Bentham's Bulldog has a summary of his position on theism. I have been wondering recently how quantum mechanics interacts with cosmological natural selection. The latter posits a multiverse where each black hole creates a new universe. But there are also certain paradigms within the former which consist of a different kind of multiverse, where every possible combination that is possible within the physical constants of a particular universe all exist in superposition. Presumably, since information can’t be transferred through black holes, the CNS-multiverse is not the same thing as the QM-multiverse. Therefore, this seems to indicate that every black hole, including the one our universe resides in, is actually a Schrödinger's black hole, existing in some QM-multiverses but not in others. In which case, each of the nodes in the infinite multiverse tree of CNS also themselves contain a large number of infinite-sized multiverse trees in a sort of fractal pattern1.
Aadil has a post on self-improvement. It occurs to me that another point of awakening is the first moment when you realize that your personality is not fixed and open to change.
Politics stuff: Ben Krauss on the mayoralty of Brandon Johnson in Chicago, as an example of a progressive failing to make proper tradeoffs. S.Y. Lee on the payroll tax funding urban transit in France, interesting because apparently mere funding increases were actually able to bring back a system that was in decline. Martin Sustrik on reforming government slowly or quickly.
Various podcasts2:
Razib Khan interviews Tim Lee on self-driving cars. Still unclear to me why rollout in the Midwest is not Waymo (or other company’s) strategy, given the enormous benefits that becoming an integral part of Midwestern culture would accrue to you3. The only reason I can think of as to why no one has tried is if they still believe that self-driving might fail, but surely we are way past that point?
Tools and Weapons has a series where they interview all the CEOs of Microsoft, which is interesting when viewed from the idea large companies function best when they have a single KPI which allows all the employees to effortlessly coordinate on decisions. It’s interesting to what extent you can hear what the KPIs were during the course of each CEO’s tenure. For Gates, it’s the phrase “a computer on every desk and in every home”, which he repeats multiple times in this series. For Ballmer, it’s loyalty: the idea is that Microsoft will maintain a product in every category where customer’s always want something more; by virtue of it’s size, Microsoft will try to outperform, but will at least outlast, everyone else. Then we get to Satya, and the goal is total dominance over B2B SaaS thanks to complete integration across all services.
It’s interesting to see the path dependence at work here. Possibly it’s Ballmer’s very focus on loyalty which meant he couldn’t throw away hardware, that which Gates formed the initial basis of the company on. Yet it’s also because Gates succeeded that software became increasingly important as a differentiator, causing a maturation that meant there would always be competitors in every segment, and merely existing was no longer good enough. Yet it’s the profligacy by which the older Microsoft launched new products in every niche, that it’s current software-focused4 iteration is currently able to compete so well on integration.
Derek Thompson interviews Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick on modern trends in dating. One thing he mentions is the increasing scope of marriage in the modern age, which makes finding your partner both harder and more stressful. On that note, one thing that’s unclear to me about Aella’s husband search is why she seems to be looking for the complete package, when it seems to me she should be taking advantage of the fact that she is committed to poly. Rather than looking for compatibility in terms of personality and sex, it seems simpler to filter primarily on someone who will be good for raising children (especially since she plans to use IVF).
Spencer Greenberg interviews Jacob Appel about psychiatry and bioethics. Surprisingly for that combination, he has what I consider to be actually good opinions. Including the potential for genetics to unlock personalization for treatment of mental disorders.
Patio11 talks podcasting shop with Ross Rheingans-Yoo.
Viewed from certain angles, this might be an implementation of Stephen Wolfram’s Metamathematical Ruliad. It is also conceptually similar to Tegmark’s mathematical universe, although it does not necessarily and probably does not produce all mathematically possible outcomes. Funnily enough, if I’m understanding the cardinality definitions correctly, the total number of universes predicted is actually in Beth 2.
The next couple of days are a good opportunity to wear out my podcast backlist, alongside my shoes. I’ll probably be skimming all the written articles though.
Here’s a trade deal: Filling a niche in cities without public transit or enough rideshare drivers, serving old people, kids, anyone else without cars (including maybe the Amish), with cheap and convenient transportation. In return, you receive: The backing of 24(!) senators, 7 Democrats and 17 Republicans. No vandalism due to rule-following norms. Brand loyalty. Finally, it seems highly likely that you could arrange a deal to obtain private access to some freeways to generate training data for night and all-weather driving.
There’s one major exception, Xbox. It’s unfortunate that I don’t have Stratchery premium, because I think Thompson probably has interesting things to say about this. But it seems pretty clear that despite its strong brand and profitability, Xbox is being marginalized.