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Political scientist writing Drezner's World on international relations, American politics and the marketplace of ideas; author of The Ideas Industry.

From one piece The Dollar Will Be the Last Pillar To Fall 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The Trump administration is accelerating the decline and fall of American global hegemony.

  America

  Their words

  I honestly do not know if the Trump administration will be able to completely eviscerate American power over the next two year - but damn they sure seem to be accelerating the decline and fall of American hegemony.

  The Dollar Will Be the Last Pillar To Falldanieldrezner.substack.com

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  The U.S. dollar's continued global dominance is a lagging indicator, not proof that American hegemony remains intact.

  America

  Their words

  the dollar's status is not a harbinger of U.S. hegemonic decline - it's a lagging indicator.

  The Dollar Will Be the Last Pillar To Falldanieldrezner.substack.com

Economist at George Mason University, co-author of Marginal Revolution, host of Conversations with Tyler. Writes in short, dense claims about economics, culture and AI, and has moved position on AI in public more than once.

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  AI is not the primary driver of the recent decline in the college wage premium

  Their words

  I do not see AI as driving these changes, but an interesting result nonetheless

  marginalrevolution.com

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

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  Calling the fall in birth rates a mystery is not humility but obscurantism: there is already a good causal account of it.

  Their words

  we really do have a good causal model of how to think about fertility decline!

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

Physician and neuroscientist at the University of Washington; researches brain health, metabolism and athletic performance.

From one piece Accelerate Learning & Increase Cognitive Capacity | Dr. Tommy Wood 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  How much a pianist practises, not how old they are, predicts how well they play, which makes skill decline with age mostly a training problem.

  Their words

  And what they [snorts] found was that the most important predictor of how well somebody performed at those piano specific skills was not their age, it was how much they practice.

  youtube.com

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  Cognitive decline is a staircase rather than a slope: the big drops happen after episodes of serious illness.

  Their words

  cognitive function doesn't just decline sort of linearly or steadily with age. It goes down, you know, a little bit on average, but the biggest decreases sort of happen stepwise after periods of significant illness.

  youtube.com

Professor of psychology at UCLA, where he studies human memory, attention and cognitive ageing, and author of Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging.

From one piece How to Improve Your Memory & Cognitive Function at Any Age | Dr. Alan Castel 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Curiosity does not simply fade with age: the general disposition declines while curiosity aroused by a particular thing you care about actually increases.

  Their words

  but as you get older that tends to decline with age which I thought was kind of perplexing because I you know a lot of curious people but we found that levels of state curiosity when I give you some interesting bit of information but I don't give you the answer if it's something you care about that actually increases with age your level of curiosity and learning.

  youtube.com

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  Happiness across a life is a curve rather than a decline, and its lowest point is midlife, not old age.

  Their words

  there's some interesting work on you know happiness being more curve linear like midlife is actually some of the lowest levels of happiness and life satisfaction

  youtube.com

Economist and Nobel laureate. Wrote a New York Times column for 25 years until December 2024 and now publishes several times a week on Substack.

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  Europe is not in economic decline; by the measures that matter most it is keeping up with the United States.

  EuropeAmerica

  Their words

  Moreover, by many measures — arguably the most important measures — Europe is, in fact, keeping up with the United States.

  Is Europe in Economic Decline?paulkrugman.substack.com

Political scientist and Baptist pastor; writes Graphs about Religion, charting American religious life from survey data.

From one piece America Got a Little More Religious. No, Really. 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  A statistically significant change is not the same as an important one, and survey data cannot tell you which it is.

  Their words

  Whether that decline matters is a different question — and one the data alone can’t answer.

  America Got a Little More Religious. No, Really.graphsaboutreligion.com

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  The growth of the religiously unaffiliated in America has stopped and gone into reverse.

  America

  Their words

  There’s clearly been a numerical decline in the nones. That seems pretty hard to ignore now, and it’s showing up in multiple data sources.

  America Got a Little More Religious. No, Really.graphsaboutreligion.com

Author of The Simple Path to Wealth and of the jlcollinsnh.com stock series on index-fund investing.

