Related posts

American science fiction novelist (Old Man's War, Redshirts, The Kaiju Preservation Society); has run the blog Whatever since 1998.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rock groups rarely keep the same lineup for their entire career.

  Their words

  It's rare to have a rock group of any sort keep all the same members all the way through their run.

  50th Anniversaries and When I’ll Hit Themwhatever.scalzi.com

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The New Right sees the world as a zero-sum collective competition between racial groups.

  Their words

  The New Right sees the world as a zero-sum collective competition between racial groups.

  @Noahpinion on Xx.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The New Right sees the world as collective zero-sum competition between groups, so any win for nonwhite groups counts as a loss for whites.

  America

  Their words

  Most importantly, they see the world in terms of collective zero-sum competition between groups. To the New Right, if Indians get into the University of Texas, it means that White people must have been “replaced” at that university — or at American universities in general.

  The anti-American Rightnoahpinion.blog

Machine-learning researcher on open language models; writes the Interconnects newsletter and the RLHF Book, after leading post-training at Ai2.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI-caused catastrophic extinction risk is negligible, but disasters like critical-infrastructure cyberattacks and bio-risks from AI are real and worth debating.

  Their words

  I put the probability of complete extinction as being so low it isn't worth discussing, but the probabilities of AI caused disasters - e.g. cyber attacks on critical infrastructure or bio-risks - as being worth debating.

  interconnects.ai

Mathematician and Senior Lecturer in the Mathematics department at Columbia University. Author of the book Not Even Wrong and of the long-running physics blog of the same name.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI agents are going to have major consequences for how mathematics research is done.

  Their words

  The new AI agents have profound implications for mathematics research and I think the math community needs to start discussing specific ways to deal with these.

  A Modest Proposalmath.columbia.edu

Founded Bridgewater Associates in 1975 and led it until stepping back from control in 2022. Author of Principles, The Changing World Order and How Countries Go Broke; publishes economic analysis at economicprinciples.org.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  MasterClass Executive program

  Their words

  It was great discussing this and other topics with Masterclass CEO David Rogier and future members of the @MasterClass Executive program. You can learn more about the program here: https://t.co/9wMKPLsuTY

  x.com

Professor at Wharton studying how people actually use AI, and author of Co-Intelligence. Writes One Useful Thing, where the claims are dated and testable because the thing they describe keeps changing under them.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  AI models generate more commercially viable ideas than groups of humans, but those ideas are highly similar to each other.

  Their words

  We found that AIs are actually quite creative and that they generate more commercially viable ideas than groups of humans, but those ideas are very similar to each other.

  Agency and Agentsoneusefulthing.org

Professor of economics at George Mason University and Bartley J. Madden Chair at the Mercatus Center. Co-writes the blog Marginal Revolution and co-authors the textbook Modern Principles of Economics with Tyler Cowen.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Enlightenment 2.0

  Their words

  In my 2015 post discussing Joseph Heath’s excellent book Enlightenment 2.0

  marginalrevolution.com

British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee. Blogs at shkspr.mobi, where he posts a book review most weeks.

• Dislikedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Coding Literacy

  Their words

  This is a disappointing and frustrating book - not least because it so nearly hits the mark. The subtitle is "How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing" - but it never gets close to discussing that topic, let alone deeply examining it.

  shkspr.mobi

Founder of Scale AI and, since 2025, Chief AI Officer at Meta, where he leads the company’s superintelligence lab.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  For the whole of human history the bottleneck on progress has been getting a group of smart people together around a shared goal.

  America

  Their words

  I mean, I think for the history of humanity, um you know, groups of smart people getting together towards a shared goal was was the bottleneck of progress. You know, US The United States of America in some sense was an example of this. Like the United States of America was formed from a smart group of very smart people getting together and having a vision for the future that they wanted to enact.

  youtube.com

General partner at Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2018 and CTO of Coinbase from 2018 to 2019; co-founder of Counsyl and Earn.com. Wrote The Network State (2022), free in full at thenetworkstate.com, and founded the Network School.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Digital finance has become a weapon of war, as shown by the financial deplatforming of groups like Canadian truckers and Russians.

  Russia

  Their words

  After the financial deplatforming of Western proles and foreign elites, of Canadian truckers and 145M Russians, it’s clear that digital finance is a weapon of war.

