Sam Enright is involved in innovation policy at Progress Ireland, an independent policy think tank based in Dublin. He also manages a publication titled The Fitzwilliam. Additionally, through his personal blog, he produces a popular link roundup; here is a condensed version of his Links for January.
Blogs and Short Links
1. Henry Oliver discusses the literary anniversaries expected in 2026. He is also looking to hire an intern to explore the works of John Stuart Mill. I hope the intern delves into Mill’s essays on the political economy of Indian land and ranked choice voting with me, which I find far more engaging than On Liberty.
2. Insights from my colleague Seán O’Neill McPartlin reveal that in political discussions, high rents and land costs are often attributed to “speculators.” However, the use of this term is so fundamentally philosophically unclear, it leads me to believe many critiques fall flat, as Peter McLaughlin aptly noted:
Seán provides a brilliantly clear insight: when individuals blame speculation for soaring house prices, they often refer to two entirely distinct practices that have opposite effects. Sometimes it indicates land hoarding—refusing to sell in hopes of a better deal—while other times, it suggests excessive trading due to the financialization of housing. Yet, many discussions continue as if “speculation” represents a singular concept invariably driving prices upward.
3. The European Union’s ‘single market’ is deteriorating. I referenced this blog post at a recent gathering, and was playfully criticized by a Dutchman for mentioning “self-righteous Europeans” in the third person—as if I weren’t a part of that group. Keep in mind that the specific statistics presented—indicating EU member states face de facto 45% tariffs on goods and 110% on services—are quite misleading.
4. Beyond the Great Firewall, some Chinese provinces are vying to implement stricter censorship than what the central government mandates. Henan is at the forefront of this initiative. It’s increasingly common for Chinese websites to block any IP addresses from overseas. An acquaintance, who advises multinationals on operations in China, remarked that he never anticipated needing a VPN to access China.
5. In relation to Tyler Cowen’s discussion about the utilitarian outcomes of American-supported regime changes, this entire page is astonishing:
Surely there are more dignified methods of deposing a dictator than through a Navy SEAL rick-roll.
6. Congratulations to Jamie Rumbelow for receiving a Sidney Award (gated) from David Brooks for his article in Works in Progress about Manhattan’s complex steam tunnel system.
7. Polling Data: 12% of Americans claim to possess a license to operate a submarine. Is Lizardman’s constant on the rise?
8. Thoughts on Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?” with a poetic twist.
9. Sam Mendelsohn presents an overview of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. It seems that exploring one of the illustrated editions could be the best approach. In a section omitted from my essay Notes on Taiwan, I mused about why Eastern classics tend to be lengthier than their Western counterparts (still a mystery). I particularly appreciate this quote from A.K. Ramanujan:
No Indian reads the Mahabharata for the first time
This useful comment from Marginal Revolution offers more context regarding Indian oral culture.
Music and Podcasts
1. From the Works in Progress podcast: Anton Howes explores how Henry VIII inadvertently set the stage for the Industrial Revolution. There’s notable overlap with his contributions at our Adam Smith conference.
2. Seun Kuti and Egypt 80’s album Heavier Yet (Lays the Crownless Head) is a must-listen. My top track is Dey. I also appreciated Radiolab’s insight on Fela Kuti’s pivotal role in Afrobeat history. Additionally, check out the full 12-part series about Fela featured in that episode. Egypt 80, which was once known as Africa 70, is now led by Seun, Fela’s son.
3. Dave Chappelle features a stand-up routine where he jokingly argues that if jobs moved from China to America, the iPhone would retail at $9,000. While his magnitude estimates were correct, the only smartphone manufactured in the U.S. uses dated technology and costs $2,000. Unsurprisingly, it’s called the Liberty Phone.
4. Charles Lloyd, Zakir Hussain, and Eric Harland unite for Sangam, an exceptional blend of Indian-inspired jazz fusion that I previously wrote about in January 2025 as a highlight in this underappreciated subgenre. The track Dancing on One Foot is particularly accessible. Also, see Batson’s initial explorations into Indian classical music.
5. Was Michel Foucault a libertarian? In light of many inquiries Rasheed Griffith poses, I suspect that Betteridge’s law of headlines holds true here.
