGI. Thank you

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

Cognitive psychologist Dan Willingham: "Students should only use AI for things they already know how to do well." https://t.co/yX4n0iGiZL

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

@IlyaSomin I think this is an underrated element of constitutional design. That their particular plan for ensuring the selection of "fit characters" didn't work is not a reason to give up on the project altogether. We now seem constituted to nearly guarantee selection of *unfit* characters.

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

I was there!

[𝚁𝚒𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚎 𝙱𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚝𝚜 @RichieBucketsUK]

Might legit be the best throw I’ve ever seen from any baseball player ever. Hell it might be the best throw in ANY sport that involves throwing.

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

@IlyaSomin @AP4Liberty You probably also think he should have done more to promote foot voting and less to promote hand voting. ;-)

[Isaac Saul @Ike_Saul]

I know a lot of people have already posted about it. But it's really just... I don't know. The president is selling 6-figure access to his social media feed so Wall Street algorithms can beat you to the punch and fleece you before news even hits your phone. He's making millions on a system designed to give a massive advantage to major corporate traders who can afford a feed that gives them information first. It's the single most corrupt thing I've ever seen a politician do with their office. Literally.

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

The man should never be trusted with power over human lives. Let him go to Mars. Don't let him anywhere near government on Earth.

[Katie Miller @KatieMiller]

Therapy has become incredibly dangerous for societal bonds.

In a new study, 1/3 of parents believe their child won’t speak to them because of a therapist’s influence.

This is how countries weaken and fall apart.

Rome didn’t fall primarily because of barbarians at the gates. It fell because loyalty, duty, bonds, and the birth rate collapsed. When the Romans lost the traditional family, its societal structure that fostered mutual support fell.

Therapists are creating a mental health crisis by actively encouraging patients to cut off their families.

When communities are no longer connected, they become unrecognizable to their people.

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

@megbasham He probably agrees with more of what Reagan stood for than you do.

[Gabriel Sterling @GabrielSterling]

Again, every contest on every ballot in GA has been reviewed and compared to the election outcomes. Of the 1.11 million ballots cast, there were only 23 discrepancies…all 23 were on hand marked paper. Again showing hand marked is less reliable than Ballot Marking Device ballots.

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

@RichardHanania Most Europeans don’t lack air conditioning because they lack American-style capitalist values. Most lack air conditioning because most usually don’t experience sweltering heat.

[David Axelrod @davidaxelrod]

It's actually mind-boggling that @JDVance would say Watergate would be a "10 hour story" today.
Just to review, Nixon's aides authorized a break-in of the DNC HQ to install bugging equipment--in a caper foiled by a night watchman, who called police. They then enlisted the CIA to mislead the FBI that the break-in was related to a probe of malign foreign actors.
The entire operation was paid for by a slush fund controlled by the WH.
The WH also enlisted the IRS to probe hundreds of Nixon's political enemies.
The AG, the WH COS and several other top aides all were convicted and served time for their involvement in the crimes and coverup.
Nixon was caught on his own secret tape system conspiring with them but was pardoned a month after he resigned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
That Vance thinks this would be a "10 hour story" today speaks volumes about the moral and ethical degradation of the Trump era.

[David French @DavidAFrench]

The reason why Watergate would be a 12 hour news story today is that Trump is so corrupt that Nixon seems almost quaint by comparison. Heck, the Guilded Age guys are kicking themselves for being born in the wrong century. There's much more dirty money to be made now.

[Daron Acemoglu @DAcemogluMIT]

Dear followers, I would like to share this new working paper.
https://t.co/orOij1jAlO
It’s a theoretical exploration of the political consequences of pervasive automation. The worrying implication from the analysis is that the combination of rapid automation and redistribution used in order to quell discontent doesn’t seem stable – more automation necessitates more and more redistribution. This creates a natural complementarity between pervasive automation and repression as the method of choice for holding pitchforks at bay – a particularly concerning conclusion as AI is expected to lead to a lot more automation in the years to come.

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

So one of the "core objectives" for the conflict he started was to end the conflict he started.

The second was to open a waterway that was open when he started the conflict (and may not stay open without the Iranians being able to charge "fees" for "services").

And the third -- preventing Iran from ever getting a nuclear weapon -- is at best incomplete and not necessarily more complete than it was on February 27.

[Michael Evans @USCivitas]

@GabrielSterling It would take someone over 2,000 years spending 1 million dollars per day to reach $1 trillion. No one should be trusted with that kind of power. James Madison, for one, thought that kind of extreme private wealth / power would not be compatible with a healthy republic.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

Destroying confidence in the electoral system and other pillars of democracy (media, courts) is their goal, it’s not just pathetic whining. Then they use that lack of confidence to push strongman powers, restrictive voter suppression laws, and other crackdowns.

[Bob Elder @southernphd]

I never met Gordon Wood, but I have a story about him.

In one of my grad school seminars, we read Wood’s Creation of the American Republic. The sheer erudition and evidentiary depth of the book bowled me over.

Back then, before kids and before life accelerated to warp speed, I used to call my mother every Sunday to catch up. Lots of times, we ended up talking about what I was reading that week in my grad seminars or for leisure. Mom had an omnivorous mind, and she was always looking for something else to read. She was a true intellectual—curious about almost everything, always eager to integrate new arguments or ideas into her existing schemas of how the world worked or to have those schemas challenged and changed.

When we talked that particular Sunday, I think I tried to describe to her part of Wood’s argument about the relationship between the state constitutions during the Articles of Confederation era and the federal Constitution. Maybe I was tired, maybe I didn’t completely understand her questions, but the end result of the conversation was that Mom had questions about Wood’s argument that I didn’t answer satisfactorily. I told her that she should probably just read the book, and we said goodbye.

She did eventually read the book, but the next Sunday, Mom started our conversation by saying, “Well, I had a lovely conversation with Gordon Wood this week.” For a split second, I thought she was joking, but then I remembered who I was dealing with. I started to sweat. “How?” I asked. A whole variety of unlikely scenarios in which the foremost historian of the American Revolution and my mother, who lived in Wichita, Kansas, might have met ran through my mind. “Oh, I just looked up his office phone number on Brown’s website and called, and he picked up!” Mom said. I decided I would have to find another profession.

As it ended up, Gordon Wood spent about an hour on the phone with my mother answering her questions about the Constitution. Ever since, I’ve had a soft spot for the man when I imagine him picking up the phone in Providence and finding Becky Elder from Wichita on the other end of the line. His generosity in that moment spoke very well of him.

Rest in peace, professor.

[Valerio Capraro @ValerioCapraro]

Students without access to LLMs are 2 to 8 times more creative than students with access.

That is the finding of a new paper comparing 2,200 college admissions essays written by humans before ChatGPT with essays generated by GPT-4.

The key point is not individual creativity. GPT-4 can write well, sometimes better than individual students. The problem is collective creativity.

Each new human essay added new semantic territory. New ideas. New angles. New experiences. New combinations.

Each new GPT-4 essay added much less.

The authors call this the diversity growth rate: how much novelty each additional text contributes to the collective pool of ideas.

Humans kept expanding the pool. GPT-4 made the pool converge.

Even when the authors pushed GPT-4 to be more creative, changed parameters, or used chain-of-thought prompting, the homogenizing effect remained.

This is the real danger of AI in education.
Not that students will write worse.
That everyone will write the same.

*
Full paper in the first reply

[Andy Hall @ahall_research]

@alexolegimas Yeah great point — that also makes me think there’s two separate pieces to this. One is how the economy shapes up; the other is how a power seeking government can use AI to entrench itself faster than a democratic populace can use the same tech to empower itself.