Diamonds are whose friend?

AI speed and Culture. Barthes on intertextuality and reader as the centre Mined Diamonds as diminishing cultural value. Theatre: Kyoto (play) thoughts, non-fiction drama. Sustainabilty. Links.

• Home education: Naomi Fisher, Peter Grey

• AI: how it’s developing fast

• AI/Culture: Barthes on intertextuality and reader as the centre

• Culture: Mined Diamonds as diminishing cultural value

• Theatre: Kyoto (play) thoughts, non-fiction drama

• Trump policy as cultural war

• Economics: Trade-offs in minimum wage policy

• Sustainability: Hannah Ritchie podcast (redux), substack and disaster stats

• Sustainability: UK home solar and heat pump set-up

• Events: EV + Friends UnConference (26 April); Nature Tech UK UnConference (28 March)

Links: Home school life (Catherine Oliver), family life + writing (my cousin Felicity Yeoh), sober coach life; Why north of England is poor; How UK coal won in the industrial revolution (Anton Howes); on reading literature (Patrick Collison)

Welcome to all those recent joiners to the newsletter. If you are interested in the education strand then check out my podcast with Naomi Fisher on self-directed education with a UK perspective and also Peter Gray with a US view. The pod with Daisy Christodoulou on the importance of knowledge in education (and also video assisted referees) is also good here.

I have been thinking a lot about obesity, AI, climate and cultural change. As separate subjects! I think these trends are important in the world today.

Tyler Cowen (MR) makes this point on the latest AI models:

Often I don’t write particular posts because I feel it is obvious to everybody. Yet it rarely is. …

o1 pro is the smartest publicly issued knowledge entity the human race has created (aside from Deep Research!). Adam Brown, who does physics at a world class level, put it well in his recent podcast with Dwarkesh. Adam said that if he had a question about something, the best answer he would get is from calling up one of a handful of world experts on the topic. The second best answer he would get is from asking the best AI models.

Except, at least for the moment, you don’t need to make that plural. There is a single best model, at least when it comes to tough questions (it is more disputable which model is the best and most creative writer or poet).

I find it very difficult to ask o1 pro an economics question it cannot answer. I can do it, but typically I have to get very artificial. It can answer, and answer well, any question I might normally pose in the course of typical inquiry and pondering. As Adam indicated, I think only a relatively small number of humans in the world can give better answers to what I want to know.

In an economics test, or any other kind of naturally occurring knowledge test I can think of, it would beat all of you (and me).

Its rate of hallucination is far below what you are used to from other LLMs.

Yes, it does cost $200 a month. It is worth that sum to converse with the smartest entity yet devised. I use it every day, many times. I don’t mind that it takes some time to answer my questions, because I have plenty to do in the meantime.

I also would add that if you are not familiar with o1 pro, your observations about the shortcomings of AI models should be discounted rather severely. And o3 pro is due soon, presumably it will be better yet.

The reality of all this will disrupt many plans, most of them not directly in the sphere of AI proper. And thus the world wishes to remain in denial. It amazes me that this is not the front page story every day, and it amazes me how many people see no need to shell out $200 and try it for a month, or more.

Me: On the front line of investing, I am seeing signs of this impact starting everywhere. The best AI models are now very good (University graduate level in all subjects) and are on the cusp of being able to recursively learn (some say can already to an extent). Miss this trend at your peril.

That said, I still think that what Daisy Christodoulou argues on knowledge is correct. You need to know enough to ask the right questions and do the right research, but if you do then getting expert answers to those questions is now very cheap.

I’m also more neutral as to its (potential negative) impact on creativity. There are puts and takes. I think the value we assign creativity is complex and will continue to have large value even in a world where AI enables human creativity more. It’s not only the surface level features of art that count, and AI I think at least for now still struggles with originality (to the extent we want originality).

Triggered by dipping into Kate Brigg’s novel Long Form

(a novel that intricately weaves the daily experiences of new motherhood with a profound exploration of the novel as a literary form. Set over the course of a single day, it follows Helen and her infant daughter, Rose, as they navigate routine activities—feeding, resting, and moving through their shared space.)

I’m re-reading Roland Barthes who argues that no text is truly original - all text is interconnected - and places the reader (or the audience) as the centre of meaning.

(Barthes emphasized that all texts are connected and that meaning arises from their relationship to other texts, an idea known as intertextuality. He argued that authors do not create meaning in isolation but rather remix cultural codes, linguistic structures, and previous works. Barthes placed the reader at the heart of textual interpretation, not the author. He argued that each reader brings their own background, experiences, and cultural knowledge, shaping the meaning of a text in different ways.)

This bring me to thinking about the colour pink and the value of diamonds or gold. In history, pink was not a girl’s colour (certainly in the 1800s pink was not a girl’s colour in fact young boys sometimes wore pink because it was considered a lighter version of red, a color associated with masculinity and military uniforms as I know from my old very British boys school where pink is our school colour) .

