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This AI Boom Will Also Bust
Imagine an innovation in pipes.
Robin Hanson
This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die. Click to read Overcoming Bias, by Robin Hanson, a Substack publication with tens of thousands of subscribers.
- Popular posts
- 23
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- #364 personal
Visit overcomingbias.com → RSS feedOn Hacker News May 2008 – Feb 2023
Society, Policy & Culture 20Life, Learning & Writing 8Tech Industry & Business 7Math & Algorithms 4Science & Space 2Career & Management 2
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What is ‘elite overproduction’?
Elite overproduction … describes the condition of a society which is producing too many potential elite-members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure.
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No Recent Automation Revolution
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that for many years the media has been almost screaming that we entering a big automation revolution, with huge associated job losses, due to new AI tech, especially deep learning.
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Explaining Sex Rate Changes
According to the Post, polls say 28% of US men age 18-30 report not having sex in the last year, almost 3 times as many as a decade ago.
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Firm Inefficiency
Economists are often stereotyped as claiming that firms are very economically efficient, i.e., that they very effectively minimize costs and maximize profits.
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How Bees Argue
The book Honeybee Democracy, published in 2010, has been sitting on my shelf for many years.
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My Favorite Liar (2008)
[the following recounts an exceptionally powerful teaching technique employed by an economics professor of mine at university; teaching fact-checking and skepticism by salting it into the content of his delivery]
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Elite Biases Make Policy Biases
A 2014 paper predicted U.S.
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Beware Centralization
Imagine merging three public firms, by making each firm into a division of a single new firm with one new boss.
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Lost Advanced Civilizations
Did life on Earth start on Earth, or did it start on Mars and move to Earth?
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Prestige in US Today
Lauren A.
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UFOs shows government competence as either surprisingly high or low
Sometimes I pride myself on my taking an intellectual strategy of tackling neglected important questions.
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We moderns are status-drunk
Twelve years ago I posted on how our era is a rare unique “dreamtime” of fast growth, wide cultural integration, and delusional beliefs.
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Brainwashing is sorcery
Can’t bring yourself to slaughter a nearby village, or a long-time associate?
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Why Is Everyone So Boring?
Upon seeing the adult world in detail, teens often lament “But it’s all so boring!” And in a standard trope of fiction, a spark of art infuses life, energy, and vitality into dull adults whose lives have lost all meaning.
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Pretending to be Wise
> The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral. > > —Dante Alighieri, famous hell expert > > —John F. Kenne…
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Women Prefer Poaching
Men tend to want the woman they see in front of them, while women want the man other women see:
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Make an Extraordinary Effort
> "It is essential for a man to strive with all his heart, and to understand that it is difficult even to reach the average if he does not have the i…
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The Baby-Eating Aliens
(Part 1 of 8 in "Three Worlds Collide") • This is a story of an impossible outcome, where AI never worked, molecular nanotechnology never worked, bio…
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Make More Than GPA
25% Drop in free playtime for 6-to-8-year-olds from 1981 to ’97, while homework more than doubled. Time 30Nov, p.57.
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Guessing the Teacher's Password
When I was young, I read popular physics books such as Richard Feynman’s QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. I knew that light was waves, so…
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Eliezer Yudkowsky: That Alien Message
Imagine a world much like this one, in which, thanks to gene-selection technologies, the average IQ is 140 (on our scale). Potential Einsteins are o…