Reducible Errors
The residents of Jerusalem are familiar with an odd phenomenon. A major tourist destination, the holy city receives between 3 and 5 million visitors a year from around the world. People from all countries and walks of life. The vast majority of these visits proceed perfectly normally, but for a small fraction of people, something strange happens. It is said that travel changes you. And in some…
This is the fourth in a series of posts about my history with computers. I want to describe how it feels for your weird little obsession (computers) to end up taking over the world. Click here to read part 1 . I don't remember exactly when the Internet happened for me. What I do remember is that it felt like a logical progression of the stuff I had seen and tried before. In a very real sense, I…
Observation #1: LinkedIn sucks LinkedIn sucks. At this point, I doubt anyone needs to be convinced of this obvious fact. AI slop content has largely taken over the site. The one-sentence paragraphs, the breathless "insights", and the supposed personal growth from minor setbacks dressed up as Shakespearean tragedies. All of it relentlessly positive, performative, and empty. Automated engagement…
One of the most interesting phenomena in modern society is the conspiracy theory. Even defining the concept is hard, since one person's conspiracy theory is another person's shrewd assessment of the true levers of power. Calling an idea a conspiracy theory is already a slight on the idea, the speaker derogating it merely by attaching the label. Subsequent discussion and debate often becomes…
There has been much debate online recently about post-AGI economics. For example, Philip Trammell and Dwarkesh Patel made the case for taxing capital under the assumption that once AIs can do jobs better and more cheaply than humans can, the latter will be immiserated unless we do large-scale redistribution. The argument goes something like: Baumol effect arguments say that as long as there is…
In a lot of action/superhero movies, including the latest James Bond film No Time To Die , the villain's plan is pretty simple: design some terrible new superweapon, then use it to either blackmail world leaders, or to directly takeover the (checks notes), uh, world. The hero's plan is pretty simple too: find the evil supervillain's lair, kill the villain, and destoy the superweapon. Boom, problem…
This is the third in a series of posts about my history with computers. I want to describe how it feels for your weird little obsession (computers) to end up taking over the world. Click here to read part 1 . The last few posts might make it seem like I was stuck in my own little universe, oblivious to the rest of the world. The truth is quite the opposite. My TV consumption in the 80s and early…
This is the second in a series of posts about my history with computers. I want to describe how it feels for your weird little obsession (computers) to end up taking over the world. Click here to read part 1 . By the summer of 1982, the computer situation in my house was getting to be a problem. I wanted to spend more and more time on my dad's Northstar Horizon, but so did my dad. I imagine I was…
Imagine if as a kid you were really into the harmonica. It was your weird little hobby. But then over the course of the next 40 years, somehow the world's economy completely reconstructed itself around the harmonica. And now everyone you know has to play the harmonica, or deal with it even if they don't like it. You see harmonica billionaires everywhere, even a few trillion-dollar harmonica…
Prediction markets are having a moment. Polymarket daily volumes are around $30 million. Kalshi is around the same, and recently raised a funding round at a valuation of $2 billion. On the regulatory front, the SEC and CFTC seem to have given up trying to limit Kalshi's transformation into a sport-betting powerhouse, making a mockery of state-level regulations on sports gambling. Indeed,…
The first post of any new blog has a lot of pressure on it. For one thing, it has to be good inasmuch as it sets the tone for subsequent posts. But more importantly, someone reading the first post of a new blog probably is asking a very reasonable question: is this the first of many? Or more likely, is it merely the first of one? We've probably all seen the plots which show that number of posts…