iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

24. Send encouraging emails at the end of the semester to relevant students. 25. Smile (see principle #2).

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21. Sitting in on colleagues’ lectures for the same course is useful. 22. Teaching dialectically and showing the history of thought is useful. 23. Get student buy-in on the electronics policy.

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17. Ensuring students get reps in is important. 18. Cold calling is useful. 19. Connecting to current events is useful. 20. Teaching centered on questions may be useful.

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14. “See the other side”: help students understand the perspective of other students. 15. Considering extreme cases is usefully clarifying. 16. Rapid feedback is important.

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12. Teaching facts and encouraging memorization of facts is underrated. 13. Simple, decisive empirical moments are both more memorable and plausibly more important evidence than fancy complicated evidence.

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9. It’s okay or may even be good if learning feels painful. 10. Repetition is important. 11. Consistency is important, e.g. in notation and terminology.

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7. Each and every theory must be presented back by empirical evidence, not passed down as wisdom of the ancients. 8. Inoculation is an important part of the job: against appealing-but-wrong ways of thinking; and against popular-but-wrong “facts”/memes.

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4. Teaching is hard because of the curse of knowledge. 5. Teach in multiple ways. 6. Keep it simple – but that doesn’t mean easy: teach fewer things but teach them more deeply.

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Basil Halperin @basilhalperin.com · 04/02/2026

Some teaching principles: #econsky basilhalperin.com/essays/teach... 0. Have extreme empathy. 1. Grading should be predictable. 2. Enthusiasm matters! Show that you care – channel your enjoyment! 3. Actively solicit feedback. ...

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Bonus: thoughts on math You can also subscribe here 🤠 basilhalperin.substack.com/p/some-princ...

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Basil Halperin @basilhalperin.com · 04/02/2026

Some excerpts, starting with goals...

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Basil Halperin @basilhalperin.com · 04/02/2026

New post: Some principles for teaching basilhalperin.com/essays/teach...

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For more, check out the website: stripe.events/fellowship We invite graduate students and early-career researchers who are interested in studying the economics of AI to apply – ***regardless of prior experience working on the topic*** #econsky

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I very much wish to thank Patrick Collison, Emily Glassberg Sands, and the team at Stripe for their generous support of this initiative – I am honored to be a part of it

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We welcome researchers interested in any aspect of the economics of AI, broadly defined. We are particularly interested in research that: 1. is focused on the economics of *transformative* AI 2. is forward-looking 3. is expected to be of durable importance, and 4. moves fast :)

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What you’ll get: – $10k, and you should ask for more if you have a reason – a conference in SF in a few months with senior economists and AI developers – opportunity to access Stripe data and/or work with its customers – a community of fellow nerds

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Andrey Fradkin @andreyfradkin.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Introducing the Stripe Economics of AI Fellowship: The economics of AI remains surprisingly understudied. The fellowship aims to help fill that gap, by supporting grad students and early-career researchers with $, data, a conference, and community –

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Reposted by Basil Halperin

In the latest episode of our podcast, Justified Posteriors, we discuss whether interest rates should rise in anticipation of AGI (as predicted by @basilhalperin.com). Our priors are quite different! Do check it out. empiricrafting.substack.com/p/if-the-rob...

empiricrafting.substack.com

If the Robots Are Coming, Why Aren't Interest Rates Higher?

Transformative AI, Existential Risk, and Real Interest Rates

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Basil Halperin @basilhalperin.com · 26/02/2025

(thanks for these great posts!)

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Anyway Tom’s post is very poetic and deeply resonant personally with my own experience pushing Greek letters around, check it out

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“When I’m trying to concentrate on something my weasel thinks of something I could order on Amazon.” During the worst periods of modeling ( = early in a project) I have to block everything – not just the news or the blogs or the obvious stuff, but Amazon, Instacart, Wikipedia...

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“On a good day it’s like swimming in cold water. I don’t want to get in but once I’m in I don’t want to get out.”

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“If it’s writing or programming I can just bring up a window and type away. If it’s deriving things then my mind is constantly drifting” [more I would say about this^ offline]

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Tom relatedly talks about a jungle metaphor: “When you’re programming you get incremental feedback: you can see the mountain peak and you’re slowly getting closer to it. With proofs you’re going through the jungle and you don’t know if you’re getting closer or farther away...”

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You might be trying to explore an infinite, pitch black space of zero value… …or the light switch might be 1 foot in front of your face. It’s so hard to tell! The cold uncaring uncertainty is what drives you [rather, me] mad

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- …or maybe you even find a wall, but you feel and feel over the wall, you haven't found a light switch yet, you don't know if you should keep searching here or go try to find another wall - …or there may be no walls, no light switches in ANY direction!

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- but the nearest wall might not be in that direction - …or there might not be any wall in that direction, you may be stumbling into nothingness, forever

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Doing theory research is like: - being in a dark room trying to find a light switch - sticking out your hand, hoping to bump into a wall first, to then grope towards a light switch - and not knowing which direction to walk to find the nearest wall – randomly picking a direction…

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Funnily enough, the metaphor I’ve always felt for the process of doing theory is also about a dark room, but somewhat different:

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Basil Halperin @basilhalperin.com · 06/01/2025

The best piece I've read on “what it feels like from the inside” to do theory research: “Like going through a room in the dark grasping for a door handle.”

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Trump tariff proposal reportedly reduced to only cover “critical” security imports — Leopold Aschenbrenner has an old, interesting alternative to these tariffs: Minimal *quotas* for critical goods — idea being Weitzman/Hayek meets geoeconomics: www.forourposterity.com/the-economic...

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won't someone think of the predoc wages 😞

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Tbf econ has gone pretty far in this direction already

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I like the optimism but — meetings/emails/grants, famously the parts of the job that profs love the most!

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Basil Halperin @basilhalperin.com · 04/01/2025

Soo no discussion of this Tyler post on “The future of the scientist in a world with advanced AI” because it’s too depressing or? “The humans will gather the data” 😬

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If only there had been an untweeted control session 😩

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🤖 bsky.app/profile/basi...

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need an RCT to know whether tweeting about an AEA session actually increases attendance: ***Policy implications of transformative AI*** -- for those interested in AI, policy, or their intersection... tomorrow at 2:30!

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from Daniel, Klos, and Rottke (2024) ARFE kentdaniel.net/papers/unpub...

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