Matt Lakeman on Tunisia, about half of it wondering how it was that Kais Saied managed to become elected, although it seems to me that he is better than average for the region.
Dwarkesh interviews Victor Shih. If I recall correctly, there was a tweet or something by Tanner Greer (which I cannot find) as to what makes a good Dwarkesh guest. Replicating ChinaTalk is fine, since ChinaTalk is great, but if Dwarkesh is time rather than guest limited it seems like a bit of a waste. Anyway, there’s this interesting essay by Duncan Sabien on perspective, which is relevant for any really big topics like China or AI.
Noah Smith on the end of Baumol’s cost disease. Personally, I think this is a good case of mimetics actually effecting positive change.
Jenneral on historical thinker’s attitudes towards women. It’s interesting really how Schopenhauer’s thoughts are basically identical to that of some of the more questionable right-wing personalities today, although in hindsight perhaps not actually surprising.
Dylan Black on Bentham’s Bulldog’s anthropic arguements for god. I basically agree with everything here, and my impression is also that Matthew tries to do “mathematics with English”. Unclear what he might think about my alternative explanation for fine-tuning, which at the very least seems to me to demonstrate that naturalistic explanations are capable of producing Beth 2 numbers of people.
Sam Enright on the mathematical necessity for discounting when considering utilitarianism with infinite numbers of people. Very interesting that a large part of the essay is on how niche his belief is, when it seems obviously correct to me. Specifically, I think discounting over uncertainty clearly leads to better outcomes. For similar reasons to why the free market works, the less informed you are in a particular area, the more you should probably leave decisions to better informed participants.
Zvi on how we currently treat children.
Jim O'Shaunnesey interviews Todd Rose about how we are misinformed about the beliefs of our peers1.
Works in Progress on kidneys. Somewhat related, a tweet about an article which seems to miss the point about what the real problems are.
Asimov Press has an article by Noah Whiteman on biomimicry of peptides in drug development. It’s quite interesting, because if a peptide is being produced within an adversarial context, it (and it’s derived analogs) would probably have a limited lifespan as a pharmaceutical, as in the case of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance. Which is presumably why this article focuses on repurposing these peptides towards alternative use-cases, but then it’s confusing why alternative use-cases even exist in the first place. I assumed the adversarial environment would mean the protein becomes particularly specialized, but perhaps it’s actually the opposite, that it becomes necessary to operate by multiple complicated mechanisms instead.
Derek Lowe on a promising new asthma treatment (in mice).
Karl Ove Knausgaard in Harpers Mag on discovering materialism (via Haley Nahman). It’s interesting to see how different people will, upon being acted upon by some force, spin out in completely different directions. Or alternatively, how holders of some particular philosophy might have entered into their opinions for reasons diametrically opposed (Platonists consist of mathematicians, analytic philosophers, Classicists, and literary types). It’s interesting that apparently the existence of AI is similarly powered to psychedelics, or Buddhism, in leading people towards non-dualism.
Sympathetic Opposition on writing under the influence of psilocybin. I wish there was more elaboration on what exactly the benefits were. Personally, I felt like being on mushrooms lets me understand the motivations of others, which are otherwise pretty opaque to me. But that’s sort of the opposite of what the author seems to be describing.
SlimeMold linkthread. Includes an excellent ad for Bioré sunscreen.
Stephanie Murray natalism linkthread. One result where “I notice I am confused”: apparently life satisfaction of unpartnered women seems opposite to that of the discourse that women are better at being single than men.
Ozy Brennan EA linkthread. Including a cool series on AI from Quanta Mag.
Provides empirical evidence for Matt Yglesias’ point that misinformation mostly harms your own side.