2025-01-07
eggrock
Infinite Loops podcast episode with Julian Gough from The Egg and the Rock, with an interesting theory that claims to solve fine-tuning, which is that black holes (or similar phenomena which produce singularities) create new universes with slightly altered parameters from their parent universe, which evolutionarily produces more and more complex universes. It’s actually a very compelling idea.
Lionel Page claims that a behavior being evolved for does not imply anything about the morality of that behavior, while making the point that we need to design our moral systems to make use of the moral actors we actually have. I think there actually is an argument that what is evolved for is more likely to be moral, because evolutionary benefit is likely correlated with increased utility for most behaviors which which are not zero-sum competition (Edit: similar take by Robin Hanson). If being able to walk better was sufficiently high utility (for example, because it let’s you avoid getting eaten), there’s actually does seem to be an utilitarian argument that you have a moral obligation to produce offspring that can walk better, all else being equal Edit: Richard Hanania discussion on Ayn Rand, who I think sort of goes the wrong way in the other direction. I should mention I’m reading Daniel Abrahams new novel The Mercy of Gods, and the first notable thing about it is that it explicitly mentions this question of whether evolution is moral (The second interesting thing is that it has a deep focus on characters’ internal views during social interactions, and not even just for a sci-fi novel).
These two items actually intersect in a very interesting way. If universes like our own are produced by black holes, do we have a duty to become technologically advanced enough to create black holes for energy production? From a utilitarian perspective, it seems like the answer is obvious.
Asimov Press article about the Cohn Lab. It’s interesting how you can read echoes of different founders in the article’s descriptions. Related, Shruti Rajagopalan on Manmohan Singh. These two articles really bring home the old idea that the key to rulership is the proper use of talented individuals. On that note, here’s Tanner Greer on his visit to India, with unique perspectives as both a conservative and a China-watcher.
Bloomberg interview with sama. Interestingly, despite his reputation as a master manipulator and raising literally billions of dollars, he claims he doesn’t have a high EQ.
Wood From Eden sees excessively high standards towards parents (focusing on gentle parenting and stranger danger) as an instinctive form of status competition.
Addison del Mastro with an interesting Newcomb’s Paradox (another one of those things you start seeing everyone after learning about it) where the second box is Starbucks leftovers from special orders.
Matt Yglesias on the nature of the pardon. Regarding the Gödel anecdote, it makes me think about the advocates for using Github to write legislation. This is in order to make the process more efficient, and this is reasonable because the process of legislation is actually very similar in many ways to coding. This means that legal systems should also be subject to the incompleteness theorems, so it’s not surprising that most legal systems can indeed lead to dictatorships, as otherwise they would be incomplete, insufficiently flexible to function.
Yaw provides a good summary of How Asia Works.
Jodi Ettenberg linkthread. Relevant, Ruxandra on political polarization between genders.
