Let’s start with some numbers. My shortest book was Death and What Comes Next by Terry Pratchett (1 page) and longest was The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (815 pages, even tough it is more like… Read More »My 2025 in Books
Always keep in mind who is writing a history and why. “Herodotus’ work is the construction of a Greek identity. By and large, prior to the Persian wars – and prior to Herodotus’ own writings – the Greeks do not… Read More »Collections: The Fremen Mirage Part IIIa: …by the Princess Irulan
Rome lasted a really long time. “Sallust’s complaints about Roman decadence – which date to the first century B.C. nearly five centuries before its ‘fall‘ – are often quoted as somehow explaining Rome’s eventual demise, but Rome wasn’t even done… Read More »Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part II: Water Spilled on the Sand
Unfortunately not about Fremen but still great series. “The opposite of Fremenism is almost invariably termed ‘decadence.’ This is the reserve side of this reductive view of history: not only do hard conditions make for superior people, but that ‘soft’… Read More »Collections: The Fremen Mirage, Part I: War at the Dawn of Civilization
“They’ve spent billions. They’ve hired the brightest minds. They’ve built the most sophisticated systems in human history. And they cannot make AI do what they want. Not because AI is too dumb. Not because AI is too smart. Because what… Read More »They Built a Child They Won’t Raise
To despair is human. But it is not productive. “Liberalism may have lost the first French Revolution, but it ended up winning the world — at least, for a while.” https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/where-does-a-liberal-go-from-here
It is not that simple. “So again, a vow is a promise to a divinity or other higher power (you can make vows to heroes and saints, for instance), whereas an oath is a promise to another human, which is… Read More »Collections: Oaths! How do they Work?
Automation cannot solve all science questions. “Yet as neuroscientist Anil Seth keenly observed, AlphaFold relies on the same underlying Transformer architecture as LLMs, and no one confuses AlphaFold with being a mind. Are we supposed to interpret that such an… Read More »The Death Of The Scientist
Wag the dog. “The transformation of superintelligence from internet philosophy to boardroom strategy represents one of the most successful ideological campaigns of the 21st century. Tech executives who had previously focused on quarterly earnings and user growth metrics began speaking… Read More »The Politics Of Superintelligence
But it is not. “Geography is not destiny.One way to put it: Geography is the hardware, our institutions are the software. When both work well, a country is unstoppable. With bad hardware but intelligent software, a country can go far.… Read More »Argentina Could Be a Superpower