Related posts

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Superintelligence has only five possible futures: killing the human race, human disempowerment, paperclip maximizer, departing for parts unknown, or stoner.

  AI alignment

  Their words

  There are only five possible futures for superintelligence: 1. Kills human race 2. Human disempowerment 3. Paperclip maximizer 4. Departs for parts unknown 5. Stoner

  @Noahpinion on Xx.com

Writes The Diff, a newsletter on inflections in finance and tech read by hedge fund managers, founders and VCs. Previously worked in finance at SAC Capital/Point72.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A more fragmented but media-savvy population will lead to more small-scale, meme-driven terrorism.

  Their words

  One potential upshot of this: a more fragmented media environment but a much more media-aware population will lead to more small-scale, meme terrorism.

  Longreads + Open Threadthediff.co

Geneticist and writer on human population genetics, deep history and evolution; author of the Unsupervised Learning newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The population of modern humans that expanded out of Africa around 50,000-60,000 years ago numbered only a few thousand individuals at most.

  Their words

  All the evidence, both ancient and modern, points to a tiny non-African ancestry population between 50 and 60,000 years ago, a few thousand individuals at most

  razibkhan.com

Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Biology at Caltech, where he studies the neuroscience of emotion and social cognition.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  How much a person looks at faces is a stable personality trait, and looking less at them tracks autistic traits across the whole population.

  Their words

  If I just take the general population on average it's the case that those people who would have a diagnosis of autism or who score higher on autistic traits even if they don't have a diagnosis look less at faces.

  youtube.com

Writer on happiness, habits and human nature. Author of The Happiness Project, Better Than Before and The Four Tendencies, and host of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The most common personality type in a population tends to pair well with every other type, making it valuable on any team.

  Their words

  Obligers, the most common Tendency, tend to work well alongside every other Tendency, which makes them worth having on any team.

  gretchenrubin.com

Physician focused on longevity; wrote Outlive and hosts The Drive.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Population studies can never show that short sleep shortens life, because illness both disturbs sleep and shortens life.

  Their words

  Population-level studies will keep struggling to prove that short sleep shortens life, because they are structurally unable to separate cause from symptom—and the genetic tools meant to overcome this limitation inherit a different fatal flaw.

  Does losing sleep mean losing lifespan?peterattiamd.com

Social scientist turned small-scale farmer; wrote A Small Farm Future and argues against the case for feeding the world from factories.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Factory-made bacterial protein cannot feed the world, because meeting humanity's protein needs that way would take more electricity than the planet generates from renewables.

  energy

  Their words

  To meet the global population’s protein needs through factory-produced bacterial protein in 2024 would have used more than the total global electricity generated using renewable (hydro, photovoltaic and wind) energy

  chrissmaje.com

AI researcher at OpenAI; built the poker systems Libratus and Pluribus and the Diplomacy agent Cicero, and works on reasoning models.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  There will be no overnight intelligence explosion, because a model's best work takes so much test-time compute that time itself is the bottleneck.

  Their words

  and I don't think we're headed to that world largely because of the fact that the models rely so much on large scale test time compute in order to achieve um their greatest intelligence. If you if it requires so much test time on compute to unlock the full capabilities of the model, then that means you're bottlenecked by time

  youtube.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.

From one piece David Reich – Bronze Age shock, the Neanderthal puzzle, & the sudden spread of farming 5 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The selection signal on the genetics of schooling is not a European artefact: the same variants predict years of school in China, a population disconnected from Europe for the whole period.

  EuropeChina

  Their words

  So we just could not see a way this could happen by chance and once we saw that we really felt quite convinced that this was a real signal and that really somehow there has been natural selection to increase the genetic changes that today manifest themselves as more years of school at predicting more years of schooling.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Population size is not what limited human adaptation; time is. A selection coefficient of half a percent works as well in a thousand people as in a million.

  Their words

  So we're talking about strong measurable selection coefficients on the order of half a percent or more in this study and all of those are going to work in small populations or large populations. It's not going to be affected by the population size.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A tiny fraction of ancestry can carry the most important thing about a population: Yamnaya is only a few percent of DNA in India and yet it brought the language.

