We’re launching the Justified Posteriors Podcast, co-hosted by Andrey Fradkin and me - Seth Benzell.
Thanks to Tyler for today’s shoutout -- he’s a key inspiration.
We evaluate research on the Economics of AI and Tech, with a good helping of wit and light hearted irreverence.
1/ Are you above or below the panopticon? đź§µ
On a new Justified Posteriors, @AndreyFradkin and I talk AI + hiring, +peer review & + religion with @SarahHBana of @LSEnews and @DigEconLab
Sarah's research: ~4M job applications, all screened by one vendor's video games (example: balloon-popping to test risk aversion). When every employer buys the same arbitrary screen, the same applicants get rejected everywhere. Algorithmic monoculture.
Full episode + transcript: empiricrafting.substack.com/…
is nathan fielder actually playing a character? said i’d run nathan fielder’s voice through soma, so here it is:
45 clips from 2008 to now. about half in character (nathan for you, the rehearsal, talk shows), half as himself (podcasts, festival q&as)
i expected the deadpan to show up somewhere in his voice. it basically doesn’t. 13 of 14 voice measures can’t tell persona nathan from real nathan. same pace too, 177 vs 175 words a minute. his reply timing doesn’t give it away either
the one thing that changes is his words. in his shows he says “um” and “like” about a third as often as on podcasts. but that’s mostly the edit. live on talk shows, still in character, he’s almost back to normal
he’s also flatter than 70 of the 80 public figures we’ve measured. and he and elizabeth holmes land on the same voice print, bamboo. close on melody, different on almost everything else, so not twins
holmes’ voice changed depending on who was in the room. his doesn’t. maybe the character is just him with the ums edited out
in honor of the doc of a generational releasing today, we obsessed over @ElizabethHolmes voice
a lot can be said about her, but her voice is irrevocably distinct and…practiced
we pulled 16 recordings of her from 2014 to 2017, we’ve pulled them from ted talks, charlie rose, cnn, mad money, a bunch of conference panels, and 3 full days of her deposition. about 4 hours of her talking total
we've been running her voice through @try_soma before the documentary drops and honestly the deposition sounds like a different person:
- hedging (“i think”, “i believe”, “sort of”) went from 3.8 to 19.5 per 1,000 words, about 5x. every deposition day was higher than every public appearance
- stumbles went from 29 to 50 per 1,000 words
- her sentences got simpler, 2.3 clauses per sentence down to 1.8
- her pitch dropped too, 152 hz in public to 136 hz under oath
the part i didn’t expect: if you score her against normal population benchmarks she looks totally fine. good to excellent in almost every recording, deposition included. her hedging under oath (17 to 23 per 1,000 words) is still technically “normal” for people in general
it’s only when you compare her to HER that the shift shows up. against her own baseline it’s super obvious
which is kind of the whole point of what we’re building. a score that compares you to everyone else would’ve totally missed this
also fun fact, she’s at her most polished on stage. slowest pace (129 words per minute), cleanest speech (3 filler words per 1,000). on tv she’s way faster, 177 wpm. so even her “public” voice isn’t one voice
maybe we’ll run it again with @nathanfielder 's You Can See Everything, since that’ll be the first new audio of her since 2017?
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
Beautiful meal with @tylercowen and Fuschia Dunlop!
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
I don't think anyone has any idea what to make of this (from @I_Am_NickBloom survey)
In next Monday's episode of Justified Posteriors, we have the great Sarah Bana of LSE to talk how AI is changing hiring, academic publishing and religion.
Sarah used a cool metaphor for how AI may change labor productivity: AI as Steroids vs. Shoes vs. Coach.
Get more AI hot takes at: empiricrafting.substack.com/
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
My frequent co-author Chiara Farronato, who's not on Twitter, just wrote a nice HBR article summarizing a lot of recent research (including ours) on digital platforms. Do check it out!
hbr.org/2026/11/the-new-plat…
In the most recent episode of Justified Posteriors,
@AndreyFradkin and I update our priors with @pawtrammell of @EpochAIResearch. We discuss whether international regulation of AI is probable or good.
In this clip, Phil shares reasons he sees for optimism.
Find the full episode and follow our podcast here: lnkd.in/gZSXpCXb
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
Our episode with @pawtrammell discussing AI2040 (by @eli_lifland, @RyanGreenblatt, @DKokotajlo, @romeovdean) and the case for and feasibility of a global AI treaty is now posted. I've seen surprisingly little engagement with these ideas by economists, so we're happy to fill the gap.
empiricrafting.substack.com/…
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
40 years ago, the legendary Frank Fisher told me (and the rest of our class in the MIT PhD program) that Bob Hall was the most brilliant economist that he'd ever worked with.
It took too long, but I'm glad to see the @NobelPrize Committee recognize what the rest of the field has long known.Â
Congrats, to Bob Hall
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
Recent AI progress unbundles expertise from the workers that possess them: know-how that used to be tacit and inalienable can now be codified and duplicated at scale across the economy. We document some facts about this new market for human expertise.
1/ Modern AI systems are built on human expertise which is accumulated by paying humans. We measure this market: in a new note with @zoebcullen and @andrewjkoh we track ~213,000 expert hires and ~$540m in estimated compensation at posted rates on one leading platform.
iemlab.org/projects/human-wo…
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
This Hall & Jones paper is a favorite. People want to spend more on healthcare as they get richer. We should expect that healthcare as a percentage of spending should continue to increase as AI gets better. A year of life is a lot more valuable than a marginal unit of material consumption.
Seth Benzell - the LA-atic Stranger retweeted
Coming next week to the pod, @pawtrammell discusses the economics of a global AI treaty and the AI2040 scenarios. In this clip, he postulates that AI will make cooperation easier.






















