Jason Hartline

Springer publishes a P ≠ NP "proof" and Eric Allender has words to say.

blog.computationalco...

I was the AEA's President Elect as the first Trump term began. We worried about government statistics then, and appointed a committee that included members (such as Google's Chief Economist) who might be in a position to help make reliable statistics available if the government went dark.
#econsky

Opinion | What to Do When the President Acts Like a Five-Year-Old?

Nobel prize winner George Akerlof (my former colleague) on the firing of statistics officials:

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/o...

August 1, 2025 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations Statement from the American Economic Association on the Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today. The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day. Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias. The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions. We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure. Lawrence Katz President, American Economic Association Katharine Abraham President-Elect, American Economic Association Karen Dynan Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics Kenneth Troske Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing

As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements

This is a big deal

Some say Trump is destroying BLS because he says he doesn't like the "phony numbers." But Chamath knows the truth: Trump is just really mad that firms and households sometimes take too long to answer surveys, which has implications for measurement error, even attenuation bias if on a model's RHS

"... They were exploring who they were authentically in the world, and they were witnessing something in the film that they had never seen before; that there is an alternative way of being." --Barry Bostwick (a.k.a. Brad). 2/2

"It started out as a gay event … The audience were outcasts, in a way, from their own society. They found their family there. They found someplace to go and be seen..." 1/2

‘Everybody was fondling underwater!’: an oral history of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at 50 Mick Jagger wanted to play Frank-N-Furter, Susan Sarandon got pneumonia, and the cast were wet and half-naked most of the time. Richard O’Brien, Barry Bostwick, Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell tell t...

Happy 50th to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". www.theguardian.com/film/2025/ju...

Paula and her committee

Paula defending her dissertation

Congratulations Dr. Paula Kayongo for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation!

"Behavioral Information Design for Forecasting Dashboards: Equilibria, Mechanisms, and Calibration"

Thanks to her stellar committee: @jessicahullman.bsky.social, @mjskay.com, and Annie Liang!

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump.

Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt.

Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

COMSOC 2025 workshop on Computational Social Choice, Vienna, Austria, 17-19 September 2025.

Econ-CS-PoliSci conference
#econsky #CS
marketdesigner.blogspot.com/2025/07/coms...

I think the point of the quoted was to move from the push model to the pull model, and to only pull letters if they would be pivotal.

I'd guess the real reason not to is that it delays the process too much. Because people mostly wouldn't respond to letter pulls quickly.

Feeling good being a doctor 🙂

We may have the chance to hire an outstanding researcher 3+ years post PhD to join Tarleton Gillespie, Mary Gray and me in Cambridge MA bringing critical sociotechnical perspectives to bear on new technologies.

jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

Good to see some universities standing up for american and academic values. Thank you George Mason University president and faculty.

Yifan giving Jason a figurine holding a "best advisor award"

Figurine in Jason's likeness holding a best advisor award.

It was wonderful, but not easy, to try to keep up with the many projects that have gone into your formulation of Trustworthy AI, @yifanwu.bsky.social. Thanks for being patient and teaching me so much!

Photo of Yifan Wu and her committee.

Congratulations to Dr. @yifanwu.bsky.social for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation!

"Trustworthy AI: Foundations from Proper Scoring Rules"

Thanks to her committee: @jessicahullman.bsky.social, Bobby Kleinberg, and Annie Liang.

bsky.app/profile/jaso...

Three dashboards are depicted. Allocation Rule, Utility Curves, and Heatmap.

Dashboards are visualizations of uncertainty. We compared:

1. allocation rules (probability of winning as function of bid).
2. (hypothetical) utility curves (for selected values, as function of bid).
3. heatmap (showing utility on a grid of bid,value pairs).

Each are depicted in this figure.

New paper (w. Paula Kayongo, @jessicahullman.bsky.social) on bidding dashboards as might be used in online marketplaces (like ad auctions).

(a) even bidding against a dashboard, massive under-shading as also observed in auctions.

(b) showing direct payoff relevant info improves bidding a lot.

Nuffield Postdoctoral Research Fellowships Deadline: Tuesday, 30 September 2025

The @nytimes.com says: "The Bull Market for Economists Is Over." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/b....

But Oxford Econ Dept & Nuffield College continue to offer their prestigious 3-year postdoc in economics! 👏 🎯

Deadline 🚨 30 September 🚨 to get offer by Xmas 🎄: economics.web.ox.ac.uk/nuffield-pos...

A slide saying: I'm going to show you 30 cards, one at a time. You cannot write down anything, or use anything, only your memory. There is a card which appears more than 15 times. Which one is it?

Giving a talk to high school students tomorrow at @sydneycompsci.bsky.social. The part on streaming algorithms is going to be fun!

Analyzing Live Social Data: Exploring Social Trends on Bluesky Bluesky provides a public firehose that we can stream into Materialize, through which we can observe live social behavior and trends.

We have a new blog post up at @materialize.com about analyzing the Bluesky firehose (Jetstream, really) through Materialize. You can grab a copy of the community edition of MZ and follow along, or invent your own ways of looking at the data, live!

materialize.com/blog/analyzi...

Harvard Is Said to Be Open to Spending Up To $500 Million to Resolve Trump Dispute

Harvard, we are counting on you to stand up for American universities and values. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

In light of Columbia's capitulation to the Trump regime's illegal and extortionate demands, I have resolved not to write for Columbia publications, speak at Columbia events, or perform other free labor for a university that has repudated its values.

3d.laboratorium.net/2025-07-25-c...

As I said in another thread, obviously AI will be used in reviews in the figure and at such a point, trying to influence the AI improperly should be considered unethical. However, we should really ensure that the AI isn't manipulable before we use it like this.

ElicitationGPT: Text Elicitation Mechanisms via Language Models Scoring rules evaluate probabilistic forecasts of an unknown state against the realized state and are a fundamental building block in the incentivized elicitation of information and the training of ma...

Basically, yes, LLMs are not so good at completing large tasks. However, turning large tasks into micro tasks and combining the results with algorithms, produces reliably good outcomes. This is related to the field of Human Computation, I called it "Algorithmic AI" in a recent paper (below).

Try this tool instead: bsky.app/profile/beng...

For example, this tool: bsky.app/profile/beng...

Definitely a good idea to use the tools to help fix your writing. Even human reviewers make mistakes in understanding that the tools can help you correct by pointing out potential points of confusion.