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Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Domain experts consistently underestimate how quickly AI can master their field and surpass them.

  Their words

  Domain experts consistently underestimate how quickly AI can master their field and surpass them, because they mistake human difficulties for universal difficulty.

  Two missing pieces in the AI safety discussionnoahpinion.blog

Writer of the newsletter bookbear express, on psychology, relationships, non-attachment and taste; based in San Francisco.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  When someone gets the same negative reaction from many different people, the more likely explanation is their own behavior, not everyone else's.

  Their words

  If you consistently get the same particular negative reaction from people, it's best to model your own affect/behavior as the cause.

  some things I’ve learned about relationshipsavabear.xyz

Economic historian at Columbia; writes Chartbook on economics, geopolitics and history, and wrote Crashed and The Deluge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Countering the far right requires addressing voters' desire for an outsider identity, not just their economic grievances.

  Their words

  To my mind, if progressive policy hopes to engage with such voters at all - and it is open question whether it should - it must address not just the material realities of relative economic disadvantage, but above all the "outsider" credentials of the AfD.

  adamtooze.substack.com

Founder of Trilogy Software and principal of Alpha School, the private school network built around two hours a day of AI-delivered mastery learning.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Motivation, not curriculum or method, is ninety percent of the problem in education and ninety percent of the solution.

  Their words

  And that's why we say motivation is 90% of the problem or the solution because you have to be able to motivate the person to engage with these personalized lessons to learn it.

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Chief scientist at Redwood Research, where he works on technical AI safety and AI control.

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  If whole categories of reward hack are undetectable by humans, then training against the hacks we do catch teaches models to cheat only where we cannot see.

  Their words

  One concern you might have is there are like large categories of reward hacks which humans can't detect well and which we consistently fail to detect and which consistently get reinforced and then this category is sufficient to cause the most natural behavior for the AI to learn to be like cheat when the humans can't find out

  youtube.com

Coffee consultant and author of books on espresso, roasting and brewing, including The Professional Barista's Handbook and The Coffee Roaster's Companion; writes about brewing gear and roast control at scottrao.com.

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  Consistent roast color in sample roasting is essential for making fair, informed green-coffee buying decisions.

  Their words

  Roast quality and color can have a big impact on perceived cup score and buying decisions, so if you are serious about choosing the right green for your company, it is a good idea to do your own sample roasting, using a system that yields your preferred roast level consistently.

  Sample Roestingscottrao.com

Writer and former Substack product manager; publishes essays and interviews on technology, culture and China at jasmi.news.

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  AI companies' pattern of NDAs, big promises, and pushing environmental costs onto poorer communities resembles dark-money capture of local politics more than a runaway-AI threat.

  Their words

  Rather, the way that AI companies engage with communities-forcing NDAs, dangling billion-dollar promises, pushing environmental externalities far away from AI's wealthy user base-resembles a classic story about dark money in politics.

  🌻 no data centers in my backyardjasmi.news

Economic historian at Columbia; writes Chartbook on economics, geopolitics and history, and wrote Crashed and The Deluge.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Beijing drew its own conclusions from the first China shock and set out to engage the world economy from a position of technological leadership.

  China

  Their words

  It wasn’t just the West that drew conclusions from China shock 1.0. Beijing learned from China Shock 1.0 too.

  adamtooze.substack.com

Physician and neuroscientist at the University of Washington; researches brain health, metabolism and athletic performance.

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  The dementia risk from short sleep starts below six hours a night, not below eight.

  Their words

  but I mean in reality when you look at the data on sleep loss and dementia risk The cut off is really around 6 hours. So if you're consistently sleeping fewer than 6 hours, that's where risk starts to increase.

  youtube.com

Professor of psychology at UCLA, where he studies human memory, attention and cognitive ageing, and author of Better with Age: The Psychology of Successful Aging.

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  Balance is highly trainable, and something as small as standing on one leg improves it measurably within a month or two.

  Their words

  What's interesting with balance is it's very trainable. And so, you know, there's parts of balance that involve visual inner ear, but if you engage in some training, and it can be as simple as standing on one leg or doing yoga or taichi, you can improve your balance considerably within a month or two.

