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Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸

@thatmikebishop.bsky.social

AI, forecasting, policy, social science Loves: humility, kindness, high decouplers

59 Posts164 Follower 165 Folgt

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Unsung Heroes of Fatherhood www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/uns... Hard to pick a favorite, but maybe one of these two:

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/unsung-heroes-of-fatherhood

Patrick Siegman @siegman.biz · 6mo ago

We’re back, baby!

A chart showing traffic tickets issued in San Francisco, with a sharp drop that began in 2014, hit bottom in 2022 when just a few tickets were issued, and has now rebounded almost to 2014 levels.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I think I’ll be using more Claude Sonnet 4.6 until Anthropic works out the kinks with Opus 4.7

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 6mo ago

It's extremely disappointing to see this from someone capable of much better thinking.

nilay patel@reckless.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Ben Thompson making a full-throated case for fascism here stratechery.com/2026/anthrop...

In fact, Amodei already answered the question: if nuclear weapons were developed by a private company, and that private company sought to dictate terms to the U.S. military, the U.S. would absolutely be incentivized to destroy that company. The reason goes back to the question of international law, North Korea, and the rest:

International law is ultimately a function of power; might makes right.
There are some categories of capabilities — like nuclear weapons — that are sufficiently powerful to fundamentally affect the U.S.’s freedom of action; we can bomb Iran, but we can’t North Korea.
To the extent that AI is on the level of nuclear weapons — or beyond — is the extent that Amodei and Anthropic are building a power base that potentially rivals the U.S. military.
Anthropic talks a lot about alignment; this insistence on controlling the U.S. military, however, is fundamentally misaligned with reality. Current AI models are obviously not yet so powerful that they rival the U.S. military; if that is the trajectory, however — and no one has been more vocal in arguing for that trajectory than Amodei — then it seems to me the choice facing the U.S. is actually quite binary:

Option 1 is that Anthropic accepts a subservient position relative to the U.S. government, and does not seek to retain ultimate decision-making power about how its models are used, instead leaving that to Congress and the President.
Option 2 is that the U.S. government either destroys Anthropic or removes Amodei.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 6mo ago

If we support a standard or vague agenda to slow or shape automation then most people will end up worse off than if we did nothing. At least half the Acemoglu ideas seem bad to me. However, it will become politically untenable to “do nothing” and we need a positive agenda.

Stefan Schubert@stefanschubert.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Some economists argue that we should steer AI away from automation towards 'augmentation'. In today's newsletter, I argue that this is a mistake. Governments can't steer huge societal transformations in this way. And even if we could stop automation, we shouldn't. www.update.news/p/why-we-sho...

Stefan Schubert @stefanschubert.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Very cool competition that the Financial Times held in 1914 to forecast the border changes in WWI. ‘Precisely seven years after the competition closed to entries, the FT announced: “No map sent in is even approximately accurate as compared with the final lines.”’ www.update.news/p/ai-just-is...

Tim Duffy @timfduffy.com · 7mo ago

There's a periodic poll of academic economists run by UChicago, and it recently asked them about AI and economic growth. Lots of uncertainty, but this result is slightly more bullish than I would have expected. kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/ai-a...

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Much respect to those who make predictions and publicly score them. 🫡

Rodney Brooks@rodneyabrooks.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Just published my annual predictions update, tracking from Jan 1st 2018, with new commentary and new ten year predictions. It is long. rodneybrooks.com/predictions-...

Epoch AI @epochai.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Individual AI benchmarks saturate too quickly to give us a long-run trend of AI progress. We can solve this by "stitching" them together. This lets us forecast AI capabilities, quantify algorithmic improvements, and detect accelerations in AI progress. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwiD...

A Rosetta Stone for AI Benchmarks

YouTube video by Epoch AI

youtube.com

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Ending the kidney shortage is a no-brainer. I just contacted my elected officials, Click here to take @action and do the same. actionbutton.nationbuilder.com/share/SPK-QE...

#TakeAction with ActionButton

ActionButton helps people take quick action to create powerful change.

actionbutton.nationbuilder.com

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 10mo ago

The ideal that all parents, but especially mothers, spend max time with their kids leads to a stigma against au pairs. More people should consider it. www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/we-let-an-...

We Let an Immigrant Live in Our Home

You should too, especially if you have young children

alexnowrasteh.com

Antoine Vernet @antoinevernet.com · 10mo ago

I watched @kjhealy.co's keynote yesterday. It is well worth your time if you often wonder about what a good visualisation should do, and if you are curious about how they fit or don't in a truth-challenged environment. It is funny too. I also like the 3 words slides! #rstats youtu.be/ZamPCbvBAgE?...