  The Network Statethenetworkstate.com

Founding member of OpenAI and former director of AI at Tesla; creator of nanoGPT and the term "vibe coding".

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People disagreeing about AI capability are speaking past each other, because they are using models of very different tiers on very different kinds of task.

  Their words

  TLDR the people in these two groups are speaking past each other.

  @karpathy on Xx.com

Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Comparative advantage stops governing once the power imbalance is large enough: groups then switch into seeking to dominate instead of trading.

  Their words

  and part of it is just power, I think. Like, once there's a sufficiently large power imbalance, um, very often, not always, but very often groups of people seem to to sort of shift into this other mode where they just seek to dominate.

  youtube.com

Programmer and essayist who has worked at Amazon, Google, Grab and Sourcegraph. Best known for the long-form essays collected as Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants and Stevey's Blog Rants.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Groups of two to thirty people will produce output that rivals what the big companies produce.

  Their words

  it's also enabling engineers who have seen the light and believe the curves are going to continue to go up to actually get together in groups of two and five and 10 and 20 and 30 people and start to do things that rival the output of these big companies that are tripping over themselves.

  From IDEs to AI Agents with Steve Yeggeyoutube.com

Researcher and science writer. Co-founder and editor at Works in Progress magazine, formerly a researcher at Our World in Data, and author of the Scientific Discovery newsletter on science, global health and medical innovation.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  A History of Immunology

  Their words

  I loved this book. I enjoyed learning about the early, often wildly speculative theories of immunity, how blood groups and allergies were discovered

  scientificdiscovery.dev

Writer and illustrator, author of Am I There Yet? and Out of the Blue; writes the newsletter Out of the Blue on grief, joy and everyday attention.

• Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app

  Lovevery

  Their words

  Lovevery Kits are just the ultimate. We have this play gym (as does everybody?!) which works with the Montessori toys they make. They have kits for different age groups from newborn through 51 months (I cannot even begin to calculate how old that is) and they have taught me so much about baby development!

  mariandrew.substack.com

Palaeontologist at Queen Mary University of London; studies dinosaur behaviour and writes about what the fossil record can and cannot tell us.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Whether an animal hunts in groups cannot be read off its close relatives, so pack-hunting Velociraptor does not follow even if Deinonychus hunted in packs.

  Their words

  There are various canids that all hunt in groups, but then you've got things like maned wolves, which are effectively solitary. The hyenas. Spotted hyenas are, yeah, these super social animals, but the brown hyena, the striped hyena, and the aardwolf are solitary. So you just can't do group versus solitary off close relatives or anything like that.

  youtube.com

Development economist; writes Global Developments, on growth, history and the numbers behind them.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The newly independent states of Africa were largely European inventions, assembled from peoples who had not previously shared a state.

  Europe

  Their words

  The relative absence of pre-colonial states meant that the newly independent African states were largely European inventions; modern Kenya, for instance, inherits the boundaries of British East Africa, which was created by pulling together the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kalenjin, and Kamba ethnic groups.

  global-developments.org

Writes The Pragmatic Engineer, the software-engineering newsletter, and wrote The Software Engineer's Guidebook. Formerly an engineering manager at Uber, and at Microsoft/Skype and Skyscanner before that.

• Usesrcmnd.app

  Greater Than Code

  Their words

  a podcast with frequent software engineering guests from underrepresented groups. Weekly episodes on the human side of tech.

  blog.pragmaticengineer.com

Archaeologist of the Maya and the ancient Americas; directs the Maya Exploration Center and presents the ArchaeoEd podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Andean religion was essentially monotheistic: one fanged creator deity stands behind cultures separated by thousands of years.

  Their words

  But he is the one creator deity, in my opinion, through all of these cultures. And the people in the Amazon still talk about him there. His name is Viho Masse in some groups, but they say that his emissaries on earth are the jaguars and that he is the creator deity.

  youtube.com

Investor and writer. Previously a partner at Andreessen Horowitz and a product leader at Twitter, Facebook, Snap and Microsoft. Writes essays and memos at sriramk.com.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Private group chats have become the primary venue for the most interesting conversations in tech.

  Their words

  Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups.

  Group chats rule the worldsriramk.com

Historian of Ukraine at Harvard; wrote The Gates of Europe, Chernobyl and The Russo-Ukrainian War.

