2025-08-18
conflagratio
Vitalik Buterin has some good commentary on the recent Noor Siddiqui opinion piece on embryo selection in the New York Times.
Marginal Revolution has a paper by Vlad Tarko on the increasing relevance of status competitions as our basic needs have become satisfied. I take the opposing position, which is that since the desire to win status competitions developed to ensure access to basic resources, the most self-aware and intelligent will increasingly opt out of them1 as resources are increasingly abundant. The deciding factor is to what extent reproduction continues to depend on status.
Heather Havrilesky on shame, though this reminds me of a tweet I can’t find about the Cluely drama that maybe shame culture is a good thing after all, given what seems to happen when East Asians Americans escape it. Eurydice2 also points out that the other side of “being yourself” and “not caring what other people think” might mean becoming less conscientious and more neurotic.
Derek Thompson has a post on pickleball, the kind I normally diagnose as the output of someone who gets a little too into their rabbit hole. But there is a good point included that having a “very low barrier to entry and a surprisingly high ceiling for mastery” is a great way to make something popular. Maybe this is me reading my own special interest into everything, but it seems to me that the decline in relationship formation is to a large extent because it used to have a very low barrier to entry, which is now less so.
Richard Ngo on how everyone tends to regard themselves as the underdog. It seems to me that this is natural, because any organization which is not rapidly expanding is probably fully tapped out trying to maintain their current status versus entropy and various enemies. In which case, it’s correct to perceive that additional headwinds will result in decline and eventual collapse (ignoring that interlopers are themselves subject to restraining forces).
Dean Ball was on the Cognitive Revolution podcast a while ago talking about his work on the AI Action Plan. I’m a little confused, because my take then (and still sort of now) is that the plan is good and important in that it avoids restraining industry, but otherwise the government is pretty limited in what it can really do. This seems supported by the fact that Dean doesn’t see much value in staying in the administration after publishing it. On the other hand, it seems to be very well received, so either expectations were very extremely low, or I’m still missing something.
Cameron Wolfe, similar to Sebastian Raschka’s, although this one is a more comprehensive overview rather than a description of how it differs versus the competing Chinese models.
Priyanka Pulla has a piece in Asterisk Mag on the Serum Institute of India. It’s interesting because, to a large extent, it seems like companies are now very wary of falling victim to China-trap dynamics in any overseas partnership. In some ways, this is a shame, since that is after all how China lifted its people out of poverty. But it looks like you can still develop your technical base and skills if you can make your partners feel good about it in the process.
The Argument is libbing out. Generally speaking, I don’t think the track record of journalistic supergroups is usually very good, since they are often more additive than multiplicative for the people involved. But the potential is there, so I hope it goes well.
Ozy Brennan with “fun facts” about Maoist movements around the world.
Ari Shtein with a funny piece on underperforming university endowments.
Greco Wansley has a post on ways to mitigate the harms of status competitions.
Her blog also hosts a guest post on how to be good at sex, an example of “just be good” sort of advice which is nevertheless useful.