2025-04-28
only you know
Jasmine Sun has an interview with an anonymous AI researcher, which is wild because in between all the standard stuff, the conversation veers towards “profound” conversations this guy has with AI variants of himself and his ex-girlfriend. It's confusing when people mistake these simulacrums of people as the real thing, since to me, they clearly feel like a role that’s being played, way too consistent and unsurprising versus real individuals, who are selfish and incoherent. Although possibly that’s because I have trouble feeling deep connection with other people, so even minor discrepancies turn me off.
Matt Reardon on the forces driving AI forward. It’s good to remember that Moore’s Law isn’t a law, but a target. The desire to get more with less is one that is only obtained by advances in new fundamental technology, like electrification or spreadsheets, which allow you to get things done in completely new ways. In their absence, we can only get more with more, hence the great stagnation: why outside the Magnificent Seven, the stock market has actually been pretty stagnant, and also why working hours have plateaued instead of continuing to decline. Better efficiency is possible through specialization, communication, and logistics, but these are just squeezing out the last little bits of optimization to a system which are already at Pareto frontiers. The promise of the singularity is that AI will be beyond efficiency tradeoffs, allowing for growth compounding into infinity (or rather, the limits of physical constants). It seems more likely to me that, like other fundamental advancements, AI will generate immense potential that results in enormous growth as it is filled in, but which nevertheless tapers off as efficiency tradeoffs are reached.
Wood From Eden and Richard Hanania (paywalled) both have some interesting content about parenting problem children, and the tensions between selfishness and individualism versus prosociality and following rules.
Mary Jane Eyre in the Republic of Letters on how sex should be written about transgressively. There’s a particularly funny section where he notes that even self-declared sex-positive writers are “having sex” in a manner more aspirational than physical.
Thomas Pueyo with an introduction to Canadian geography. It’s interesting because whenever I meet someone from the US abroad, they’ll usually say what state they are from, and sometimes also the city. Canadians are just as regionalistic, but can only ever say they are from Canada.