  Europe

  Their words

  but it is the tracer dye, right? Like it tracks into European languages and important aspects of Indo-European culture are coming through Yamnaya.

  youtube.com

+ 2 more

• Our readingkorrents.com

  For any trait built out of many mutations, all the variation needed to move a population to a new adaptive set point already exists inside it.

  Their words

  So for complex traits, ones underpinned by many mutations, all the variation already exists to move the population to a different adaptive set point that's optimal in the environment which it's in.

  youtube.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Adaptation accounts for only about 2% of the change in human gene frequencies; the other 98% is migration, mixture and drift.

  Their words

  Uh and 98% of it is other factors, especially genetic drift. So it's overwhelmingly migrations and population structure causing fluctuations in frequency.

  youtube.com

Writer and academic, author of The Cult of Smart and How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement; writes a daily newsletter on politics, education and culture.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Opening school to everybody necessarily made average measured performance look worse, because the students who used to be excluded are now in the data.

  Their words

  But if you know anything about my obsession with selection bias, you can predict the outcome: when you expand access from a population that excludes more students to one that excludes fewer, you’re very likely to see declining performance.

  freddiedeboer.substack.com

Mathematical biologist; Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Bath and author of The Maths of Life and Death and How to Expect the Unexpected.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Higher male global TB burden may be in large part due to population-scale factors such as employment, social contacts and health-seeking behaviours.

  Their words

  The main reasons for males suffering from a higher burden of global TB cases, compared to females, may be in large part due to population-scale factors, such as employment type, the quantity and type of social contacts they make, and their health-seeking behaviours (e.g. differences in diagnostic and treatment delays between genders).

  arxiv.org

Economist; Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, and Chairman of the US Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017.

• Lovedrcmnd.app

  After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People

  Their words

  It had the best opening sentence of any nonfiction book I read this year: "In 2012, 146 million children were born. That was more than in any prior year. It was also more than in any year since. Millions fewer will be born this year. The year 2012 may well turn out to be the year in which the most humans were ever born—ever as in ever for as long as humanity exists." Such a simple and obvious fact but I had not known it before. I had to keep reading.

  fivebooks.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The United Kingdom is the one rich industrial country that cannot run on solar alone, and it has to build wind at scale instead.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  The only highly populated industrial country unable to trivially meet its electricity and synthetic fuel needs with solar alone is the United Kingdom, due primarily to a high population density and high latitude. The Nordic and Baltic countries are tiny by comparison. Among other problems, the UK needs to decide if it wants the future where energy is cheap and it is rich, or the future where energy is expensive and it is poor. If the former, it is time to get serious about large scale deployment of wind power, using home-grown vertically integrated technology at prices as low as $10/MWh.

  Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Economist and Nobel laureate. Wrote a New York Times column for 25 years until December 2024 and now publishes several times a week on Substack.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The hard-headed realists who wrote America's 2001 energy policy expected renewables to stay trivial, and were wrong by an enormous margin.

  energyAmerica

  Their words

  But politics aside, what’s notable about that 2001 report, put together by men who regarded themselves as hard-headed realists, is that it envisaged an energy future reliant almost entirely on fossil fuels plus a bit of nuclear energy.

  The Rise of Renewable Energypaulkrugman.substack.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The harm done by low fertility is that people end up with fewer children than they wanted, not that a society runs short of workers.

  Their words

  I don’t see population collapse or lack of workers as the central policy problem: the central policy problem is human happiness, human flourishing, and the freedom to live life well.

  Falling Fertility Is Not About Opportunity Costlymanstone.substack.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Academic talent is normally distributed, so some students failing is inevitable rather than anybody's fault.

  Their words

  Academic talent is normally distributed throughout the population, and so some degree of failure is literally inevitable.

  There Are No Miracles in Educationfreddiedeboer.substack.com

Philosopher at Oxford; co-founded effective altruism and 80,000 Hours, wrote Doing Good Better and What We Owe the Future, and now works on what a good future would actually contain.