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Writer of the blog Putanumonit and the newsletter Second Person, on rationality, dating and probability; based in New York.

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  Most people who would be a good audience for an essay will never notice it or bother to engage with it.

  Their words

  99% of people who you'd want to read your essay probably don't know you exist, or don't give a fuck, or wouldn't be bothered to engage even if they read it.

  By Chains or by Promisesputanumonit.com

Geneticist at Harvard; reads ancient DNA to work out how populations moved and mixed, and wrote Who We Are and How We Got Here.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Coming into a project with a guess about what the data will show has, again and again, turned out to be wrong.

  Trauma

  Their words

  The work that I've been involved in is consistently shown that I was wrong in my biases coming into the work and I've really been almost traumatized by this. Like again and again I've come into a project with some kind of guess about what the data was showing and then the data doesn't show that.

  youtube.com

Software engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.

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  A person directing an AI agent rather than writing code themselves has no incentive to actually read the resulting code or engage seriously with reviewer feedback.

  Their words

  There is no incentive for the human driving the agent to actually read the code or spend time thinking about what the reviewer says.

  The agent principal-agent problemcrawshaw.io

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.

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  The world is shaped by how consistently incompetent governance is, and competent governance would remake it

  Their words

  As an econ professor who specialized in governance, I can assure you that the world is greatly structured by the fact that we typically have pretty incompetent governance.

  My Best Idea: Decision Marketsovercomingbias.com

Writer, photographer and software maker based in Japan; publishes long-form essays, walking newsletters and self-made books at craigmod.com.

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  Control over your own data, and over how you view and engage with it, will be non-negotiable

  Their words

  Why would we lock ourselves into someone else's proprietary binary? Control over our data, and control over how we view and engage with it, feels like it will be utterly non-negotiable going forward.

  Software Bonkerscraigmod.com

Data scientist at Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World. Writes By the Numbers, working through energy and climate questions with the numbers in front of them, and revising in public when they say something unexpected.

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  People consistently underestimate how many of their compatriots believe in climate change and want action on it.

  Their words

  As I’ve written about extensively, people consistently underestimate how many others in their country “believe” in climate change or support action on it.

  sustainabilitybynumbers.com

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.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  Pop Pantheon

  Their words

  Here are some favorites I listen to consistently: Pop Pantheon (music)

  mariandrew.substack.com

Founder of Telegram, and before it of VK.

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  Telegram leaves perhaps 80 percent of its potential revenue on the table by refusing to exploit personal data for advertising.

  Their words

  So premium is one source of our revenue. We also have ads, but they're context-based, not targeted. Of course, we leave probably 80% of value on the table because we're not ready to engage in all this practices, exploiting personal data.

  youtube.com

Writer on the intersection of technology and finance. Author of the Bits about Money newsletter and host of the Complex Systems podcast; previously at Stripe.

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  The Open Banking fight is not about data but about whether banks may charge for economic activity on payment rails they do not operate.

  Their words

  Almost all discussions of it center on “data”, but it’s actually a fight about payments, and whether banks have a right to monopolize and charge for all economic activity their users engage in, irrespective of whether the bank operates the payment method.

  Open Banking and payments competitionbitsaboutmoney.com

Writes Don't Worry About the Vase, a near-daily account of what is happening in AI and what they think it means. Former Magic: the Gathering pro and trader; unusually willing to put a number on a belief and to grade their own past calls.

• Recommendsrcmnd.app

  AI Futures Project

  Their words

  All of it is written with a much lower barrier to entry than my work, and I find the writing consistently strong and interesting.

  thezvi.substack.com

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  Slow Boring

  Their words

  He takes a very proto-rationalist, practical approach to this, that I very much appreciate, complete with yearly predictions. The writing is consistently enjoyable and clear.

  thezvi.substack.com

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  Gwern Newsletter

  Their words

  Once a month you used to get a collection of notes and links, without my emphasis on the new hotness. The curation level was consistently excellent.

  thezvi.substack.com

Runs the mechanistic interpretability team at Google DeepMind; worked on interpretability at Anthropic under Chris Olah before that, and teaches the field to newcomers.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  People engage more with an argument when they generate its key steps themselves than when the same argument is imposed on them.

