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

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  Recursive self-improvement in AI will mainly make existing model capability cheaper rather than raise peak intelligence.

  LLMs

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  RSI is poised to make modern LLMs vastly cheaper. Trends that have shown LLMs get exponentially cheaper at a given intelligence are likely to accelerate.

  Why I still haven’t bought into true RSIinterconnects.ai

Writes Slow Boring, a near-daily newsletter on American politics and public policy; co-founded Vox in 2014 and left it in 2020.

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  Major historical events do not necessarily have deep intellectual or ideological causes; assuming so is a common fallacy.

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  But I think this impulse to gild the lily and attribute the rise of Hitler to deep intellectual trends is an example of a pretty common fallacy of assuming that an incredibly important world event must have incredibly important roots.

  How to stop Hitlerslowboring.com

Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.

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  Publishing industry claims to predict how trends will play out, but such predictions are unreliable.

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  Publishers want to have people believe they know exactly how and when things will shake out, but you just never know.

  Processing: How Nicholas Russell Wrote Observercountercraft.substack.com

Epidemiologist; founded Your Local Epidemiologist in March 2020 to translate public-health science, and consults for organisations including the CDC.

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  The raw count of food recalls is a poor measure of foodborne illness trends because unknown contamination goes uncounted.

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  The problem is that "number of recalls" is a terrible metric because we don't know what we don't know.

  yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com

Demographer; writes on fertility, marriage and population, and directs the Pro-Family Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

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  A model fitted only to trends in its own outcome cannot forecast anything, because it contains no variable anyone could change.

  Their words

  The demand for explanations of low fertility is entirely a demand for variables which will reduce these technical trends to near zero.

  We Actually Know A Lot About Fertility Declinelymanstone.substack.com

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

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  Neither the AI enthusiasts nor the AI sceptics are making it up; both camps are looking at real trends.

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  See, the problem is that neither side is making it up. Like they are seeing really scary trends.

  youtube.com

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

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  Europe's corporate sector has become a net lender to the rest of the economy, and that low rate of productive investment is what left its industry exposed.

  EuropeChina

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  The two seemingly contradictory trends connect, because the relatively low rate of productive investment leaves European industry vulnerable to its most vigorous competitors whose firms are contending with an even more deflationary macroeconomic situation at home in China.

  adamtooze.substack.com

Investing columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor.

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  How NOT to Invest

  Their words

  Ritholtz does exactly that, running through such surefire ways to wreck your wealth as ignoring taxes, paying excessive fees, misinterpreting data, overreacting to short-term trends, and trading too much.

  jasonzweig.com

Climate scientist and energy systems analyst; writes The Climate Brink with Andrew Dessler and leads climate research at Stripe.

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  Atmospheric CO2 concentration is a lagging indicator of emissions trends, not a leading one.

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  Either way, atmospheric CO2 is better seen as a lagging rather than leading indicator of changes in emissions, as it is harder to see the effects of emissions reductions on concentrations over shorter time periods.

  theclimatebrink.com

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

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  The mass adoption of React and single-page-app architecture across nearly all web apps was driven by trend-following rather than technical fit, producing fragile, scripting-dependent software.

  JavaScript

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  As the software industry is largely driven by trends and fashion, React's "cool factor" led to a mass amnesia regarding how to make normal, well-designed web apps made of HTML with a sprinkling of scripting on top and everything became one big tangled, brittle mass of Javascript that completely keeled over when scripting wasn't available.

  technomancy.us

Senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation; writes Second Best, and was the Niskanen Center's director of social policy before that.

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  People who extrapolate from first-principles models have a stronger track record predicting AI progress than those who wait for empirical proof.

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  Extrapolators have a remarkable track record in the AI field, being repeatedly early to trends and capabilities that empiricists believed were still decades away.

  Empiricists vs. Extrapolatorssecondbest.ca

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

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  Utility blockchains that provide useful services tend not to accrue much long-term value to their coinholders, unlike a winning monetary protocol.

  Their words

  Utility protocols face heavy competition, and thus their value trends toward their marginal cost of operation.

  Why Most Cryptocurrencies Won’t Accrue Valuelynalden.com

China economy researcher based in Beijing who writes on his personal blog about Chinese political economy, history, books and music.

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  A declining manufacturing share of GDP as an economy matures reflects economic success rather than decline.

  China

  Their words

  Both of these trends are a consequence of economic success, in terms of higher output and productivity: at least some of what is decried as "de-industrialization" is good actually. It is also good for China's planners to recognize that reality and not distort the economy in pursuit of an impossible outcome.

  China bows to de-industrializationandrewbatson.com

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

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  Growth always stops eventually, and only a company that instrumented its business beforehand gets to find out why instead of scrambling.

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  It's easier to even predict whether growth will slow down at a certain point. it's easier to catch these trends earlier. If you don't have good observability over how your business runs and what the company's um key levers are, then you will be scrambling.

  youtube.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.

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  The long decline in mortality is not guaranteed to continue: new shocks and old unsolved diseases can reverse it.

  Their words

  None of these trends are a given.

  scientificdiscovery.dev

Writes about the biotech industry, drug development and forecasting — “I write to learn, mostly about biotech.”

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  A drug discovery scientist starting today will probably retire without ever having worked on a drug that reached the market.

  Their words

  Such prolificacy is unlikely to be repeated any time soon; if current trends hold, a drug discovery scientist starting their career today is likely to retire without ever having worked on a single drug that makes it to market.

  atelfo.github.io

Writer and illustrator behind Wait But Why, a long-form blog of stick-figure-illustrated explainers on science, technology and society, and author of the book What's Our Problem?

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  Public discourse has degraded into tribalism, mass shaming campaigns, and one-dimensional narratives replacing genuine debate.

  Their words

  There were a bunch of bad trends: Tribalism was flaring up everywhere, mass shaming campaigns were roaring back into fashion, politicians were increasingly clown-like, public discourse had become a battle of one-dimensional narratives.

  A Short History of My Last Six Yearswaitbutwhy.com

Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.

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  Sixty years of peer review produced no evidence that it made science better, and the literature it produced is in a bad state.

  Their words

  All we can say from these big trends is that we have no idea whether peer review helped, it might have hurt, it cost a ton, and the current state of the scientific literature is pretty abysmal.

  The rise and fall of peer reviewexperimental-history.com

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

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  Most apparent trends in American housing are the Bay Area in disguise: a handful of outlier metros drive the correlations people quote.

  America

  Their words

  In general, housing trends are largely driven by a small number of outlier metros.

  Is There a Housing Shortage or Not?construction-physics.com

Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.

From one piece Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors) 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Imaginary social trends can spuriously shape people's real beliefs and behaviors.

  Their words

  Imaginary trends could thus spuriously shape people's real beliefs and behaviors.

  doi.org

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  Misperceptions of attitude change may hinder efforts to understand social worlds, distort democracy, and turn imaginary trends into real ones.

  Their words

  These misperceptions may bedevil people's efforts to understand and change their social worlds, distort the democratic process, and turn imaginary trends into real ones.

  doi.org

Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.

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  The Mesh

  Their words

  If you're interested in understanding the collaborative consumption movement (ie- car sharing, AirBnb, city bike sharing, etc), this book gives a great overview of the trends and opportunities.

  jasonevanish.com