Trustworthy Data Visualization (Kieran Healy, Duke University) | posit::conf(2025)

YouTube video by Posit PBC

youtu.be

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 10mo ago

People often say that being good at poker requires reading tells and psychological insight, but this is mostly false. Poker AIs destroy humans despite not seeing physical tells, and with a very limited model of individual players. @clearerthinking.bsky.social @spencrgreenberg.bsky.social

podcast.clearerthinking.org - transcript

BARRY: And where the features that are relevant are easily quantified. It's easy to decide what bets to make at a casino. It is and should be formulaic. It's not so easy to decide how to play poker, because it isn't just about probabilities. You have to understand the people you're playing against and try to, in effect, see through the backs of their cards. So that adds some complexity, but you can still calculate expected values. You know that staying in on some hands is bad, chasing the odds are so far against you, and on other hands, you almost certainly have the best hand at the table. You can calculate that just by knowing the odds of various cards in a deck. But that doesn't make you a winner at poker. That's a precondition. If you can't do that, you'll never be a winner at poker. If you can do that, you at least have a chance to be a winner at poker.
Because especially as that kind of calculation gets more and more automatic, you can devote yourself to trying to read the other people at the table. And my

Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 10mo ago

I think this is kind of neat and I don't think anyone else has noticed it (I've looked and I can't find anyone who has) osf.io/preprints/so... Maybe I should back off "justification" language, but it's at least a remarkable coincidence. I still think someone else *must* have noticed it...

Title: A Justification for 80% Power
Abstract:
Cohen’s heuristic reason for choosing 80% power (balancing Type I and TypeII errors) conveniently arrives at approximately the same number as an approachwhere one maximizes the marginal gain in power per standard error reduction. Ihave yet to see someone point this out, and this is interesting because it providesa non-arbitrary justification for 80% power.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Making normies care about something is a great skill/vocation. Sadly this isn’t the skill/vocation that gets politicians elected, nor does it lead to writing popular op-eds.

jamelle@jamellebouie.net · 10mo ago

"normies do not care about this thing and so it is no use raising a stink" is imho just an excuse for not doing politics, which is the job of making normies care about something

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Why no polls in BlueSky?

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Wondering if anyone on this site wants to comment on this from @ctulocal1.bsky.social

Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 12mo ago

The pretty draft is now online. Link to paper (free): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10.... Our replication package starts from the raw data and we put real work into making it readable & setting it up so people could poke at it, so please do explore it: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the
power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles in 46 areas of the
discipline. Under generous assumptions, we show that quantitative research in political science is greatly underpow-
ered: the median analysis has about 10% power, and only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the
consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with
some being characterized by high power but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey
political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the
statistical power of political science research.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Suggestion for authors: go back to forecasters now and ask them if they’d like to update their 2030 forecasts.

Forecasting Research Institute@research-fri.bsky.social · 12mo ago

The International Mathematical Olympiad results were even more surprising. AI systems achieved gold-level performance at the IMO in July 2025. Superforecasters assigned this outcome just a 2.3% probability. Domain experts put it at 8.6%.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Charts comparing BlueSky to X would be appreciated. Almost all comparisons are of interest to me including the obvious big two categories: - user demographics - post topics

Prof Dynarski @dynarski.bsky.social · last yr.

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements This is a big deal

August 1, 2025
AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the American Economic Association on the
Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner

Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today.
The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day.
Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias.
The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity.
Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions.
We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure.

Lawrence Katz
President, American Economic Association
Katharine Abraham
President-Elect, American Economic Association
Karen Dynan
Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics
Kenneth Troske
Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

Ludger Woessmann @woessmann.bsky.social · last yr.

❓Why do the Nordics & Dutch speak English so much better than the Germans, Italians & French? ➡️ New Working Paper: Out-of-School Learning: Subtitling vs. Dubbing and the Acquisition of Foreign-Language Skills w/ F. Baumeister & E. Hanushek www.nber.org/papers/w33984 A 🧵 1/12

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · last yr.

NYC experimented with new window heat pump models in some public housing units. in winter, "The window unit-heated apartments used a whopping 87% less energy than the rest of the building’s steam-heated apartments did, cutting energy costs per household in half." heatmap.news/sustainabili...

Window Heat Pumps Could Change the Game

A new report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has some exciting data for anyone attempting to retrofit a multifamily building.

heatmap.news

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · last yr.

Happy Fête de la Fédération to those who celebrate! @franceculture.fr

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · last yr.

Most social scientists have never reflected on the epistemic virtues of forecasting.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · last yr.

Better late than never!

Gizmodo@gizmodo.com · last yr.

Joe Rogan's Trump endorsement is unraveling. He's furious over ICE raids targeting gardeners and students. He's asking if we're sliding into fascism. https://gizmodo.com/joe-rogan-feels-trump-betrayed-him-on-immigration-2000624426

Max Roser @maxroser.bsky.social · last yr.

My chart on the history of three infectious diseases — smallpox, polio, and measles — before and after a vaccine was available.

Mike Bishop 🇨🇦🇺🇸@thatmikebishop.bsky.social · last yr.

NYC mayor race needs conditional prediction markets: If [Mamdani / Cuomo] wins, what results in 2026-2027? - new housing starts - population growth - high net worth population change - rent change - student test scores - crime - police budget @manifoldmarkets.bsky.social @metaculus.bsky.social

Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · last yr.

Great New Yorker story on the development of a new non-opioid painkiller www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

The Radical Development of an Entirely New Painkiller

The opioid crisis has made it even more urgent to come up with novel approaches to treating suffering. Finally there’s something effective.

newyorker.com

Adam Bonin @adambonin.bsky.social · last yr.

Should we deport people who have lived here for many years without committing any crimes? 61% no, 24% yes. Should we should deport people as quickly as possible even if it means more mistakes, or do our best to make no mistakes even if it takes longer? Quickly: 19% Minimize mistakes: 74%