Kevin A. Bryan Profile
Kevin A. Bryan

@Afinetheorem

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Assoc. Prof. of Strategic Management, University of Toronto Rotman School | Chief Economist, Creative Destruction Lab Toronto | Co-Founder, AllDayTA

Toronto, ON, Canada
Joined February 2015
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
15 hours
The irony is that fans of the history of economic thought will know that parts of the econ faculty at U Cambridge have thought mainstream economics was the "Aeroflot of Ideas" since back when Robinson was writing pro Cultural Revolution books. So perhaps this is a compliment!.
@FT
Financial Times
@FT
1 day
How economics teaching became the Aeroflot of ideas | opinion.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
17 hours
Free speech and free inquiry is the core of university research. But that's predicated on "you trust the departments to hire deep thinkers rather than whoever shares the same radical politics as the people already there." Ending this nonsense is how we save public trust. 3/3.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
17 hours
We want univs to prosper & do good science, but *all* the depts hiring guys like this are the wacky ones, not physics or history or biology dept. Crazy that people with 30 biology pubs can't get a job, but this guy hired to teach 'decolonizing anti-racism' at elite univ. 2/3.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
17 hours
Really don't want to talk about this again. But chatted today with a great econometrician who is out of academia, and then came across this: guy is 6 years out, zero pubs in any serious journal/press, very politicized CV-> postdocs/visiting prof at Toronto, Cornell, Columbia. 1/3
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
21 hours
Since it's capitalized into price of land, allowing unlimited severance/combination + joint ownership of undeveloped neighborhood land can reach first best w/o zoning, no? If you can sever at will, highest value use wins out. Prices are an incentive and a signal, my friends.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
21 hours
Coasean/Pigouvian zoning: congestion/noise/etc. imposes externalities and other uninternalized costs (more roads/utilities per person w/ less density). Charge cost for latter. For former, allow people to buy/sell right to limit density.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
22 hours
Cool data from @_brianpotter on second homes. 1960: countryside near big city. 2025: big growth is in rural places w/ massive seasonality. Cheap but really good six months of the year: N Wisconsin, Gulf Coast, Tuscon, Alaska. I *strongly* suspect federal land out West binds here
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
1 day
Does anyone actually believe the marginal product of "people who know how to design a computer-aided task to improve productivity" is falling? Almost the opposite! Organizations that are smart should be hiring *a lot* more computer scientists. Caveat: not "coders".
@GergelyOrosz
Gergely Orosz
1 day
I am getting tired from influencers with little to no tech industry experience to write stupid stuff like this for likes. As @simonw said:. “Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry thanks to the invention of the table saw.”.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
If you think those three things are the most important policy issues, or even the biggest downside risks, of AI - and I mean this in a 'let's be real' and not a mean way - you are incredibly uninformed on the topic. Many high level decisionmakers are in the set, I'm afraid.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
90% of mainstream writing on AI is "1) encoded bias, 2) theft of copyright, 3) wasting water and electricity", ad nauseum. Gang, folks in these labs think they're curing cancer. Honestly, who gives a shit about 1, 2 and 3 given that, even if those worries were true (they aren't)?.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
It is wild how much tech journalism comes from a place of extreme hostility toward the technology. It often reads like RFK writing articles about new pharmaceutical breakthroughs. No wonder the Silicon Valley set completely ignores this!
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nytimes.com
With executive orders and an “A.I. Action Plan” to promote American dominance of the technology, President Trump declared that the United States needed to win the A.I. race.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
Come on, man. There is no way you can read that AI Action Plan and think this is the 1st order thing NYT readers should know about it. *Anthropic* is positive! AI has huge implications for natl economy, defense, future of science - half this article is about copyright.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
RT @cblatts: Tragic. Qualitative, comparative, theoretically informed (or theory generating) work in economic history is foundational. e.g.….
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
RT @mattyglesias: “Lawyers vs economics” is honestly a better summary of a lot of the factional divide than anything about ~populism~ we ke….
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
See also @deanwball, who I believe was involved with the govt report, here:
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hyperdimensional.co
A little less conversation, a little more action
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
PS: "winning in AI" means limiting harmful regs,sure, but also making it easy for best researchers to come to the US to study & work, building as much energy as possible, and being R&D leaders on batteries, chips, and other complements. Trump policy on *all 3* has been terrible.
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@Afinetheorem
Kevin A. Bryan
2 days
Mostly reasonable, and @anton_d_leicht (link below) has a nice summary for what "winning" means here (tldr: countries other than China/US should aim to make complements/components for AI stack). But: words "university", "immigration", "human capital" don't appear. That's nuts.
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