People see even a tiny bit of AI in art as 'contamination'—they'll devalue it just as much as if a machine made the whole thing.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
In a weird twist, extreme heat waves in Italy actually drive inflation down instead of up.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 17
Breaking a long-held economic rule, big farms in India have actually become more productive than small ones.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Illegal toxic waste dumping by the mob is causing about two extra cancer deaths every year in certain Italian towns.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Workers who know their boss is going to review them are actually *more* likely to just mindlessly copy and paste from an AI.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
We could cut the climate impact of flying by 60% just by avoiding those white 'contrails'—and it would barely cost anything extra.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
Those 'Report Misinformation' buttons on social media are basically just a placebo to make you feel better.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Lawsuits meant to protect the environment actually have the weird side effect of shrinking the pay gap between bosses and workers.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Immigrant workers at companies with Republican-leaning CEOs end up making 8% less than those at firms led by Democrats.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Being named one of the world's most sustainable companies actually causes a company's stock price to take a hit.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
That 'simple' small claims court meant to help artists protect their work is so confusing that most cases just get thrown out.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
The safer a politician’s seat is, the more likely they are to vote for extreme, crazy policies instead of playing it safe.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
If you frame a coupon as a way to 'steal resources' from a big corporation, twice as many people will jump through hoops to get it.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Big hospitals and schools actually drive down property values in busy cities, while parks make them skyrocket.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Judges aren't just born biased—they 'catch' it from their colleagues or from seeing social unrest early in their careers.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
When the government cracks down on farmers burning fields, industrial pollution actually spikes because the inspectors are too busy to watch the factories.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
Swapping the types of crops farmers plant is twice as effective at saving groundwater as buying high-tech irrigation gear.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
As countries get richer and better run, the number of women choosing STEM degrees actually starts to drop.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Putting people from opposite political parties on the same corporate audit committee actually makes the company's math more honest.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Companies tend to buy the crappiest carbon offsets when the projects are located right near their own headquarters.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Patent applications are four times longer than they used to be just because word processors make it so easy to copy-paste filler text.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
Despite what everyone in the neighborhood says, building a giant data center nearby has zero impact on how much your house is worth.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Legalizing sports betting has absolutely no impact on state lottery sales.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
If you give an AI agent a little bit of 'social' personality, humans are way more likely to forgive it when it screws up.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
The 1970s divorce boom might have been caused by a sudden surplus of young women rather than a shift in morals.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Making college cheaper can actually backfire and make students study less for their entrance exams.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Racial inequality in jail isn't just about over-policing—it’s driven just as much by judges giving white people 'selective mercy.'
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Corrupt government agencies don't just accidentally hire bad auditors—they strategically pick the ones with the worst reputations to help hide their crimes.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Swapping social media for ChatGPT for two months actually gives your memory and critical thinking a massive boost.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
Generative AI is actually a huge win for experienced workers, making them look even better compared to the younger tech-savvy crowd.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Online stores actually need those cranky customers who leave bad reviews to keep the whole rating system from becoming a joke.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Investors are way more likely to buy a stock if some totally unrelated company with the same price happens to be doing well.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 17
Forget the 'nesting' myth—people actually spend way less money while they’re pregnant and only start splurging after the baby shows up.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
A popular TV show about headhunters actually caused real-world stock market chaos for real recruiting companies.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 17
In cutthroat markets, just letting the players talk to each other fixes waste better than changing the prize money.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
A person’s language starts shifting in specific 'mathematical' ways—like a shrinking sense of time—right before a mental health crisis hits.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
All these non-binding 'AI ethics' promises are making the technology more dangerous because nobody takes the warnings seriously anymore.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
A new legal theory argues that since consenting to sex isn't consenting to being a parent, the law should let people 'opt out' of child support.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Graders for China’s big college entrance exam often ignore the rules to reward students who write essays with 'moral correctness.'