The value of gold is in part separated from its functional and industrial utility value.

The idea that diamonds symbolise love (although had roots in the 15th century via Archduke Maximillian and then Victorian England) really started to take off in 1947 with the De Beers marketing campaign of a “Diamond is forever”.

Before De Beers, many proposed without a ring or with other gem stones.

De Beers:

• emotionally linked diamonds with eternal love, making them seem like the only appropriate stone for engagement rings.

• The message was that diamonds should never be resold—ensuring that supply remained low and demand stayed high.

• The campaign targeted young men, convincing them that buying a diamond was a necessary, romantic investment.

Celebrity Engagement Rings:
De Beers worked with Hollywood studios and magazines to showcase stars wearing large diamond rings. This made diamonds aspirational—if glamorous movie stars had them, every woman wanted one.

• Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Grace Kelly all flaunted diamond rings, setting trends. Films featured proposals with diamond rings, further reinforcing the expectation.

Product Placement in Films & Ads:

• De Beers made sure romantic films showed men proposing with diamond rings.

• They paid magazines to feature engagement ring advertisements that targeted young couples. Their ads reinforced that "good men" spent two months' salary on a diamond ring (this was also invented by De Beers!).

Of course this was not in a vacuum. The economic and geopolitical backdropped helped.

• After World War II, the U.S. and much of the Western world experienced an economic boom.

• Soldiers returned home, got married, and had disposable income to spend on rings.

• The idea of the "nuclear family" (husband, wife, kids, house) became the ideal, and an engagement ring was part of that tradition.

I think it is a fair argument to make that without De Beers, diamond engagement rings wouldn’t be nearly as popular today. Their marketing, Hollywood influence, and psychological messaging convinced millions that a diamond ring was the only way to propose.

Thus people find it odd that I proposed with a handmade wooden ring and a special sea shell being the sometime contrarian that I am.

In the 2010s, diamonds made in the lab became available at lower prices.

The price of lab-grown diamonds fell by 50-70% between 2016 and 2023, making them significantly cheaper than natural diamonds.

Add in:

Consumer Shift: Younger generations, especially millennials and Gen Z, prefer lab diamonds for their affordability and ethical benefits (no mining, no "blood diamonds").

From a biophysical point of view, a human can not tell the difference between a lab diamond and a mined diamond.

The value is cultural.

This shift in cultural value first in the 1950s towards diamonds, and today away from mined diamonds to lab grown and other alternatives I see as shadowing what can happen in parts of the climate change transition.

If there are good economic alternatives, and a cultural values story that aligns then society can shift.

I saw the play Kyoto based on the Kyoto Treaty agreement and the run-up to that agreement. There is now a decent body of theatre work which tackles non-fiction policy and geopolitics in a live theatre dramaturgy (as different to what you can find on Netflix).

I would place Chris Thorpe’s trilogy, most recently on Family Business (on nuclear disarmament) as a sibling to this play. And shows like Enron, Lehman Trilogy as cousins (and works like Serious Money as distant cousins, you could include Death of a Salesman in the historic bucket here).

I’m not doing a deep review but highlight 3 aspects.

• The emphasis on the power or word choice

• Direct to audience speech is used effectively

• Theatre specific moments feel satisfying (as oppose to what can be re-created on tv)

There is a running idea on how important choosing the correct words in the protocol is. The addition or not of [ ] square brackets, the correct word for [discernable] human impact on climate change. This idea is explored by playwrights (and poets) to a deep degree. More so than some other creatives, I think.

Caryl Churchhill takes this to an extreme in some plays where words are replaced

(Blue Kettle: in Blue Kettle, the dialogue starts off normally, but as the play progresses, characters begin to replace random words with "blue" and "kettle," until, by the end, much of their speech is entirely made up of these two words.)

I see this idea echoed in Kyoto where negotiated words are replaced or echoed by punctuation.

Kyoto used direct to audience speech successfully. I found this use good also in Lehman Trilogy. Direct address goes all the way back to ancient Greek drama but is seldom used in TV (or more seldom used) (although see Fleabag - note Waller-Bridge’s theatre background; The Office (note Gervais’ stand-up comedy background; Modern Family another notable exception).

I think for this type of narrative nonfiction, it seems to be very effective.

Another aspect of Kyoto’s success is creating some drama moments which can uniquely happen in the theatre, from the mild live interaction between the actors and the audience to the punctuation riffing - mostly tv would not allow you to be so weird - to some of the multimedia, lighting and prop/design moments.

All in all, I found Kyoto surprisingly successful re-telling of the Kyoto Protocol and explanation of the climate politics (political economy as well as financial economy) situation we find ourselves.

