Progress links and tweets, 2023-06-28: “We can do big things again in Pennsylvania”

post by jasoncrawford · 2023-06-28T20:23:55.927Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

This is a link post for https://rootsofprogress.org/links-and-tweets-2023-06-28

Contents

  Opportunities
  News & links
  Queries
  Quotes
  AI risk
  Tweets
  Charts
None
1 comment

Opportunities

• AI Grant’s second batch is now accepting applications (via @natfriedman)
• Longevity Biotech Fellowship 2 is also accepting applications (via @allisondman)
• Science writing office hours with Niko McCarty (this one over but more in the future)

News & links

• I-95 reopened in just 12 days after a section of it collapsed. Gov. Shapiro says this proves “that we can do big things again in Pennsylvania”
• Arcadia Science will publish their abandoned projects (via @stuartbuck1)
• Short interview with the Hiroshima bombing mission lead (via @michael_nielsen)

Queries

• When was the last time a positive vision of the future took hold?
• What should Tyler Cowen ask Paul Graham?
• What should Dwarkesh Patel ask Andy Matuschak?
• Who should Eric Gilliam meet in/near London?
• How do airlines pool information / make agreements on safety and avoid antitrust?
• A FAQ that addresses the arguments/concerns of vaccine skeptics?

Quotes

• “I wonder that the Lord God has kept such things hidden”
• “The Flat Iron is to the United States what the Parthenon was to Greece”
• The terrible treatment of the girls who worked in the Bryant and May match factory

AI risk

• Claim: now is an “acute risk period” that only ends with a “global immune system”
• Concerns about AI are warranted, but there are very valid counter-arguments
• An AI doom syllogism
• On the paper “Optimal Policies Tend to Seek Power”

Tweets

• Gear teeth are way more nuanced than you would expect
• A brief thread of wonder at the modern world
• Staying up to date on news by tracking prediction markets
• Floor raisers vs. ceiling raisers
• Induction vs. deduction / empiricism vs. rationalism are the falsest dichotomies
• What someone’s unwillingness to debate says about their position
• “How easy is it for a kid to operate a lemonade stand?” as a city metric. Kennett Square, PA and Tooele, UT score well
• A 13-story, 245-unit timber high rise that would be illegal to build in the US
• Postel’s law for feedback
• Things that “made the modern world,” according to book titles
• “You can count on coal!” (1952)

• America’s worst nightmare according to Popular Mechanics, 2004

Charts

• For Juneteenth, the progress of black Americans in wealth per capita

• Death rates from “external causes”

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