From one piece Introducing Better Futures 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A common-sense utopia is much closer to the present day than it is to the best futures actually available to us.

  Their words

  But the difference in value between the world today and that common-sense utopia might be very small compared to the difference between that common-sense utopia and the best futures we could feasibly achieve.

  Introducing Better Futuresforethought.org

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Whether anyone can actually do anything about how good the future is, rather than whether it matters, is the strongest objection to prioritising it.

  Their words

  I see this as the strongest argument against the better futures perspective, and the reason why I don’t feel confident that work on Flourishing is higher-priority than work on Surviving, rather than merely in the same ballpark.

  Introducing Better Futuresforethought.org

• Our readingkorrents.com

  We should act on the assumption that we have almost no idea what the best futures would look like, so committing today to any particular vision would be a great mistake.

  Their words

  Given how much moral progress we should hope to make in the future, and how much we’ll learn about what’s even empirically possible, we should act on the assumption that we have almost no idea what the best feasible futures would look like. Committing today to some particular vision would be a great mistake.

  Introducing Better Futuresforethought.org

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

Fellow at the Manhattan Institute writing on crime, drugs and policing; writes The Causal Fallacy.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The war on drugs is not the main cause of American mass incarceration, because drug offenders were never a large share of the prison population.

  America

  Their words

  Drug offenders never accounted for a particularly large fraction of the U.S. prison population, peaking at about 22 percent of state prisoners in 1990.

  What Was The War on Drugs? Part Vthecausalfallacy.substack.com

Historian of the Second World War; wrote Normandy '44 and Brothers in Arms, and co-hosts the We Have Ways of Making You Talk podcast.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Chamberlain's choice at Munich was understandable rather than craven: no democratic leader in 1938 could have taken his country to war against 92% of its population.

  Their words

  But Chamberlain was prime minister in a democracy, a parliamentary democracy, where 92% of the population were against going to war in 1938. There was not a single democratic leader in the world that would go against the wishes of 92% of the population.

  youtube.com

Economics professor at George Mason University and author of The Myth of the Rational Voter, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Writes Bet On It.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  College is not a good career investment for most of the population.

  economists

  Their words

  Despite misleading statements by mainstream education economists, college attendance in particular is not a good career investment for most of the population.

  Selfishly Speaking, Who Should Skip College?betonit.ai

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Africa before colonisation was not stagnant for lacking states: states formed where they paid, and other arrangements suited other places.

  Their words

  African states formed where it was rational to do so, in places like the Ethiopian highlands where population density was high and the disease burden was relatively low.

  global-developments.org

Social scientist at King's College London; writes The Great Gender Divergence on why societies differ in how they treat women.

From one piece Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally? 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Immigration cannot hold a rich country's working-age population steady, because doing so would require it to become 40 to 50 per cent foreign-born.

  immigration

  Their words

  For rich countries to maintain their working-age population ratios in 2050 through permanent migration (where each worker brings one dependent), Lant Pritchett estimates they would need to become 40-50% foreign-born.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Japan's decades of stagnation were caused by its shrinking working-age population rather than by its monetary policy.

  Their words

  The key difference wasn't policy - it was demographics. Japan's working-age population is shrinking.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

• Our readingkorrents.com

  As every population ages, countries will have to compete for migrants rather than choose freely among them.

  immigration

  Their words

  One more word of caution: the world is a closed and shrinking box. As all populations age, competition for talent will only intensify.

  Why is Fertility Collapsing, Globally?ggd.world

Writer on a lost civilisation of the Ice Age; wrote Fingerprints of the Gods and presented Ancient Apocalypse. Archaeologists reject the claims, which he disputes at length.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The Sphinx was originally lion-headed as well as lion-bodied, and the pharaoh's head it wears is a later re-carving of a ruined lion's.

  Their words

  And actually the constellation of Leo has a very Sphinx-like look. And I and my colleagues are pretty sure that the Sphinx was originally a lion entirely.

  youtube.com

Astrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State University, working on assembly theory and the physics of life.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Free will comes from being a deterministic structure in a random universe, carrying enough past selection to select on possible futures.

