Vote for Competence and Tolerance
Lots of people want to frame the 2020 US election as a fight between the left and the right, with the wrong side being near an extreme on that spectrum. They are deceiving you. The U.S. is facing some...
View ArticleMedical Certainty and Prestige
From The problem with rapid Covid testing, Mayank Gupta writes: The absolute number of false positives would rise dramatically under slightly inaccurate, broad surveillance testing. At least...
View ArticleI Lose My COVID Bet
Last month, I conceded defeat in my bet (with Robin Hanson) that US COVID-19 deaths would be less than 250,000. My biggest mistake was thinking voters would care about results, and unite against a...
View ArticleThe Cult of Smart
Book review: The Cult of Smart, by Fredrik deBoer. The Cult of Smart is a sporadically thoughtful book about education politics, sometimes rising above tribal politics, and sometimes repeating tired...
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Shut Out
Book review: Shut Out: How a Housing Shortage Caused the Great Recession and Crippled Our Economy, by Kevin Erdmann. Why did the US have an unusually bad recession in 2008, followed by years of...
View ArticleThe Resilient Society
Book review: The Resilient Society, by Markus Brunnermeier. This is a collection of loosely related chapters on current political topics such as pandemic response and macroeconomics. I haven’t read...
View ArticleThe ESG Alignment Problem
The ESG investing movement (environmental, social, and corporate governance) is becoming potentially important, potentially good, and potentially corrupt. I’ll walk through some of the sources of...
View ArticleDrexler’s Nanotech Forecast
In 1986, Drexler predicted (in Engines of Creation) that we’d have molecular assemblers in 30 years. They would roughly act as fast, atomically precise 3-d printers. That was the standard meaning of...
View ArticleBank Failures
This week we saw two interesting bank collapses: Silvergate Capital Corporation, and SVB Financial Group. This is a reminder that diversification is important. The most basic problem in both cases is...
View ArticleFour Battlegrounds
Book review: Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, by Paul Scharre. Four Battlegrounds is often a thoughtful, competently written book on an important topic. It is likely...
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