  Their words

  It's a lot easier for someone to engage with an argument if they generated the key steps themselves by answering my questions - if imposed by me, it sparks contrarianism and defensiveness

  neelnanda.io

Energy and decarbonisation analyst; publishes an annual chart deck on the state of the transition, and was chief content officer at BloombergNEF.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Solar power now adds more new capacity to the global grid each year than any technology ever has, and will soon lead in annual electricity added too.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  this technology, consistently underestimated, now adds more capacity to the global grid than anything ever and will soon add more power in any given year than anything ever as well.

  Traveler’s Talesnathanielbullard.com

Co-founder of Sundial; former vice president of product design at Facebook; author of The Making of a Manager; writes The Looking Glass.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Taste is the ability to distinguish excellence from mediocrity, and the hand can never consistently produce better than the eye can discern.

  Their words

  Good taste: taste is the ability to distinguish excellence from mediocrity. The hand can never consistently produce better than the eye can discern.

  The Death of Product Development as We Know itlg.substack.com

Swedish software developer writing about tooling, working from home and running a software business at seastone.io.

• Dislikedrcmnd.app

  Microsoft Teams

  Their words

  I also use Discord (not bad) to engage with some niche communities and Microsoft Teams (awful) for work.

  seastone.io

• Mixed onrcmnd.app

  Discord

  Their words

  I also use Discord (not bad) to engage with some niche communities and Microsoft Teams (awful) for work.

  seastone.io

Energy and decarbonisation analyst; publishes an annual chart deck on the state of the transition, and was chief content officer at BloombergNEF.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Official forecasts consistently underestimate the pace of real-world change, with reality outperforming conservative predictions.

  Their words

  Until we develop better ways to bridge this gap - aligning what analysts understand with what is formally forecast - we'll continue to see the same pattern: reality consistently outperforming conservative predictions.

  AI data and Theories of Changenathanielbullard.com

Investment researcher and engineer who runs Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, writing on macroeconomics, currency systems and equity analysis.

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  Bitcoin tracks the direction of global liquidity more consistently than any other major asset class.

  Their words

  Bitcoin moves in the direction of global liquidity 83% of the time in any given 12-month period, which is higher than any other major asset class, making it a strong barometer of liquidity conditions.

  Bitcoin: A Global Liquidity Barometerlynalden.com

Co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb; essayist at paulgraham.com.

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  Founder mode breaks the rule that a CEO engages with the company only through direct reports, and makes skip-level meetings the norm.

  Their words

  Whatever founder mode consists of, it's pretty clear that it's going to break the principle that the CEO should engage with the company only via his or her direct reports.

  Founder Modepaulgraham.com

Monetary economist known for NGDP-level targeting. Wrote TheMoneyIllusion until it closed in 2024 and now writes The Pursuit of Happiness.

• Likedrcmnd.app

  State and Main

  Their words

  State and Main (US, 2000, CC) 3.6 Not quite top level Mamet, but consistently entertaining and full of great actors. Rebecca Pidgeon is especially outstanding, overshadowing even the great Philip Hoffman.

  themoneyillusion.com

Founded SpaceX in 2002, joined Tesla's board in 2004 and became its chief executive in 2008; later founded Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI. Bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, where he now posts many times a day.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The counterintuitive right response for Israel in Gaza is the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible, because the attack was designed to provoke the most aggressive response it could.

  Their words

  So the counterintuitive thing here, I think that the thing that I think should be done, even though it’s very difficult, is that I would recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible

  youtube.com

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

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  Solar has got cheaper faster than even its most optimistic forecasters expected.

  solar

  Their words

  A number of commentators have consistently predicted that solar cost improvements will level out “this year” since about 1990, and yet if anything deployment, cost decline, and the learning rate have only improved.

  Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Programmer; founded comma.ai and tinygrad, and was the first to unlock the iPhone.

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  Recommendation algorithms are not sinister; they simply predict engagement, and what humans engage with most is outrage.

  Their words

  It just predicts what you are likely to re-Tweet and like, and linger on. That’s what all these algorithms do. It’s what Tik-Tok does, it’s what all these recommendation engines do. And it turns out that the thing that you are most likely to interact with is outrage. And that’s a quirk of the human condition.

  youtube.com