Link post
Atlas Fellowship: $10k scholarship + 11-day program for high schoolers
AMA with Bryan Bishop has concluded
Erik Torenberg hiring a “researcher in residence”
What a simple toy could tell the past about their future
IRBs save a few people while killing 10,000–100,000 more and costing $1.6B
Science depends on promoting good outliers, not preventing bad outliers
Breeding mosquitoes to prevent disease (strong XKCD 938 energy)
New, high-grade cache of rare earth elements was discovered recently
SF mayor introduces wide-reaching housing reforms (via @anniefryman who has a good explainer thread). And how to build a house in a day (via @Vernon3Austin)
Alex Tabarrok on Costo, channeling Voltaire
Freeman Dyson: “Nobody builds reactors for fun anymore”
Why it’s more important to “raise the ceiling” rather than the “floor”
“Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics”
If you heard the term “intellectual entrepreneur,” what would you think it means?
Why is a protein’s shape so important?
Is there a dataset of very granular TFP by industry?
What’s an example of a proactive regulation or policy that worked well?
Is anyone working on reducing the modern bureaucratic workload on researchers?
The increased supply of intelligence will create more demand for tasks that require intelligence (via @packyM)
Observations on two years of programming with GitHub Copilot
A Turing test would be a dynamic, evolving, adversarial competition
“GPT agents” are cool experiments, but the demos look sort of fake?
Freeman Dyson gave a very short answer to the 2015 Edge question
Both AI doomers and anti-doomers believe that the other side has a weird conjunction of many dubious arguments. Related, a critique of pure reason
Something the government can do now about AI safety: define liability
Scott Aaronson on what to do now about AI risk
Scott Alexander on “not overshooting and banning all AI forever”
Norbert Wiener was concerned about machine alignment problems in the 1960s
Will AI be safer if it has cost/efficiency constraints?
What are the implications of LLMs for AI interpretability?
Can Man create a machine so smart he can’t turn it off?
Rocket launches as our aesthetic contribution for the age. (Compare to this painting)
Job posting for a position at Shockley Transistor, 1960
John Quincy Adams: hero of progress?
On sending your life in a dramatically better, more ambitious direction
“The reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a ‘constructionist’ one”
One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens…
The map of undersea cables is like a wiring diagram for the planet. See also this 1996 piece by Neal Stephenson (non-fiction)
Progress links and tweets, 2023-04-24
Link post
The Progress Forum
Atlas Fellowship: $10k scholarship + 11-day program for high schoolers
AMA with Bryan Bishop has concluded
Opportunities
Erik Torenberg hiring a “researcher in residence”
Links
What a simple toy could tell the past about their future
IRBs save a few people while killing 10,000–100,000 more and costing $1.6B
Science depends on promoting good outliers, not preventing bad outliers
Breeding mosquitoes to prevent disease (strong XKCD 938 energy)
New, high-grade cache of rare earth elements was discovered recently
SF mayor introduces wide-reaching housing reforms (via @anniefryman who has a good explainer thread). And how to build a house in a day (via @Vernon3Austin)
Alex Tabarrok on Costo, channeling Voltaire
Quotes
Freeman Dyson: “Nobody builds reactors for fun anymore”
Why it’s more important to “raise the ceiling” rather than the “floor”
“Bureaucracies temporarily suspend the Second Law of Thermodynamics”
Queries
If you heard the term “intellectual entrepreneur,” what would you think it means?
Why is a protein’s shape so important?
Is there a dataset of very granular TFP by industry?
What’s an example of a proactive regulation or policy that worked well?
Is anyone working on reducing the modern bureaucratic workload on researchers?
AI
The increased supply of intelligence will create more demand for tasks that require intelligence (via @packyM)
Observations on two years of programming with GitHub Copilot
A Turing test would be a dynamic, evolving, adversarial competition
“GPT agents” are cool experiments, but the demos look sort of fake?
Freeman Dyson gave a very short answer to the 2015 Edge question
AI safety
Both AI doomers and anti-doomers believe that the other side has a weird conjunction of many dubious arguments. Related, a critique of pure reason
Something the government can do now about AI safety: define liability
Scott Aaronson on what to do now about AI risk
Scott Alexander on “not overshooting and banning all AI forever”
Norbert Wiener was concerned about machine alignment problems in the 1960s
Will AI be safer if it has cost/efficiency constraints?
What are the implications of LLMs for AI interpretability?
Can Man create a machine so smart he can’t turn it off?
Other tweets
Rocket launches as our aesthetic contribution for the age. (Compare to this painting)
Job posting for a position at Shockley Transistor, 1960
John Quincy Adams: hero of progress?
On sending your life in a dramatically better, more ambitious direction
“The reductionist hypothesis does not by any means imply a ‘constructionist’ one”
One man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens…
Maps
The map of undersea cables is like a wiring diagram for the planet. See also this 1996 piece by Neal Stephenson (non-fiction)