Economist, thinker, father. Science begets opinion. Views expressed here are my own. Retweets do not imply endorsement.
Lexington, VA
Joined May 2010
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.@AmericanAir what’s going on with AA725? Can you let us know if the flight will be cancelled and put us on another airline or get another plane in. I know technical difficulties happen. But it seems we are bearing the brunt of a maintainance failure!
Everyone is debating whether AI is good or bad.
That's the wrong question.
Here's a better one: what does AI actually make cheap?
Among other things, it makes watching almost free. And we have been arguing about cheap watching for a great deal longer than we've been arguing about AI.
In 1791, Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon — a prison that works not because someone is watching, but because no one inside can ever be sure they're not. The mere possibility of the eye does the work. People police themselves. Bentham sold it, sincerely, as efficiency and mercy: one guard doing the work of a hundred.
Sound familiar? It should. AI is the Panopticon with the price tag removed. The tower used to be an expensive building. Now it's software — near-free, invisible, and it fits inside a badge or a browser tab.
(Yes, I lean on Foucault to make this point, which pains me — I've long filed his politics under "nihilism in a very well-tailored turtleneck." But you don't have to buy a man's whole worldview to borrow his sharpest observation, and on the surveillance state he was, annoyingly, correct.)
Here's what the tech debate keeps missing: cheap watching books its savings immediately and in plain view — and hides its deepest costs, on trust, on judgment, on the free human self, exactly where no spreadsheet will ever go looking.
So the question was never whether AI is good or bad.
It's who holds the camera.
And whether the watched can look back.
New three-part series. Part 1 is live. 👇
#AI #Surveillance #PoliticalEconomy #Institutions #TechPolicy
Cheaper Eyes open.substack.com/pub/ecatin…
.@Prada Subpar service in flagship Galleria Milan store. Shipping charge on an expensive coat to Ireland. Seriously? Even your online shipping delivery is free. Why isn’t there a uniform company policy? #unethical
atin basu retweeted
Week 6: The theory paper in focus this week is the iconic "Electronic mail game" by @ArielRubinstein. It is characteristic Rubinstein---communicating a big idea with elegant simplicity. It brought into focus failures of common knowledge, by extension failures in coordination.
atin basu retweeted
🚨 Former head of the Wikimedia foundation and current CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher: “The Wikipedians who write these articles aren’t focused on finding the truth. For our most tricky disagreements, seeking the truth isn’t the best place to start. Reverence for the truth might have become a bit of distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting important things done.” 🤦♂️
Donate to help me raise much-needed funds for #menshealth this #Movember – for all the dads, brothers, sons and mates in our lives. Stop men dying too young. movember.com/m/15323755?mc=6
atin basu retweeted
Don't miss out on this gentle introduction to Python for economists. Individuals with an approach to data through the viewpoint of the economic discipline--wishing to discover Python--would do well to check this out. egallic.fr/Enseignement/Pyth…
People hide preferences till they don’t. Why? It’s important because preference cascades emanate from tipping points that can create enormous change.
open.substack.com/pub/yascha…
Good intentions that violate economic principles harm people. It’s not enough to have good “ends”, the “means” and the context also matters in a system of ethics. #Economics helps people be more ethical. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Respecting individual agency as a social norm is the basis of market exchange and economic success. #Economics #TeachEcon #econtwitter
#LiverpoolFC rocks in so many ways!
atin basu retweeted
My paper, "Usury Enforcement as an Alternative to Capital Taxation in Pre-Modern States" is now forthcoming at Public Choice. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.…
Yet another example of .@robkhenderson’s luxury beliefs coupled with sheer incompetence.
As independent India turns 78, the freedom at midnight remains gendered. A young doctor's life was brutally taken. @jhatkaadotorg demands Justice and safety for all! Sign here: bit.ly/3M6hlFa
#KolkataDoctor #WestBengal #
atin basu retweeted
10 research gap types and how to bridge them
ALT Mindmap by Lennart Nacke based on Miles, D. A. (2017, August). A taxonomy of research gaps: Identifying and defining the seven research gaps. In Doctoral student workshop: finding research gaps-research methods and strategies, Dallas, Texas (pp. 1-15). Expanded research gaps.
Why aren’t Democrats more popular? Why is this a close race? .@tylercowen has some answers. marginalrevolution.com/margi…
