The value of knowing is not always positive

An interesting article by Ciancio et al. (2025) which examines the impact of learning one has HIV when no treatment is available. When there is no treatment available for a life-threatening disease, providing personal health information could lead to despair or fatalistic behaviors resulting in negative health outcomes. We document this possibility utilizing an experiment…

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The Silicon Curtain Descends on SB 1047

By MIKE MAGEE Whether you’re talking health, environment, technology or politics, the common denominator these days appears to be information.  And the injection of AI, not surprisingly, has managed to reinforce our worst fears about information overload and misinformation. As the “godfather of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton, confessed as he left Google after a decade of…

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Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson win 2024 Nobel Prize in Economics

The Nobel Prize committee summarizes their contributions as follows: Some countries become trapped in a situation with extractive institutions and low economic growth. The introduction of inclusive institutions would create long-term benefits for everyone, but extractive institutions provide short-term gains for the people in power. As long as the political system guarantees they will remain…

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