10th Selected Links

Some links for your weekend perusal:

1. For all you Bayesians out there: 'The Road to Wisdom', a cute 8-line poem by Danish polymath Piet Hein.

2. 'More Is Different', the classic 1972 paper on emergence by Nobel laureate Phil Anderson.

3. 'Age dynamics in scientific creativity'. Benjamin Jones and Bruce Weinberg studied the age of scientists when they do their breakthrough work, analysing the complete set of Nobel Prizes given between 1901 and 2008 in physics, chemistry, and medicine. In the early days of the Prize, future Nobel scientists were on average 37 years old when they made their prizewinning discovery. Since 1985, that average has risen to 47 years. (I interpret this finding as supporting evidence of the Great Stagnation: ideas are getting harder to find.)

4. Hayek on Keynes: "He was one of the most intelligent and most original thinkers I have known, but economics was just a sideline for him."

5. Seamus Heaney's 70th birthday speech. Its best line and message (p. 4): "We should keep our feet on the ground to signify that nothing is beneath us, but we should also lift up our eyes to say nothing is beyond us."

Have a nice weekend,


Joe