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Director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. Writes the A Wealth of Common Sense blog and co-hosts the Animal Spirits podcast with Michael Batnick.

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  Government borrowing through the financial crisis and the pandemic was a good trade, because it repaired household balance sheets.

  government

  Their words

  I think the fact that the government took on debt during two crises to help households was a good trade-off.

  My Most Contrarian Opinion Right Nowawealthofcommonsense.com

Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.

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  The current tech layoffs are pandemic over-hiring correcting itself, with AI as the convenient excuse.

  Their words

  And I think what we're seeing right now with some of the layoffs is a testament to that, not AI. It's just that during the pandemic, a bunch of overhiring went on, and now AI is a convenient excuse to slim down. But I do also think AI is going to expose some roles as just not being productive ways for humans to spend their time, and therefore we must come up with new ways of spending their time.

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

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  AI risk is probably a totally manageable problem that will be brutally mismanaged, the way pandemic response was.

  China

  Their words

  it's just so easy for me to imagine the situation being like totally manageable but brutally mismanaged in practice in the same way as like maybe CO could have been avoided in the first place if the like Chinese response to CO was less of like a cover up and more of a like pandemic response and similarly like I could imagine a world where like the US response to CO was like way more functional but just like sometimes the the the response to societal problems is extremely dysfunctional.

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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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  Older adults came through the pandemic more psychologically resilient than younger adults, which is the opposite of what was expected of them.

  Their words

  But what we found, at least at the psychological level, we did some of this research, older adults were much more resilient than younger adults.

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Biologist at the MIT Media Lab; invented CRISPR gene drives and then spent years arguing for safeguards against their misuse and against engineered pandemics.

From one piece It shouldn't be easy to buy synthetic DNA fragments to recreate the 1918 flu virus 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Ordering the synthetic DNA needed to rebuild the 1918 influenza virus is surprisingly easy, even from companies that screen customers' orders.

  Their words

  It should be hard — exceedingly hard — to obtain the synthetic DNA needed to recreate the virus that caused the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic without authorization. But my lab found that it’s surprisingly easy, even when ordering gene fragments from companies that check customers’ orders to detect hazardous sequences.

  media.mit.edu

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  The genome sequences of pandemic viruses and the protocols for building them from synthetic DNA are already freely available online.

  Their words

  Both the genome sequences of pandemic viruses and step-by-step protocols to make infectious samples from synthetic DNA are now freely available online.

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Essayist; writes Astral Codex Ten, previously Slate Star Codex.

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  The people who can be moved by deaths from neglected tropical diseases are the same people who can be moved by pandemics and by AI risk, because both come from reasoning about importance rather than from the news.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  And I notice that the tiny handful of people capable of caring about 200,000 people dying of neglected tropical diseases are the same tiny handful of people capable of caring about the next pandemic, or superintelligence, or human extinction.

  In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruismastralcodexten.com

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

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  Pandemic relief checks function mainly as retroactive social insurance rather than stimulus, because people receiving them during a pandemic save or pay down debt instead of spending.

  Their words, before

  If you get a check during a pandemic, you’re not going to go out and spend it at restaurants and bars, because…well, there’s a pandemic. Instead, you’re more likely to stick it in the bank, pay down debt, or pay the back rent that you owe.

  Their words now

  I had some theory and some evidence on my side for this prediction, and yet I ended up being very wrong about what would happen to consumption.

Biologist at the MIT Media Lab; invented CRISPR gene drives and then spent years arguing for safeguards against their misuse and against engineered pandemics.

From one piece Opinion: Manipulating viruses and risking pandemics is too dangerous. It's time to stop. 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

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  Research programmes that identify or create pandemic-capable viruses teach the world how to make them, and should stop.

  Their words

  But perhaps the biggest question of all isn’t being asked insistently enough: Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?

  media.mit.edu

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  The spread of pandemic-capable biology should be treated as a matter of international security, in the way nuclear physics is.

  Their words

  Like nuclear physics, with its potential for global catastrophe when put to destructive ends, the proliferation of pandemic biology ought to be considered a matter of international security.

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Historian of the Renaissance at the University of Chicago and a science-fiction novelist; wrote Terra Ignota and Inventing the Renaissance.

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  A mass death does not by itself produce a boom afterwards: expecting a pandemic to renew an economy on its own misreads what followed the Black Death.

  Their words

  Using history to understand our present is a great impulse, but it means some of the false myths we tell about the Black Death and Renaissance are doing new damage, one of the most problematic in my view being the idea that sitting back and letting COVID kill will somehow by itself naturally make the economy turn around and enter a period of growth and rising wages.

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