Weekly Selection

Why innovators are almost always strategic copiers. Central banks and the macro-economics of climate change. What China might do to prop up Putin, and why. The potential perils of AI’s increasing capacity to code for itself. The joy to be gleaned for self by being kind to others.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

ARTICLE OF THE WEEK

Peter Coy, If There Are No New Ideas, How Do We Keep Innovating?
(The New York Times, 24 April 2023)
This begins with Mark Twain’s famous quote: “substantially all ideas are second hand, consciously or unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.” In a new book entitled “Think Bigger: How to Innovate”, the academic Sheena Iyengar makes the very same argument: thinking bigger is simply about assembling old ideas in a new way. She argues that all successful innovators are “strategic copiers,” who “learned from examples of success, extracted the parts that worked well, imagined new ways of using those pieces, and combined them to create something new and meaningful.” Sobering but true – it’s the combination of ideas that matters (gifted article – reads in 6-7 min).
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François Villeroy de Galhau, The role of central banks in the “macroeconomics of climate change
(Banque de France, 24 April 2023)
A great primer! At a time when it is no longer possible to seriously question the severe effects of climate change, the role of central banks in this area is become an increasing focus of discussion. The governor of the French central bank makes a few points: (1) The “Neither magic wand, nor ostrich policies” means that central banks cannot curb climate change on their own (a carbon tax is required), but equally cannot ignore what’s going on because climate change already affects the level of prices and activity. (2) It sheds some interesting light on the “veil of uncertainty” facing central banks – worth looking at the graph on 5-y scenarios and why negative-supply shocks are more likely than other kinds of shocks -negative and positive (free access – reads in about 15 min).
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Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage, How China Could Save Putin’s War in Ukraine
(Foreign Affairs, 26 April 2023)
A US perspective on why “a defeated Russia is not in China’s interest.” China has three broad interests regarding the war in Ukraine: (1) To prevent Putin’s downfall (“Russia with Putin at the helm is a valuable asset for China”; (2) To prevent a clear Ukrainian victory –a tribute to the US international order and a blow to China’s aspirations for a new global order with Chinese (or Chinese-Russian) characteristics; (3) To ensure it has a meaningful stake in the aftermath of the war. All this suggests that if the war continues to go badly for Russia, China will prop up Putin. Read on to get a sense of what scenarios and their implications might be (metered paywall that may require prior registration – reads in 10-12 min).
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Pia Malaney, Markets and Artificial Intelligence
(INET, 24 April 2023)
A rich, dense (but at times a bit arcane), perspective on the history, politics and economics of AI that eventually leads to this question: what happens when we fuse, for the first time, AI agents into either our market or political structures? In future stages of AI development, Malaney argues that we may reach a threshold where AI’s ability to think for itself finally becomes an issue. “As we have seen that AI can already write code, it could potentially search for ways to rewrite its directives, objective functions, and constraints” (metered paywall – reads in 10 min+).
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Arthur Brooks, Make Yourself Happy: Be Kind
(The Atlantic, 27 April 2023)
Kindness (being good to others) is underrated, yet abundant academic research shows that being prosocial raises happiness, and more so than treating yourself. And it goes both ways: the scientific evidence also shows that happier people tend to be kinder. As the host of the How to Build a Happy Life podcast observes: “In short, for the sake of your own well-being, there are good reasons to try to be kind” (metered paywall that may require prior registration – reads in 6-8 min).
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