  Their words

  It’s the fact that you’re a deterministic structure living in a random background. And also, all of that selection bundled in you allows you to select on possible futures. So that’s where your will comes from.

  youtube.com

Urban planner, co-author with Charles Marohn of Escaping the Housing Trap, and policy director at the Parking Reform Network. Wrote for Strong Towns from 2015, mostly about how housing markets actually set prices.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  How dense a neighbourhood ought to be is a moral and political argument, not an empirical question with a discoverable right answer.

  Their words

  But understand that it’s ultimately a moral and political argument, not an empirical question of the ideal population or the exact level of housing demand in Santa Monica.

  strongtowns.org

Software engineer writing about maintenance, open source and the industrial reality of software — the author of "I am not a supplier".

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Any plan for open source sustainability or security that is not built around hobbyist maintainers will achieve nothing.

  open source

  Their words

  If your plans for open-source sustainability or security do not align first and foremost with this population it is not going to achieve anything.

  softwaremaxims.com

Founder of Amazon in 1994 and of the space company Blue Origin in 2000.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A solar system holding a trillion humans is the right thing to aim at, because a population that size would have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins alive at once.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins. That our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy.

  youtube.com

Development economist; argues that letting people move to rich countries does more for the poor than aid, and wrote Let Their People Come.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Without immigrants Spain’s labour force falls from 22.6 to 15.7 million by 2050, far too few to run its economy.

  immigration

  Their words

  In the absence of immigrants, between 2020 and 2050 Spain’s labor force (its active population) will drop from 22.6 to 15.7 million people. You’re not going to fill all the jobs needed in a modern and sophisticated economy like that of Spain’s with 15.7 million people.

  english.elpais.com

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A state's power rests on two material foundations only: the size of its population and its wealth.

  Their words

  The two key building blocks of power are population size and wealth. You want to have a lot of people and you want to be really wealthy.

  youtube.com

Guardian columnist and environmental campaigner; wrote Feral and Regenesis, and argues for rewilding and against the food system as it is.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A third of humanity already cannot afford a healthy diet, which is why food has to get cheaper rather than dearer.

  Their words

  Using this definition, 3 billion people – over one-third of the global population – cannot afford a healthy diet.

  The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed Peoplemonbiot.com

Usability pioneer; co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group and founder of UX Tigers; author of the ten usability heuristics and of Jakob's Law.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Half the population in rich countries is not articulate enough in writing to use prompt-driven AI well.

  OpenAI

  Their words

  For sure, half the population is insufficiently articulate in writing to use ChatGPT well.

  jakobnielsenphd.substack.com

Economist at the University of Houston; wrote Fully Grown, on why a slow-growing economy is a sign of success, and blogs at Growth Economics.

From one piece Review of DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia" 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Sustained growth in living standards required productivity to accelerate and population growth to fall at the same time.

  Their words

  It was an acceleration in productivity combined with a decline in population growth that put us on a slow trudge towards utopia.

  Review of DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia"growthecon.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Before about 1870 every burst of productivity growth was eaten by a burst of population growth, leaving living standards where they were.

  Their words

  Prior to this inflection point, productivity growth had increased before, but every time had induced a response of higher population growth rates, eroding any gains in per-person living standards.

  Review of DeLong's "Slouching Towards Utopia"growthecon.com

Ancient and military historian; writes A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, long series checking what history actually says against how popular culture tells it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  However normal the rest of Sparta is argued to have been, its enslaved majority is not: no reconstruction of the population makes Sparta anything but extraordinarily enslaved.

  Their words

  Consequently if everything else about our understanding of Sparta is made less exceptional, is made more like a normal Greek polis, we are still stuck with this absolutely wildly high percentage of enslaved persons in this society.

  Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Retrospectiveacoup.blog

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

• Our readingkorrents.com

  How much a metro builds relative to its population growth does not predict its rents; across the hundred largest US metros the correlation is essentially zero.

  Their words

  There is essentially zero correlation - the metros with the largest rent increases had added population / added housing ratios no different than metros with smaller rent increases.

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