From one piece Serhii Plokhy: History of Ukraine, Russia, Soviet Union, KGB, Nazis & War | Lex Fridman Podcast #415 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rus is not Russia: it was a self-name for many different groups on that territory, and Moscow did not yet exist when Kyiv became a capital.

  Russia

  Their words

  So very important to keep in mind that Rus is not Russia because that was a self-name for all multiple groups on that territory. And Moscow doesn’t exist at the time when Kyiv emerges as the capital. The first reference to Moscow comes from the 12th century when it was founded by one of the Kievan princes.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  There are Nazis and white supremacists in Ukraine, but they are more marginal there than the same groups are in Central Europe or the United States.

  EuropeAmerica

  Their words

  My understanding is there are Nazis in Ukraine and there are supporters of white supremacy theories, but also my understanding is that they are extremely marginal and they are more marginal than the same sort of groups are in Central Europe, maybe in the U.S. as well.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb; previously an infrastructure engineer at Parse, Facebook and Linden Lab, and co-author of Observability Engineering.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A few larger teams under experienced engineering managers outperform many tiny teams each led by a working tech lead.

  Their words

  But everything I have ever experienced leads me to believe that a fewer number of larger teams, each helmed by an experienced engineering manager, should way outperform this gaggle of tiny groups.

  charity.wtf

Political scientist at the University of Chicago and the leading exponent of offensive realism; wrote The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Hispanic immigrants are integrating into the American mainstream faster than the European immigrants of the nineteenth century did.

  immigrationEuropeAmerica

  Their words

  All the evidence is that Hispanics are integrating into the American mainstream more quickly and more effectively than the European immigrant groups that came starting around 1835.

  youtube.com

Economist at George Mason University. Writes Overcoming Bias on prediction markets, signalling and the far future, and wrote The Age of Em and The Elephant in the Brain.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The most likely way world fertility rises again is the growth of small insular high-fertility groups, not a change of mind in the mainstream.

  Their words

  the most likely identifiable scenario by which fertility will rise again is via the growth of currently-small insular high-fertility subgroups like the Amish and Orthodox Jews

  A Fertility Reckoningovercomingbias.com

Founded CD Baby in 1998 and sold it in 2008, giving the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education. Since then a writer and speaker: five books and 550+ articles, published first at sive.rs, which they hand-code and keep free of advertising.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  The Righteous Mind

  Their words

  Brilliant insights into human nature. Moral reasoning, inventing victims, emotional reactions, the elephant (emotions) and its rider (explanations). Intuition reacts then logic confabulates a reason. Survival of the fittest applied to groups. Understanding religion and tradition. Great from start to finish.

  sive.rs

Programmer known online as technomancy; author of Leiningen, the Clojure build tool, and a maintainer of the Fennel programming language.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Being easy to find online exposes people, especially those in marginalized groups, to a high risk of targeted abuse.

  Their words

  ask any member of a marginalized group and they'll tell you that being easy to find can have a high cost when it exposes you to targeted abuse.

  in which legibility comes at a pricetechnomancy.us

Research psychologist, instrumental in founding the field of naturalistic decision making; developed the recognition-primed decision model, the PreMortem method and the ShadowBox training method, and wrote Sources of Power and Seeing What Others Don't.

From one piece Insights for Making Better Decisions | Gary Klein | Knowledge Project 144 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Groups as a rule make terrible decisions; one person should decide and the group should only supply input.

  Their words

  I have problems with group decisions. I think groups as a rule like a heuristic make terrible decisions. Individuals should make decisions. Groups should provide input. Um but there should be one sort of person making the decision.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Brainstorming together produces no more ideas and no better ones than having people generate ideas privately before sharing them.

  Their words

  the research on like brainstorming where all brainstorming together the research shows that brainstorming does not produce more ideas or more innovative ideas. And I think teams would be and groups would be better having individuals generate their own concepts and then after they've done it independently and privately sharing it with the others.

  youtube.com

Economist; former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The main obstacle to sound fiscal policy debate is a widespread, quasi-religious belief that public debt is inherently bad.

  public debt

  Their words

  The main challenge in discussing fiscal policy is the widely held and nearly religious belief that public debt is very bad.

  Fiscal Policy under Low Interest Ratesdirect.mit.edu