prior probability

Greetings from South America! I will be presenting an updated version of my co-authored paper “Die Adam Smith Problem” (with Salim Rashid, Illinois) on Monday morning, July 15, at a joint meeting of the History of Economics Society (HES) and International Adam Smith Society (IASS) at the Universidad de Desarrollo in Santiago de Chile. (Here is the conference program.) In the meantime, I have posted the revised draft of the paper to SSRN; see here.

This “Thank you for your thank you card” is something, I believe, my beloved Jorge Luis Borges would have loved!

On this day (11 July) in 1804, an early-morning duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton took place. To commemorate this fateful moment in North American history, I am posting below some historic odds and ends: a YouTube video showcasing the actual pistols used in the duel; a TikTok video featuring Hamilton Park in Weehawken, N.J., where this famous duel took place; and the song “Ten Duel Commandments”. P.S.: The last duel to take place in Argentina occurred in 1968! (See here and here; second link in Spanish.)

Yesterday (9 July) was Argentina Independence Day, which my daughter Adys Ann and I celebrated by visiting the Museo Evita in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires. Later today (10 July), we will attend an informal talk or charla on my favorite Argentian writer, Jorge Luis Borges, as well as make a pilgramage to Borges’s former flat on Calle Maipú #994, among other things. In the meantime, here is Evita’s Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Perón

FYI: The Bluebook is a collection of incredibly complex and convoluted citation rules used by most U.S. law journals. (Think of Dante’s Inferno, but for footnotes!) I have proposed an alternative set of simpler rules, which I call “Anti-blue“, here.

I just finished reading Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason (book cover pictured below), which was written by my fellow lawyer-historian Buckner F. Melton, Jr. (As an aside, it’s true this work wasn’t on my summer reading list, but I couldn’t help myself after finding a used copy of this tome for $1(!) at this lovely bookshop in my hometown last week.)

For me, one of the most remarkable aspects of the “Burr Conspiracy” is that historians still disagree about about the extent of Aaron Burr’s involvement in this enigmatic plot and what his true aims were. Perhaps Burr’s nefarious conspiracy would be a great test case for our proposed World Truth League! More details about this new information market are available in this short (16pp.) white paper/prospectus; in the meantime, everyone is welcome to join the world truth league waitlist here: https://worldtruthleague.com

I am posting my third link to Twitter in as many days because I could not find this catchy song, “Incentives Matter” (hat tip: Tyler Cowen), on YouTube:

Are you tired of being lied to by op-ed pundits and TV talking heads? Would you like to see their opinions put to the test? Then join the World Truth League! You can join a team and make forecasts or hindcasts, which will then be aggregated over multiple rounds until a consensus emerges. More details are available in our short (16pp.) white paper/prospectus; in the meantime, join the world truth league waitlist here: https://worldtruthleague.com

A bunch of these silly GPT-5 memes popped into my Twitter feed last month, so I thought I would pass one along. Also, happy 11th anniversary to my blog!