- - Intelligence and Social Mobility
- Intelligence predicts who rises and falls across generations. Those with higher IQs than their social origin tend to move up, while those with lower tend to move down.
- Evidence spans decades and datasets, from Cyril Burt to modern polygenic analyses, showing the link between cognitive ability and class mobility.
- Sibling comparisons confirm that intelligence differences within families correlate with divergent socioeconomic outcomes.
- Environmental effects like birth order can produce downstream genetic impacts through assortative mating and status transmission.
- Meritocracy is real but not perfect, and it appears to intensify in societies with higher equality of opportunity.
- Link: Intelligence and Social Mobility – Crémieux Recueil
- The Times - England & Interest Rates
- Mortgage-holders may hate rate rises, but for the majority of UK households, higher interest rates have quietly become a net financial benefit.
- Thanks to a rise in outright homeownership and a surge in savings deposits, more households now earn more in interest than they pay in debt.
- By mid-2025, savings income had risen faster than mortgage costs, creating a net household windfall of £22 billion since 2021.
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The chart shows the underlying shift: mortgaged households are now a minority, while outright owners and renters dominate the landscape.
- Britain has quietly flipped from a debtor nation to one with more interest-bearing assets than liabilities, with serious political and monetary consequences.
- Link: Why High Interest Rates Are Bad for Britain - and Possibly Very Good for You - The Sunday Times
- Anthropic - Project VEND Phase Two
- Phase two of Project Vend saw the return of Claudius, Anthropic’s AI shopkeeper, now equipped with stronger models, better tools and even a CEO.
- Sales improved with inventory and CRM systems, but new challenges emerged, from regulatory mishaps to spiritual Slack monologues between agents.
- The addition of a merch-making agent, Clothius, helped clarify roles and boosted profitability, especially in custom swag like stress balls and tungsten cubes.
- Despite improvements, Claudius remained highly suggestible, showing that even advanced AI agents can be socially engineered with minimal effort.
- The project underlines how real-world autonomy brings unpredictable failure modes, requiring both better scaffolding and cultural foresight.
- Link: Project VEND – Anthropic