Speaking about political economy, I rarely write about The Current Thing and avoid direct politics even while I try and interpret what is actually occurring in the world. I do think for those who are interested that two ideas in part explain current US politics.

One is articulated by Ezra Klein (left leaning, NYT) on the blitzkreig tactics (also picked up by Tyler Cowen) and another more speculative but intriguing is understanding US politics via the lens of the culture battles. Tyler Cowen articulates that.

Ezra Klein describes Trump’s political strategy as a "blitzkrieg" approach, overwhelming the media, opponents, and the public with a rapid succession of extreme policy ideas, scandals, and executive actions. This tactic makes it difficult for critics to mount effective opposition because they are constantly reacting to new controversies rather than focusing on any single issue. Klein argues that this chaos benefits Trump by shifting the terms of political debate, exhausting his opponents, and normalizing previously unthinkable policies. (This moves the Overton policy window).

The summary of the Cowen idea would be:

Trump's policies should be understood primarily through the lens of culture war rather than traditional economic or governance frameworks. He suggests that many of Trump's actions, even those with economic implications, are designed to signal loyalty to a specific cultural and ideological base rather than to achieve coherent policy outcomes. This means that Trump's decisions often prioritize symbolic victories over substantive policy success, reinforcing divisions and shaping national identity debates rather than focusing on pragmatic governance.

Note - GPT suggests this is a useful but incomplete view (noting institutional disruption and special interest patronage). Still I thought both ideas intriguing.

(via Alex Tabbarrock) I found this idea of a new consensus on minimum wage policies - where it may disadvantage some groups in the trade-offs eg race, disability - intriguing.

My take is that there is an evolving new consensus on the minimum wage. Namely, the effects of the minimum wage are heterogeneous and take place on more margins than employment. (Link to MR post)

A great sustainability podcast I did was with Hannah Ritchie, who continues to put out great thoughts on her substack and via World in Data. She has recently asked:

How many people died from disasters in 2024? Here, I’m talking about meteorological and geological disasters — events like floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes.¹

My instinct going into this was “less than last year” and close to an “average year” because there weren’t many major earthquakes. From looking at this data before, years with large death tolls nearly always have catastrophic earthquake or tsunami events.

Having seen the results, this turns out to be a reasonable summary.

And:

The world looks to be on track to produce more rice, wheat and soybean than ever before. Wheat just marginally; but soybean and rice by a long shot.

The chart below shows the historical data on global production of staple crops, with the latest projection for 2024/25.

Corn — the world’s most prolific crop — looks like it will not beat last year’s record, but will be comparable to output in 2021.

Production of sorghum and millet — a key staple across Sub-Saharan Africa — has barely grown in decades, and output this year will not be much different.

Check out her substack here:

How much food did the world produce in 2024?

Tom Gosling has thoughts on this electrification journey. See here: https://www.tom-gosling.com/blog/an-electrifying-journey

A key component of my middle class approach to decarbonisation is the electrification of home heating and car transport. I’ve written elsewhere about installation of a heat pump, which, despite the bumps along the way, I’m now very happy with. And I installed solar panels ten years ago before I even took my carbon reduction pledge. My two recent electrification initiatives have been purchase of an electric vehicle (EV) and installation of a home battery to go with my existing solar panels, meaning I’ve almost completely cut out direct domestic burning of fossil fuels. In addition I’ve adopted of an off-peak tariff. I’ll cover each separately here and then consider how they work together, the overall economics, and the carbon savings.

Alex Edmans has followed suit and is pleased (Linkedin):

It's still early February, but yesterday I was able to power my house for the whole day and recharge 1/2 of my car exclusively with solar and battery (no grid). I installed the panels/battery two weeks ago, guided by research from Tom Gosling. Since I was completely new to this a couple of months ago, I thought I'd share the setup in case it's of interest to others:

1. Off-peak electricity tariff that allows me to charge the battery and car overnight at 6.7p/kWh (rather than the normal 24p). This runs from 12am-7am.

2. House runs on the battery from 7am, effectively using electricity for 6.7p/kWh than 24p. (If the battery runs out, the house uses the grid).

3. Solar panels start generating electricity from 8am, peaking at noon. If they produce more than what I'm using, it recharges the battery. If there is still a surplus, it recharges the car (the charger has a mode where it only charges with surplus energy). I'm in the process of setting up an export tariff so I can export surplus energy to the grid in the spring/summer.

4. Fully electric vehicle with a home charger. I bought it fourth-hand; in addition to being cheaper, it's environmentally beneficial as four new car purchased results in three additional cars on the road

Future Events:

My next event will be an UnConference for Emergent Ventures winners + Friends. If you think this might be you (as a friend who might benefit from an EV UnConference meet-up) let me know and will send an invite. Brief details:

• Date: Sat 26 April, 2025

• Time: 9am for 10am - 5pm then also dinner.

