2026-01-27
when shall i be free?
Maximilian Schons in Asimov Press with an excellent overview of the current state of brain emulation.
Andrew Miller in Asterisk Mag describes the history of autonomous vehicles and the competition between Waymo and Tesla’s approach to sensors.
Dario Amodei overview of potential risks of AGI and possible mitigations.
Lauren Gilbert linkthread includes mention of the Institute for Progress request for proposals on AI policy1. It’s actually not clear to me this initiative is necessary, since it seems to me that a lot of people are actually working in these areas for free online, and although they lack detail, it doesn’t seem to be because of lack of funding, but because it’s just too early, with the future too undefined, to properly translate these ideas into actionable proposals. For example, for publication of research papers, depending on its level of capabilities, AI could be used to assist peer reviewing (or similarly any other gatekeeping, like grant applications, replication, or hiring). Or perhaps we could eliminate the written portion entirely and turn the paper submission into an AI-chaired thesis defense. If we reach the Coasean singularity, you could outsource this defense to your own AI assistant. Or perhaps we might submit all our data directly to a global repository in an AI-readable format, allowing for on-demand generation of review papers in real time, alongside suggestions for your future research. Until AI perhaps becomes capable of running experiments themselves, and does so according to its own judgment as to the optimal allocation of resources. In deciding among these outcomes, it’s not clear to me that think tanks currently have any advantage over the market2 in determining which approaches would overall work best for society, and promoting any particular ideas or even encouraging the formation of institutions structured around any particular approach seems ultimately more likely to be distortionary than beneficial. In a world where starting up new institutions is itself something which becomes significantly easier due to AI assistance, the only thing which needs to be done is to ensure that existing institutions cannot block new experiments3, allowing the market a broad range of options to choose from. Related, Kevin Blake on the metaphor of the Cambrian explosion for AI applications.
Cameron Wolfe overview on the idea of using reinforcement learning as a means to unlock continual learning.
The PSmith’s review Philosophy Between the Lines and discuss the history of esoteric writing and Straussianism reading. It’s interesting because there seems to be an implication that it was the Renaissance practice of extracting the truth of classical texts from their esoteric shells that led to the Enlightenment value of truthseeking, which necessarily came bundled with other values like tolerance and freedom of expression as safeguards.
Anton Cebalo with cases of how visitors from the Middle East, China, and Russia view and understand America and it’s notions of freedom4.
Kat in Republic of Letters on Han Chinese views of “barbarian” cultures. It’s interesting because it feels in some sense like pre-2010’s American discourse, but actually many of what I see as weaknesses in Chinese culture could plausibly be improved through a small dose of cultural relativism.
Richard Hanania suggests that therapy might contribute to worse mental health outcomes. It does seem to me that the two are correlated, but it’s unclear to me what the underlying mechanism is, whether it’s something to do with excessive self-reflection, or if it’s an issue where low quality and selection effects are steering the industry towards sycophancy5. Tangentially related, Eurydice on being able to take (online) criticism well.
No Magic Pill on the professionalization and hollowing out of street workout online subculture. Though it seems to me that any scene which is both public performance and online will naturally trend in this direction. If it’s only public, like the gymnastics equipment at the Platja de San Sebastiá, people tend to be pretty friendly and casual. Alternatively, /r/bodyweightfitness, which is targeted for exercise in the privacy of one’s own home, also seems to be useful for aspirational beginners.
Desmolysium on teriparatide with zoledronic acid to prevent age-related osteoporosis.
Tokyo Gourmet on the 2026 Tabelog awards.
Edit: I’ve been thinking about this more, and it seems possible that in this case the IFP could be acting more like a startup accelerator than a think tank. By which I mean, startup accelerators take more risks and fund multiple overlapping bets, while think tanks pick a particular position to be anointed as the chosen one. It will be interesting to see which approach they go with here, and if they choose the former, how they communicate that in their writeups.
Related, Flyover Takes response to a recent report by Samantha Shorey on using AI agents in government work.
Robert Worth in the Atlantic on events in Minneapolis. Richard Chappell on democratic accountability. Nicholas Decker on ensuring electoral freedom is preserved (Edit: Emily Witt in the New Yorker)
Jerusalem Demsas has an article about how more CEOs and economic elites should be condemning recent events. It seems to me that they are, but I think it’s understandable that they aren’t being particularly aggressive, because if there’s a threat of retaliation, then one needs to make sure that the reward is worth the cost, and it’s easier to make that calculation for policies which directly affect GDP. Maia Mindel contends that there is a fundamental “incompatibility between the current configuration of markets and the civic and political foundations of those market themselves”. This doesn’t seem to be the case to me, at most, the two are adjacent and orthogonal, which means they have many objectives which could variously help or harm the other. It’s therefore up to us all to attempt to tie the two together as much as possible, and otherwise manage tradeoffs accordingly.
Also, while I’m at it, there’s a good New York Times article on the recent violent suppression of protests in Iran. Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly unclear to me exactly what the US options are for improving the situation short of a full invasion. Presumably overthrowing the government would minimally require distributing a significant number of arms to citizens while using drones or air superiority to take out IRGC sniper and machine gun positions across Tehran, and it’s not clear to me that, even if they were willing to accept the theoretical costs involved, that they even have the capacity to do so in a limited manner. Given how entrenched the current system is, it doesn’t seem like a few airstrikes would really improve anything long-term.
(Jan 31 edit: I just remembered that Abigail Shrier had this idea several years ago).
I have a semi-serious joke idea that the underlying cause behind studies finding that parenting quality doesn’t matter for outcomes is that there are actually many beneficial effects to bad parenting. For example, it lets the child learn to handle the unreasonable, unfair, and annoying behavior of others, producing things like self-control, self-sufficiency, and humility. Possibly the optimal system is to have one very unreasonable parent to force yourself to develop these skills, and then have the other one be more reasonable, serving as a positive role model.