Brad DeLong

1 week ago | braddelong.substack.com | Brad DeLong

Thirteen ways from cotton to code of looking at America’s economic story, & none a Grand Narrative: priming our historical past to serve as an analogy generating machine…It was not much like the course I wanted to teach, but it is the course that it turn out I have taught. It wound up not really telling a Grand Narrative about but rather examined a number of episodes and facets of American economic history. There is no possible Grand Narrative, after all.

1 week ago | braddelong.substack.com | Brad DeLong

As of 2025-05-01 Th... Have at it, people… If, in playing with it, it says anything insightful or weird to you, please email me…<https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6813df8e5a408191b26db4f9c441f149-subturingbradbot>Wakeup initiated…What is your name? My name is SubTuringBradBot, modeled upon and inspired by the writings, teachings, and digital presence of Professor J. Bradford DeLong.

2 weeks ago | braddelong.substack.com | Brad DeLong

This Seems to Me to Be Taking "Volunteer to Teach What You Want to Learn" to an Extreme: MAMLM Edition. Behind the paywall because I do not know what I think, and at the end I think all this piece demonstrates is my own great confusion. I bounce back and forth between the false promises & the real achievements of GPT LLMs, an so I go from Predict-o-Matic to Pagliacci, and back again… Yes, Cosma Shalizi has assigned himself the task of, this fall, explaining how LLM GPTs really work.

2 weeks ago | braddelong.substack.com | Brad DeLong

It is a lie to claim that the United States now has a tariff or an industrial policy. It just has a chaos monkey making chaos, and a bunch of grifters trying to cover up and rationalize that reality. The effects will be bad. How bad? That is very hard to guesstimate…I did a show for CGTN, playing it straight. I think I saw the host wince at one point—and I believe that what I said then was cut. But I may be wrong: I do not form many long-term memories while on panels.

2 weeks ago | braddelong.substack.com | Brad DeLong

Start from a deeply deluded place about what the economy is & you are playing a stupid game. & so to the extent that Trump is not stopped and removed from all levers of power immediately, America is going to do nothing but win some very stupid prizes indeed…A pirate’s miner’s life for me? Trump dreams of a shovel-dug coal-fueled America has not existed for nearly a century—and never will again.