2026-01-22
hedorian forever
Owen Cotton-Barratt overview of Eric Drexler’s AI commentary1, on the theme that future superintelligence is best reasoned about as systems of services, and not as individual anthropomorphic agents. I generally agree more people should be thinking this way, but it is worth noting that systems can encompass both “the economy” and “society”, and analysis of the latter system actually does benefit from some degree of anthropomorphization, both for individual agents and in the aggregate. On that note, Anthropic open sources Claude’s constitution document; positive review from Agus.
Guive Assadi argues against fixation on preventing AI risk based on the idea that if doom is averted, then utopia is inevitable, because path-dependence and lock-in from initial conditions could drastically affect to what extent we are able to achieve more positive utility outcomes2.
Isaac LaGrand interview with Brian Caplan on all the ways that he disagrees with the other prominent members of the George Mason economics department. On the topic of state capacity, I agree that only technological limitations are “real”, and the concept of political economy is more often just being used to launder failures of leadership, but in other cases one could imagine how advancements in the former could provide additional optionality in the latter. On that note, Eleanor Konik on historical attempts at locust management.
Eric Topol with an overview of all the natural experiments showing evidence for the neuroprotective effects of the Shingles vaccine. Tangentially related, Lynetta Wang with an interesting framework describing how pharmaceutical companies choose drug development targets Notably, even the most empirically-driven pathway is ultimately for the purpose of producing single-target interventions.
ChinaTalk has an interesting interview with Dan Kim and Chris Miller on what exactly economic resilience and security means in the context of the CHIPS act. It’s interesting to hear about the benefits of friendshoring in light of recent drama around Greenland. I’m very confused what is going on there, since it’s obvious that the United States by itself cannot outmanufacture China3.
Afra Wang writes in Wired on the Chinese intellectual scene of the “Industrial Party”. Although it’s strange to read about their diminished energy as a sign of failure, when it seems to me it’s really an indication of how totally they’ve won. The alternative would have been to fall into the trap of many formerly celebrated American institutions, who upon succeeding in their original mandates found themselves advocating for increasingly radical positions as a means of avoiding headcount reduction.
Joshua Dwyer writes in the Center for Education Progress on replacing holistic admissions with standardized testing in combination with a lottery, which is interesting to read in light of a recent Sinica podcast on the Chinese Gaokao, since adding a lottery component is probably the most obvious reform for decreasing involution.
Secretary of Defense Rock modern military book recommendations.
Georgia Ray on preparing for heavy snowfall.
Cyn on girls asking guys out4. It seems to me the direct ask is collapsing things into a binary with “I like you, do you like me?”, and the issue is that for the most part5, the answer actually provides very little new information. Notably, the solution she goes with doesn’t remove the first part, just changing the second to something more like “how much do you like me?”
This is a continuation of earlier comments by Will MacAskill, where I note that Effective Altruists seem to be ignoring how well positioned they are to steer AI towards positive outcomes.
Noah Smith had many good pieces about this over the past couple of years. Anyway, Mick Ryan has a transcript of the full Carney speech, and Luis Garicano has some comments on Europe. I’m reminded of the meme that makes fun of the repeated usage of the phrase “wake-up call” as applied to Europe, which makes it seem like they are some sort of narcolepsy patient, who looks for any excuse to go back to sleep. Current events in Davos feel more like the scene in Mean Girls where everyone finally decides to kick Regina out of the group, but it’s unclear to me that they’re actually going to be doing anything differently policy-wise, along the lines of current Bank of Japan actions as described by Kyla Scanlon.
Edit: Wesley Fenza response.
Regarding exceptions, Katherine Dee has an interesting description of manosphere culture as arising out of an environment where boys grow up without male role models (as described by the Moynihan Report).