Links and tweets, 2023-01-25
by Jason Crawford · January 25, 2023 · 1 min read
The Progress Forum
- Tyler Cowen AMA is now done, read dozens of answers
- Vitalik on science, his philanthropy, progress and effective altruism
- On Eli Dourado’s “Heretical Thoughts on AI”
Announcements
- AllSearch.ai: “Google Books on steroids” (@dwarkesh_sp)
- Our World in Data is hiring a data scientist (via @MaxCRoser)
Links
- Zvi on gas stoves: ruining Nice Things for “marginally better health”
- A link from last week’s digest on quantum computing is probably bogus
Queries
- What is the case that ~4° C of warming by 2100 will be far worse for the world?
- What is the earliest technology where most users had no idea how it worked?
- Why is the learning curve on corn linear and not exponential?
Quotes
- The insane power potential of nanotech motors. See also the intro to Nanosystems
- “Don’t send that railway through our town! … Wait, build us a branch line!”
- There are no “natural” resources
- The dose determines the poison
Tweets and retweets
- My hypothesis about Solow’s computer productivity paradox
- One blast furnace produces ~170x more iron than all of England in 1720
- Stuart Buck’s grandfather hoped he would grow up to “get an indoors job”
- Satellite photo of anywhere on Earth for as little as $175 ($7/km2!)
- We had supersonic jets, lunar landers & nuclear reactors in the 1970s. We lost our way
- A nuclear design has finally received NRC certification after 6 years
- Skyscrapers used to be Art Deco and neo-Gothic, what happened? (@culturaltutor)
- The Hardiman, one of the earliest exoskeleton designs