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
AI data centers can pay 100 times more for electricity than other industries and still walk away with a profit.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Public companies are basically 'day trading' their own stock to boost their market value by about 1% every year.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
The Great Crash of 1929 wasn't a bubble or a loss of faith—it was caused by a massive pile-up of unsold stuff in warehouses.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
The best way to pay back victims of price-fixing is to let the first criminal who snitches lead the lawsuit against his old buddies.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Just being mentioned in the news—even for something good—triggers a 'spotlight tax' where auditors start charging you way more.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
About half of a brand's dominance comes from secret, long-term deals with grocery stores, not because people actually like the product more.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
When banks fight harder for corporate clients, businesses actually cut their R&D spending just to make their profits look better on paper.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
When a study finds that a policy had 'no effect,' it might actually be a sign that the market is so competitive it's become immune to outside help.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Laws meant to stop people from bullying journalists actually end up making factory floors safer for workers.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Power plant owners are blocking new battery companies from the market just by messing with prices to make storage look unprofitable.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Extreme global rivalries are actually making international groups more active and tougher, instead of tearing them apart.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Giving more people health insurance sounds great, but it hasn't actually improved their mental health at all.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Drivers who don't stop at crosswalks kill more people than drunk drivers do, but they barely get more than a slap on the wrist.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
When you hear news about the government spending more on the military, it actually makes it cheaper for regular companies to borrow money.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
The legal test for design patents is psychologically rigged to help people get away with ripping off designs.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
A lot of 'underperforming' investment strategies are actually more efficient than the market if you factor in how much time you're actually at risk.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Once you actually start learning a new skill, you get worse at predicting how much more you’re going to learn in the future.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Individual investors will gamble like crazy when they’re falling behind their friends, but they don't play it safe when they’re winning.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Every single hectare of coca grown in Colombia ends up costing about $48,000 in overdose deaths here in the States.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
Adding a 'public option' into the workers' comp market actually made the market more crowded and drove prices up.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
The way the Champions League is set up is mathematically killing the competition in local soccer leagues.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Auditing just one company at random makes other firms behave better, simply because they use the same broker.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
That bloodstain analysis you see on TV? It has error rates as high as 32% and zero actual science to back it up.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Donors will stop giving money to a charity if it looks too profitable, even if that profit means they're actually running things well.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Bitcoin crashes don't actually behave like bubbles bursting—they’re more like balloons slowly leaking air.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 17
Government workers in developing countries sometimes lean into 'Third World' stereotypes just to explain away their own bad work.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Investment banks are lowballing IPOs so badly that companies now have to hire a second set of 'watchdog' advisers just to keep an eye on them.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 17
New environmental and tax laws are accidentally crushing small coffee farmers and handing everything over to giant multinationals.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Owning 30% of a company usually gives you just as much voting power as if you owned the whole thing.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
When companies are on the verge of total collapse, they actually start playing it safe instead of taking big gambles to save themselves.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
The movement to free the 'factually innocent' has accidentally made it way harder for people with unfair life sentences to get another day in court.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 17
Banks are starting to care more about who you know than how much money you actually have when they’re deciding on your loan.
Paradigm Challenge arxiv | Mar 16
Surviving a natural disaster actually has almost zero impact on your long-term happiness or how much you care about climate change.
Nature Is Weird arxiv | Mar 16
Generative AI is making big banks so much faster that small-town banks are falling twice as far behind as they were two years ago.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 16
Knowing when to shut up at work can actually make your team get along better and handle drama way more effectively.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 16
Eco-friendly self-driving cars might actually make pollution worse because human drivers start driving like jerks to exploit the AI's safety gaps.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 16
The way central banks define a 'housing boom' is basically a coin flip for whether they can actually see a financial crisis coming.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 16
The idea that looking at too many outside ideas kills innovation is actually a brand new problem—it didn't even exist ten years ago.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 16
If you hate your commute, it's probably because of the neighborhood where your office is, not the one where you actually live.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 16
The wealth gap between rich and poor countries is actually 74% bigger than what the official income numbers tell you.
Cosmic Scale ssrn | Mar 13
Making teacher licensing tests harder doesn't actually get you better teachers—it just leaves you with way fewer of them.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
For the government to keep executing people, the legal system basically has to allow for a certain amount of racism and "oops" moments.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
You can predict what the Fed is going to do weeks early just by watching "secret" emergency cash requests from foreign banks.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 13
Zimbabwe tried backing its money with actual gold, and it still lost half its value in six months because nobody trusts the government.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
You don't need a bulldozer to fix rock-hard volcanic soil—you just need a bunch of earthworms to stop the "biological starvation."
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 13
Poor countries are often broke on purpose because the people in charge realized that blocking growth is the easiest way to stay in power.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
You can lose a letter grade just because your exam was in the morning or because of Daylight Saving Time, even if you know the material.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 13
The only thing keeping the big AI labs from going broke right now is basically "faith" that they’ll eventually build a super-intelligence.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
Blocking new roads in National Forests sounds green, but it actually does absolutely nothing to stop wildfires.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 13
During the pandemic, having customers in other countries actually made it harder for small businesses to get a bank loan.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
The legal difference between a campaign donation and a straight-up bribe is basically a fairy tale.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
Giving executives massive raises for getting promoted actually backfires because it just encourages them to cheat with insider trading.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
Apple doesn't actually decide when the next iPhone comes out—they’re basically waiting on the speed of the tiny parts inside to catch up.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
Good news: your personal carbon footprint is probably way smaller than those online calculators want you to believe.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
You’d actually make more money if you ignored the experts and messed with your investment portfolio 94% less often.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 13
When stores raise their free shipping limit from $80 to $100, they often see their total sales absolutely tank.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
Australia somehow figured out how to consistently beat the stock market, which basically goes against everything we know about finance.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
Central banks might want to start setting interest rates based on how much regular people are freaking out about the price of groceries.
Practical Magic ssrn | Mar 13
Even though it’s illegal to discriminate, algorithms are just using your ZIP code to "guess" your race and income anyway.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
If you don't have a college degree, your best shot at a big promotion is actually when your company is in total chaos.
Paradigm Challenge ssrn | Mar 13
A single typo in a bank transfer was the "proof" that convinced millions of people that a global elite was involved in a dark conspiracy.
Nature Is Weird ssrn | Mar 13