#AcademicRunPlaylist - 10/29/24

I'm really enjoying my new Lina Khan shirt, and I while I didn't listen to any antitrust talks today I still did get a bunch of other interesting talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was a great talk by Diyi Yang on why LLMs are highly specific to a constrained social context and the implications for LLM generalization at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. As long as you skip the training with LLMs part at the end I highly recommend the talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_976GzdEd40

Next was a nice talk by Ming Yin on measuring how humans respond to algorithmic predictions and how to improve the system overall (with the extremely problematic experimental choice of granting parole) at Stanford University https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SckGKtuG5Ek

Next was an interesting talk by Molei Tao and Yuqing Wang on diffusion model generation quality quantification at the Simons Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSulNENqizU

Next was an engaging panel on how conflicts of interest impact the discounting of scientific studies with Filippo Lancieri and Luigi Zingales at the Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU7EnP9xLrw

Next was an intriguing talk by Les Valiant on logic frameworks for reasoning at the Simons Institute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvLUo0xiSxg

Last was "Slavery's Capitalism," edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman. This book brings together a great group of scholars to analyze the economic aspects of slavery from a variety of perspectives - the development of modern management, building Northern wealth, building legal jurisprudence, and more. It's impossible to walk away from this book without a deep appreciation for how profoundly slavery was and in many ways still ingrained in the foundations of American society.

While some of the chapters are more of a historical play by play, many of the essays engage in probing analysis of slavery's influences on economic practices. For me the standout was the chapter by Daina Ramey Berry on human capital and enslaved mortality. Highly recommend https://www.pennpress.org/9780812224177/slaverys-capitalism/