iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Today, I have texted the King of Sweden: Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Prize in Economics even though I have 8 PLUS great publications, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of economics, but can now think about whatever comes to mind.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

The sudden passing of John Leahy reminds us of life’s fragility and of the importance of distinguishing what truly matters from what does not.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

John Leahy, the chair of Michigan’s economics department, has suddenly passed away. I deeply mourn his loss. He was exceptionally smart and humorous, but most importantly, he had deep empathy. It is so difficult to process what happened. May he rest in peace.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

On Saturday, protests in the US will demand "no kings." The Rose asks in its new release, "O," that "Until the day the king resigns//let kingdoms fall for dreams to rise." www.youtube.com/watch?v=Busw...

youtube.com

The Rose (더로즈) — O | Official Live Performance Video

YouTube video by The Rose

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Reposted by Tilman Börgers

Andrew Kosenko @andrewkosenko.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Werner Von Braun would like a word. Also, do the Manhattan Project. Von Neumann, Fermi, Szilard, Wigner - and Einstein, whose letter got the ball rolling. To name just a few. Or American mathematics: Courant, Kac, Lax, Wald...

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Pope Leo joined X today, but I can't see him on Bluesky. He needs to be encouraged to use alternatives to X.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

My sense is that I have no idea what future college teaching, or future research, will look like, once systems like ChatGPT have matured. (I should have had, but strangely did not have, a similar sense of big unknown future developments when the internet, and mobile internet access, were invented.)

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

One thing that has surprised me is how confidently ChatGPT cites results from maths books which, when I look those books up, don't actually exist.

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Reposted by Tilman Börgers

Corinne Low @corinnelow.com · 10/04/2025

Educating international students is a massive export of services. They pay us money earned in a foreign nation for a product the US has, until now, had an absolute advantage in. We cannot effectively sell these services if these students can be deported, detained, and even kidnapped at random.

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Lawrence H. Summers @larrysummers.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

I am profoundly saddened and alarmed by Columbia University and Paul Weiss law firm’s capitulation to the increasingly dictatorial Trump administration.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Jörg Oechssler and Georg Weizsäcker have created a new opportunity for us to donate for Ukraine: yourcontributionsquared.eu/en/

yourcontributionsquared.eu

Your Contribution Squared

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

The new US administration seems set o join the group of authoritarian regimes that don't respect the law, internationally and internally. This Episcopalian bishop's sermon yesterday was a beautiful expression of the worry that many people have. www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

pbs.org

WATCH: 'Have mercy' on LGBTQ+ communities and immigrants, Episcopal bishop asks Trump

The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, ended her sermon with a direct appeal to President Donald Trump.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Can you elaborate? In which way is the understanding of AI "shallow"?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

The September 11 attacks in the US in 2001; the July 2005 attacks on the London underground which I experienced directly; the November 2015 attacks on Paris; the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; the rise of the caliphate in Syria and Iraq; it all seems a sequence of related tragedies.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

I read Emmanuel Carrère's "V 13" over the holidays. It is a remarkable re-telling of the trial of the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015. It prompted me to look back at some aspects of the history of first quarter of the 21st century:

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Let me re-phrase: do you think it is pure coincidence that coin tosses tend to produce evenly distributed results, or is it the result of some objective reality, and we can usefully describe that reality using probabilities?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

(Creamer-McLean is not a non-existence result.) The fact that two modeling approaches both imply counterintuitive results does not tempt me into thinking that I have to affiliate myself with one of them.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

If probabilities are purely subjective, then no auction is expected revenue maximizing with risk neutral bidders. The mechanism designer can improve upon any auction by further exploiting differences in bidders' subjective probabilities.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

I want to assail the fortress :) Is it pure coincidence that people's probabilities for some events are closely aligned, whereas for other events people differ widely? Relatedly: If probabilities are purely subjective, wouldn't we expect to see more betting than we do in practice?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Why not relitigate the common prior assumption? Isn’t it fun?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

My sense is that having strong opinions on notation is a good way to make one’s life as a theorist unhappy.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

But if beliefs are part of the representation of preferences, is there a justification for common priors? And without common priors, don’t some parts of economic theory make some very counterintuitive predictions?

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Nageeb Ali @snageebali.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Paper worth reading: "The Optimality of Majority Rule" by Nina Bobkova. It offers a new perspective on why simple majority-rule may be best: it not only aggregates information but it also motivates voters to learn about what really matters. Link: drive.google.com/file/d/1pVVE... #polecon

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Shengwu Li @shengwuli.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

I wrote an intro to the literature on simple mechanisms. Out now in the JEP. It’s a short (14-page) plain-language summary, designed to get students to the research frontier. 📈📉 pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/...

pubs.aeaweb.org

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Your argument implicitly assumes a larger set of states of the world. I interpret "who won Michigan" only as a message, not as potentially payoff relevant.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

I think what this conversation illustrates is that Blackwell dominance depends on how we define states (not US states ... but "states of the world.") If I fix that there are only two states of the world" Harris won, or Trump won, in a sense I fix what is potentially payoff relevant and what is not.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Suppose there are only two relevant states of the world. One signal reveals it. The other one does not. Doesn't the fully revealing signal always Blackwell dominate all others?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

More generally: according to the literature, the less informative binary signal is less costly than the more informative binary signal, and therefore the less informative binary signal has better chances of being heard. This seems counterintuitive!

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Suppose you didn't know who won the election. Two options: (i) I tell you whether it was Trump, or it was Harris, (ii) I don't tell you the winner, but I tell you who won Michigan. According to the rational inattention literature, (ii) has better chances of catching your attention than (i).

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

I wonder whether it is relative or absolute disadvantage that determines which job in the Trump government one gets. In any case, I qualify in both respects for many government jobs!

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

My view is that it would be useful to define what it is that we want to learn from citation counts ("impact" is perhaps a too vague phrase), and to examine which evidence leads us to believe that citation counts inform us about what we want to know.

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Which role should Google Scholar citation counts play in tenure reviews? What are people's experiences, and opinions?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

The provision of spaces for online interaction seems a public good. Some providers offer such spaces as a byproduct with the main intention being something else, such as political influence. Maybe some public policy intervention would be jusfied?

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Tilman Börgers @tilmanborgers.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

The newly published collection of hundreds of letters by Oliver Sacks includes three letters to his cousin Robert Aumann. Sacks brings up religion, evolution, consciousness, rationality ... Sacks even, politely, acknowledges game theory. Only letters from Sacks, no letters to Sacks are published.

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