Friday Fodder #35
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Tariffs happened this week. I’m sure you’ve heard. Matt Levine talked about it and even he had nothing to add and I have nothing to add to him:
I do not want to write about the tariffs, because there is a pretty overwhelming consensus that they are bad, and that consensus strikes me as correct, so what can I add? “Trump Tariffs Wipe Out $2 Trillion From US Stock Market,” reports Bloomberg. “Wall Street analysts anguish over ‘Liberation Day,’” reports FT Alphaville. “You Can NOT Be Serious!,” writes my Bloomberg Opinion colleague John Authers.
We also had earthquakes make waterfalls, astronauts over the north pole, X and XAI are now one company, and, oh yeah, tariffs.
On to the reading!
Timely
Hyperlegibility - If you only read one thing, read this. Best thing I’ve read in awhile, building on James Scott’s idea of legibility and extending it into how quickly we’re changing the world and ourselves to become more understandable.
Xi Jinping is investing in science and technology - Sinocism is the place to go to understand what’s going on in the CCP. An in-depth (and free this time) look at how the top echelons think about science and tech. “Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, the Party Central Committee has comprehensively advanced the innovation-driven development strategy, proposed accelerating the strategic task of building an innovative country, and established the ambitious goal of making China a world leader in science and technology by 2035.”
LLMs As Index Funds - Not how I would have said it maybe, but a great analogy, this is why LLM output is mid. Where’s the alpha?
What’s Happening To Students - What happens when nobody has an attention span beyond the 7 second dopamine hits they’re used to?
Timeless
What Should One Do? - Paul Graham with a new logic ladder for deciding how to use your time.
Asking Good Questions Is Harder Than Giving Great Answers - A look at one of the wilder LLM benchmarks (Humanity’s Last Exam) and how to think about the part of human creativity AI still hasn’t captured: questions.
A Three Point Plan To Fix The Democrats And Their Coalition - Ruy Teixeira wrote this three years ago, and it still sounds right. Which is more than a little sad since rebuilding a proper Democratic Party is one of the most important projects in America right now. Guys, you’ve got like two more years tops.
On The US AI Safety Institute - A look at why the government should have an institute to understand AI safety risks.
Books
The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi - We in the west overweight the Western values we think the whole world shares. We forget that other cultures have other values that are not always compatible. The pillars of Bushido are a great example of this. Musashi was an undefeated samurai in the 17th century and wrote this as a combination strategy manual and autobiography. It also works as a great intro values that still underpin Japanese culture.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
🤣
The world is amazing. Cheers!