2025-05-14
song for the lost
Asimov Press on different wonders of biology, one of those articles that has you look again at the things you’ve learned and realize they are really really cool.
Experimental History on the potential of SlimeMold’s feelings as control systems theory as a unifying paradigm for psychology. Personally, I think he’s overselling it a little, but it could definitely form the backbone of a new paradigm if you start making use of new statistical techniques with both personality psychology and genetic testing. Once you link genotypes to phenotypes, you actually get more than just personality psychology and psychopathology, you also completely close the loop and get evolutionary psychology as well. The fact that psychology is currently composed of many different subdisciplines which are only loosely connected is, as Jared Peterson discusses, indicative of a problem: because if you build two castles from the same substrate, and they can’t get the same results, at least one of them is wrong.
Elle Griffin writes about transitioning to a system where American workers are by default owner-operators of the companies where they work. It’s a laudable goal that I also want to see, but I’m starting to question whether this will be a good approach in the age of AI, where potential equilibria include human-run companies getting shut out, or a few larger companies winning it all. Something like an “American dividend” might be better for downside protection, and encourages positive sum cooperation and like AI diffusion (see Matt Levine, index funds should be illegal). The main problem is that private markets are(n’t) the new public markets (another Matt Levine classic), and such a move might further discourage promising companies from going public, so founders can retain control.
Ilan Gur has a post on the UK ARIA program, which provides an interesting combination of optimistic ambition and a good description for why innovation generally doesn’t happen outside a few concentrated parts of the world.
Andrew Yang interviews Rutger Bergman of the “School of Moral Ambition”, which appears to be a more normie version of Effective Altruism. For example, it includes earning to give, but it seems to care more about domestic lives instead of treating all lives equally, and improving lives instead of reducing suffering. Also, they don’t seem to care longtermism, x-risk, or AI, and they want to tax the rich. Still, it seems adjacent enough that the fact they felt the need to create a completely new thing doesn’t seem to bode well for EA’s prospects (Edit: Bentham’s Bulldog interviews Rutger on his relation to EA).
Asterisk Mag has an interesting piece on road fatalities in the United States, promoting “Safe System” road design. The statistic that Canada and Finland have lower fatality rates despite similar rates of car ownership is actually pretty crazy, considering weather differences
The Free Press (via Marginal Revolution) has an article by Tim Daly noting that Mississippi has improved student literacy rates by allowing students to be held back. Also on Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok on the pricing of pharmaceuticals, and a link to a tool of information on New York judges.
Naomi Kanakia on the New Yorker reviewing her novella Money Matters. I wonder to what extent literary fiction is waking up to the fact that the rebels are becoming the cool kids, and if so, whether they will be able to co-opt them.