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  The United States' share of global GDP and equity markets will keep shrinking, and that decline is accelerating.

  America

  Their words

  For these reasons, I see that declining trend of the US share of the world economy described above accelerating.

  JL Goes International, and to ETFs…… Oh my!jlcollinsnh.com

Founder of the toy manufacturer Viahart; writes about manufacturing, importing and why bringing production back to America is harder than it sounds.

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  Rebuilding American manufacturing is a decades-long educational and cultural project, not something tariffs can do.

  ChinaAmerica

  Their words

  America needs an educational and cultural transformation to compete with China and reverse the decline in living standards that Americans have suffered over decades.

  molsonhart.com

Neuroscientist and novelist writing on consciousness, artificial intelligence and culture in the newsletter The Intrinsic Perspective.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  The Decline of Deviance

  Their words

  My favorite recent piece on our cultural stagnation is Adam Mastroianni’s

  theintrinsicperspective.com

China economy researcher based in Beijing who writes on his personal blog about Chinese political economy, history, books and music.

From one piece China bows to de-industrialization 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Manufacturing subsidies that push output and capacity above natural levels can depress prices enough to shrink manufacturing's share of GDP.

  China

  Their words

  There's even a case to be made that those policies actually depressed the manufacturing share of GDP: by boosting output and capacity above where they would have been otherwise, subsidies probably contributed to the sustained decline in prices for China's manufactured goods over the past few years, weighing on their share of nominal output.

  China bows to de-industrializationandrewbatson.com

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  A declining manufacturing share of GDP as an economy matures reflects economic success rather than decline.

  China

  Their words

  Both of these trends are a consequence of economic success, in terms of higher output and productivity: at least some of what is decried as "de-industrialization" is good actually. It is also good for China's planners to recognize that reality and not distort the economy in pursuit of an impossible outcome.

  China bows to de-industrializationandrewbatson.com

Palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London; studies dinosaur behaviour and writes about what the fossil record can and cannot tell us.

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  Dinosaurs were doing fine right up to the impact; there is no good reason to think they were already in terminal decline.

  Their words

  But yeah, there's been a back and forth about whether dinosaurs were already on their way out or were they a bit limited by the very end of the Cretaceous. I think the more recent analyses have shown that's probably not the case, because in other words, they were basically doing fine right up to the extinction event. And so yeah, if the asteroid hadn't hit, there's no reason to think that they were on some kind of terminal decline.

  youtube.com

Development economist; writes Global Developments, on growth, history and the numbers behind them.

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  Indonesia’s nickel boom tripled export value while poverty in the district hosting it fell no faster than the national average.

  Their words

  Morowali’s poverty rate has seen a modest decline since 2016, from around 15% to 12%, but this puts it squarely in the middle of the pack of other Sulawesi districts—and not far from the decline in the national average, which fell from 10.9% to 8.6% over the same period.

  Indonesia Climbs the Chainglobal-developments.org

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

From one piece There Is No Long Decline in Fertility 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  People aim at a number of surviving children rather than a number of births, so falling child mortality lets births fall without anyone wanting a smaller family.

  Their words

  the key point is that as child mortality declines, live births can be allowed to decline without changing desired family size

  There Is No Long Decline in Fertilitylymanstone.substack.com

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  There is no long decline in human family size: once child survival is accounted for, the two-century downward trend disappears.

  Their words

  What you can see is that the “long decline” of TFR since the late-19th century is… an illusion! It isn’t real!

  There Is No Long Decline in Fertilitylymanstone.substack.com

Researcher and science writer. Co-founder and editor at Works in Progress magazine, formerly a researcher at Our World in Data, and author of the Scientific Discovery newsletter on science, global health and medical innovation.

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  The fall in cancer mortality is not mostly the fall in smoking: stomach and colorectal cancer were already declining before smoking was.

  Their words

  In my view, without smoking, we probably would have seen cancer mortality decline much earlier.

  scientificdiscovery.dev

Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.

From one piece Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Falling birth rates ended cousin marriage in the Arab world by leaving too few cousins, pushing marriage onto individual choice.