• Venue: Central London

What is an UnConference?

Unlike traditional conferences with pre-set agendas and passive listeners, an UnConference invites all attendees to participate actively.

Everyone is encouraged to propose topics, lead discussions, and contribute to conversations in a meaningful way.

While a conventional conference treats attendees like a passive audience to be entertained by the organizers, the UnConference format gives everyone a say by building something together

Also, I’ve seen Nature Tech UnConference. The Nature Tech Unconference brings the nature tech ecosystem together for a series of collaborative nature tech workshops and panel discussions, and to celebrate the global Nature Tech Collective Community. 28 March, LSE, London (link).

My cousin Felicity has a substack that covers family life and writing. Check it out.

Two rejections received in two days this week. You know how it feels when the bus stop is unexpectedly closed so you walk to the next one (in the rain), to find that one closed too? https://substack.com/home/post/p-155841732

My friend Catherine Oliver on homeschool (UK).

How We Homeschool exists to show the world what home education can look like, and to help and inspire families by sharing approaches and resources that work. Families from all over the world share their experiences.

Links:

Civic Future Fellowships. We're launching two talent programmes to find exceptional people who can break Britain out of stagnation. We need a new generation of talented public leaders — MPs, advisers, and senior staffers. Apply now. https://civicfuture.org/programme/talent-programmes/

Works in progress fellowships: a long-term writers’ fellowship, hosted jointly by Works in Progress and Asimov Press. We are looking for four to six writers who, over a six-month period, will produce richly detailed articles about a selected area of scientific progress.

A writing fellowship on scientific progress

On being a sober coach. …Tony Dominguez was idling in Los Angeles traffic when he got a call from the wife of a client. The client was a film star with a bad alcohol problem and an increasingly fragile professional reputation. He had stopped answering his phone while on holiday in a European country. That meant he was drinking, which meant he was facing mounting odds of public disgrace or death. Within a few hours, Tony was on a flight to go get him. (FT) https://www.ft.com/content/edeb157b-f543-4af4-8532-4bd30f249dac

From Tom Forth on N England. … here is a better explanation of why North England is poor with a bonus explanation of why so many Britons think much less of Margaret Thatcher’s Premiership than he and his guests do. It is a heavily simplified and selective story, but I think it tells the key parts of how North England fell from being the birthplace of the industrial revolution and among the richest places in the world two centuries ago to being an economy substantially lagging everywhere else in Northern Europe today. https://tomforth.co.uk/whynorthenglandispoor/

How coal won. Anton Howes. Over the course of 1570-1600, people all along the eastern coast of England, and especially in the rapidly-expanding city of London, stopped using wood to heat their homes. They instead began to burn an especially crumbly, sulphurous coal from near Newcastle in Northumberland — a fuel whose thick, heavy smoke reeked, stinging their eyes, making them wheeze and cough, and tarnishing their clothes, furnishings, and skin.

Age of Invention: How Coal Really Won

Patrick Collison. This year, I read ten important historical novels: Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, To The Lighthouse, Bleak House, Portrait of a Lady, Anna Karenina, Life and Fate, Heart of Darkness, Madame Bovary, and The Magic Mountain.

Reflections:

• Four of these are more than 800 pages long. The Magic Mountain and Portrait of a Lady, while shorter, are not short. Of the ten, 5 are British, 2 are Russian, and there was one from each of France, Germany, and the US.

• For me the clear standouts are Middlemarch, Bleak House, Karenina, and Life and Fate. I would enthusiastically reread any of them. If I had to choose just one to go to again, I would probably select Middlemarch. There's something memorably compelling in Eliot's affection and empathy for almost all of her characters. If Succession is a show with no likable personalities, Middlemarch is the opposite. Bleak House is a close second. Life and Fate is quite different to the others: it’s not exactly entertaining (or even notably well-written), but it is true and profound. (Most works designated “important” are not, but Life and Fate surely merits that as well.) If kindness is one of the core adjurations of Life and Fate, Eliot is the author that most embodies it.

…… There’s clearly some value in reading them for somewhat tautological reasons: they're worth reading because they are the books that we’ve decided are worth reading. They form part of our cultural context, and other works probably make somewhat more sense and are more memorable when interpreted through their lens. They are intellectual capital cities: you sorta have to go to Paris and New York in order to understand the rest of the world, and whether you “enjoy” them isn’t really the operative question.

• Ultimately, a utilitarian case for better understanding history or even humanity would not be my primary argument for why one might choose to read them, though. With self-consciousness about the platitude, they are simply some of the finest intellectual achievements of humanity, and worthy of engagement for that reason alone: a deeper appreciation for excellence is itself a valuable thing.

Reflections: https://x.com/patrickc/status/1872592892373487765