Links and tweets, 2022-09-08

by Jason Crawford · September 8, 2022 · 1 min read

Opportunities

• Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross are investing $10M in AI-first products, apply here (via @natfriedman)
• Congressman Jake Auschincloss is hiring a Chief of Staff, @MarkLutter encourages the progress community to apply

Announcements

• Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet is a new book out from Tupy & Pooley. Jeremy Horpedahl has a brief review. Arnold Kling is slightly critical; I found his comments interesting but not fully convincing
• Prediction market Kalshi is seeking approval to create election contracts, add your comment to the CFTC (thread from CEO @mansourtarek_)
• Aletheia is a new platform for communicating peer-evaluated research (via @namalhotra)

Links

• I don’t think we can assign quantitative probabilities to all our beliefs, but this essay argues that if we make coherent choices, then we have them at least implicitly
• “Not even death can exempt you from TSA screening”

Queries

• Is there a case in the last century where a new technology didn’t become cheap enough for everyone? (@davidmanheim)
• Who should Derek Thompson talk to about why the British economy is such a mess? (@DKThomp)
• Is there a nice comparable table of rocket turbopumps by flow rate and pressure head? (@anderssandberg)
• Did Queen Elizabeth I really inhibit the development of the stocking frame?

Quotes

• Gutenberg had to solve many intricate problems to make the printing press
• Bacon anticipating Lakatos
• Jefferson anticipating Paul Romer
• Sawmills outnumbered even gristmills in 19th-century America
• “Life in the big city,” London, 1850s

Tweets & retweets

• Norway’s tunnel: < $7M/km; Seattle’s tunnel: $1,167M/km
• Diablo Canyon will continue operations until at least 2030 (@ANS_org)
• The more money an organization gives out, the less likely it is to fund unusual people (@SamoBurja)
• Beware the deepity (@JeremiahDJohns)

Charts

• The shift to WFH is saving ~200M hours and 6B miles of commuting/week in the US alone (@I_Am_NickBloom)

Comment: Progress Forum, LessWrong, Reddit