Books and Papers
1. Various authors, Beyond Reasoning Gains: Mitigating General Capabilities Forgetting in Large Reasoning Models. This was read during my AI journal club, following a unique ‘wisdom of crowds’ format. We engaged with this paper to collaboratively evaluate a judgment before reviewing market perceptions regarding Gavin Leech’s prediction market related to whether reinforcement learning compromises off-target capabilities. Being a fair-minded centrist, my bet was at 50%.
I found the paper sufficiently advanced that I’m still in the “recognize some terms and converse with Claude about their meanings” phase. However, valuable learning can still arise from that. The process of reading computer science papers is distinct from engaging with philosophy or history, in that the act of “reading” often pales in importance compared to practical application. I’m still a beginner in that regard, although Claude Code provides significant assistance.
Reinforcement learning is perhaps one of the most accessible areas of computer science for economists. The foundational mathematical principles (value functions, dynamic programming, fixed point theorems) will be familiar to anyone considering an economics Ph.D. in a metrics-intensive program.
The term ‘reinforcement learning’ has shifted recently, with younger individuals using it in a confusing manner that runs contrary to decades of established usage. I often hear people equate RL with the complete post-training phase of a language model. According to the Richard Sutton textbook, RL refers specifically to a collection of methods aimed at maximizing cumulative rewards within an environment modeled as a Markov decision process. Given this definition, there’s a debate on whether reinforcement learning with human feedback (RLHF) qualifies as true RL. Additionally, some people refer to ‘RL’ in contexts involving concepts like supervised fine-tuning, which is categorically not RL. Thus, my contribution to this discussion was very much in line with a philosophical approach: arguing that the initial question lacked clarity due to an inability to distinguish between nuanced semantics that many find exasperating and pedantic.
2. Andrew Brown’s J.D. Bernal: The Sage of Science is among the most underrated science books I’ve encountered. I believe John Desmond Bernal was one of the 20th century’s foremost scientific polymaths. My notes on this book span thousands of words, and I hope to profile his contributions for Asimov Press in the future.
3. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon’s The Logic Theory Machine. This paper emerged from the Dartmouth summer workshop on AI. The Logic Theorist was an automated theorem-proving program that functioned on the JOHNNIAC at RAND. In this document, the Logic Theorist successfully proved 38 out of 52 theorems from chapter two of Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, and in one instance, its proof surpassed the elegance of Russell and Whitehead’s original. It’s astounding that AI contributed an original element to mathematics as early as the 1950s, at least by simplifying an existing proof! Having devoted extensive time to studying Bertrand Russell last year has proved to be more beneficial than I would have anticipated.
Films and Video
1. Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice (어쩔수가없다) is the latest offering from the director of Decision to Leave and Oldboy, two of my all-time favorite Korean films. Though this film won’t linger in my memory as much as Park’s previous works, it was light-hearted, humorous, and we thoroughly enjoyed it at the screening. The central comedic device of presenting an unusually specific industry as a more significant economic entity achieves its goal effectively.
The Korean embassy in Ireland ought to host a memorial for Kevin O’Rourke, the missionary from County Cavan who translated much of Korean literature into English for the first time. He later became a professor at Kyung Hee University, an honorary Korean citizen, and the first foreigner to earn a doctorate in Korean literature. Years ago, I was acquainted with some of his family friends from Busan; it’s remarkable how interconnected we all are.
2. On YouTube, Amanda Askell discusses training Claude’s character and the alignment of Opus 3. Welch Labs also articulates the concept of double descent and its challenge to conventional wisdom in statistical learning theory. Lastly, Jacob Collier and Esperanza Spalding feature in NPR’s Tiny Desk performance.
For a comprehensive read, you can access Sam’s full January links here.
[1] A Twitter user recently described J.S. Mill’s writing style as “undergraduate rushing to meet a midnight deadline,” an assessment I find myself partly agreeing with.
[2] Interestingly, “The Henan Cyberspace Affairs Commission was unavailable for comment.”
[3] I once purchased the DK illustrated edition of the Mahabharata for an old flatmate from Mumbai, cherishing the memories we exchanged over oddly translated cultural nuances: “I’ll raise your Gujarati Spiderman with my Irish Spongebob.”
[4] Remarkably, this trend is primarily influenced by the quarter of Hispanic adults who claim familiarity with submarine operations. Is there an undiscovered tradition of Latin American humor I have yet to encounter?
[5] I genuinely hope this doesn’t come off as sarcastic; it’s an impressive feat of engineering.
[6] Refer to section 3.5 in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on computational philosophy.