  Their words

  But over the past 50 years, there has been a massive decline in fertility. This entails fewer cousins of a suitable age.

  Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA?ggd.world

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  Marriage and birth rates are collapsing across the Middle East and North Africa even though religiosity there has not weakened.

  Their words

  The Middle East, North Africa and Anatolia are witnessing a rapid decline in coupling and fertility. This should rock your priors.

  Why are Marriage & Fertility Plummeting in MENA?ggd.world

Growth advisor and operator who has led growth at Miro, Amplitude, Dropbox and SurveyMonkey.

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  Hiring a head of growth to reverse a declining business is destined to fail, because the cause of the decline is deeper than the missing team.

  Their words

  If you have the overall business slowing down, your head of growth is destined to fail because the reason business is slowing down is much deeper than not having a growth team.

  youtube.com

Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.

From one piece Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Government payments and benefits aimed at raising birth rates do not reverse the decline.

  government

  Their words

  Across the OECD, governments are upping their spending. But a wealth of research suggests these fail to mitigate the downward trend.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

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  The fall in childbearing in rich countries is concentrated among the less educated, not among female graduates.

  Their words

  Slurs of ‘childless cat ladies’ usually target female graduates, but in the US, Sweden and Finland the real decline is happening among people with less education.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

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  Something is broken in how people pair up in the West, and that shortage of couples and marriages, not money, is why there are too few children.

  Their words

  From the 1960s, US fertility fell primarily due to fewer births among couples. In that context, baby bonuses might raise fertility. But today, the major contributing factor is the decline of coupling.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

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  American shipbuilding has been uncompetitive for a century; it is not a recent decline.

  America

  Their words

  The situation we face today, with U.S. ships costing at least twice as much to build as ships built elsewhere, is not a recent development; it’s been the norm for at least the past 100 years.

  Why Can't the U.S. Build Ships?construction-physics.com

Neuroscientist at UC Davis; studies memory and wrote Why We Remember.

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  Memory does not simply decline with age — an older brain's job changes to passing on accumulated knowledge rather than forming new episodic memories.

  Their words

  about this idea that really when you’re older in most societies, your job is no longer to form new episodic memories, it’s to pass on the memories that you already have, this knowledge about the world, what we call semantic memory, to pass on that semantic memory to the younger generations, pass on the culture.

  youtube.com

Researcher and science writer. Co-founder and editor at Works in Progress magazine, formerly a researcher at Our World in Data, and author of the Scientific Discovery newsletter on science, global health and medical innovation.

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  The long decline in mortality is not guaranteed to continue: new shocks and old unsolved diseases can reverse it.

  Their words

  None of these trends are a given.

  scientificdiscovery.dev

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

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  Solar has got cheaper faster than even its most optimistic forecasters expected.

  solar

  Their words

  A number of commentators have consistently predicted that solar cost improvements will level out “this year” since about 1990, and yet if anything deployment, cost decline, and the learning rate have only improved.

  Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Psychologist and science writer; wrote Science Fictions on how research goes wrong, and writes the newsletter of the same name.

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  Published effect sizes shrink as more studies are done, and that decline is what the replication crisis is made of.

  Their words

  The decline effect is the idea that scientific findings get smaller over time. That is, initial findings tend to report effect sizes that then crumble away—sometimes to nothing—with subsequent research.

  How growth mindset shranksciencefictions.org

Economist at the University of Houston; wrote Fully Grown, on why a slow-growing economy is a sign of success, and blogs at Growth Economics.

From one piece Review of DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia" 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  The fall in fertility deserves equal billing with the research lab, the corporation and globalisation in the story of modern growth.

  Their words

  What I’m nitpicking here is that this decline in fertility deserves equal billing with the research lab, corporation, and globalization.

  Review of DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia"growthecon.com

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  Sustained growth in living standards required productivity to accelerate and population growth to fall at the same time.

  Their words

  It was an acceleration in productivity combined with a decline in population growth that put us on a slow trudge towards utopia.

  Review of DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia"growthecon.com