Analysis

What are the Best MR Posts?

From the Archives–written by ChatGPT. This ranking judges posts on reasoning, originality of framing, explanatory power, intellectual stimulation, timeliness, and how much they accomplish in their...

Links 11/7/2026

Western Democracy Was Always a Managed Oligarchy. Now It’s Breaking

How democracies under stress are showing their true oligarchy status.

‘I Heard a Barnacle’ – How Paying Attention to Nature’s Background Noise Can Reveal Animal Secrets

The too-often-neglected importance of sound in nature and scientific investigation.

The Anthropic succession plan?

Anthropic’s version is rather more elaborate. Each of its seven co-founders will maintain a confidential, ranked list of up to ten people who may eventually inherit that founder’s membership and...

Was Mossadegh a liberal, democratizing force?

One reads and hears so many times that Iran was on the path to democracy until a CIA coup installed the Shah in 1953. It turns out that account is quite wrong, as is detailed by Simon Sebag...

An AI Boom Reversal: Mechanics vs. Economics

Suppose the AI capital investment boom recedes as asset valuations deflate. Some thoughts on implications. First, as has been well discussed, the capital investment surge is offset — in terms of GDP...

Business Cycle Indicators: Employment Grows

Key indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, as well as alternative indicators: Figure 1: NFP employment (bold blue), civilian employment with smoothed population controls...

Coffee Break: Fake Medicine, Cancer Vaccines that Work, and an Update on Bigfoot and Democratic Politics

Part the First: How Do You Identify a Vanity Institution? Last week we discussed an alternative medicine clinic in Switzerland in which several patients died after alternative therapies. These...