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• "I like to occasionally compare AI-related search terms on Google Trends to various other things, as a reality check that most people still don't really think about it much* *though they do use it all the time without knowing it" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:24 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "I'd be curious to see more people forecast this. Altman, Thiel, and others think fusion is coming in ~3 years after being perpetually "10 years away" for multiple decades, but the @metaculus community (median) still sees fusion as ~10 years away (lol)." (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:24 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• This is essentially no relationship between net approval 3 years from election day and the incumbent's eventual re-election margin (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:24 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Funny how the meteorites rarely seem to ever hit the ocean (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:24 p.m.
  in statistics | a)
• "This is a fun stats "puzzle" // There's an [initial] 80% chance your friend is at the neighbourhood pub. The pub has 2 rooms, and they're equally likely to be in either. You search one and they're no in there. Question: Now how likely is it that they're in the pub?" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:23 p.m.
  in statistics | a)
• "I guess this turned out to be right. I wonder if there are actual state-to-state variations in how easy or hard it is to poll a state and that this difficulty remains somewhat consistent over time? // If VA polls correctly had Northam ahead by ~9 points before the election in 2017, would so many people on this site be skeptical that the VA-Gov race is close?" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:22 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• If they're getting this mad about Biden - who is usually a branded as a nonoffensive moderate bland old white guy - I shudder to think about what would happen if it were Kamala Harris. (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:22 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Ten methods that can help prove that your intervention is effective (even when it is not) ...Interesting to see how many studies do many of these items (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:21 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• It's funny to read the replies to any @JoshMandelOhio thread where it is just people dunking on him. (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:21 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• The contrast in ship movements at LA-area ports now compared to 2 yrs ago is wild. Here’s our time-lapse animation using @MarineTraffic data. (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:20 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "While we do need progress against climate change, I don't understand the doomsday narrative at all. As far as I can tell, a typical young kid living today in a high-income country is much more likely to die of heart disease than climate change." (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:19 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• "While we're talking abbot systematic forecasting errors, here is climate models continuing to fail to see how much and how fast solar energy costs would fall" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:19 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Expert forecasts vs. reality (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:18 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Happy Halloween! Meet the scariest pumpkin I could think of. (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:18 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "This is brilliant: Software engineer got tired of getting rejected by automated screeners and tested a theory. Real resume: 0% success Obviously fake resume stuffed with buzzwords: 90% success rate Calls from from Notion, AirBnB, Reddit, Dropbox, Robinhood, etc" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:18 p.m.
  in careers | a)
• "Why do people buy name brand drugs when the generic is always so much cheaper? Advil - $0.08 per pill... generic ibuprofen - $0.02ea Benadryl - $0.12ea - generic $0.02ea etc. It even tells you what the thing is on the bottle, so you can easily go buy it cheaper elsewhere!" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:17 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• This VA GOV race is very interesting because it's such a showdown between the fundamentals and the polls (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:17 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• How do you tell the difference between a crank and someone warning you about something potentially devastating? Look at their forecasting record. (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:16 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "My problem with the phrase "black swan" is that most of the events people user it for were clearly predicted beforehand. "Look a black swan!" "Darling, that's a swan, we knew we'd see them when we came to the river" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:16 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "So @TuckerCarlson has become Alex Jones, except he's still on @FoxNews ?" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:16 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "Broke: I lost, so the election was rigged Woke: I won, so the election was rigged" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:15 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "Elon Musk's net worth has increased by $117 billion this year, and now stands at $287 billion. Musk has gained more than Warren Buffett's entire net worth just this year, lol" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:15 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Booster (three doses) reduce the rate of severe COVID cases ~20x compared to two doses (for age 40+)! (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:15 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Apparently not dying in pandemics is popular (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:14 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Don’t make me tap my favorite chart (The history of left-handedness) (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 4:13 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Interesting to see that even Trump/RNC's internal polling had a lot of trouble with oversampling Biden voters - seems like they did much worse than even the mainstream public pollsters did! // The RNC’s final polling/voter scores were way off: Trump was losing in Iowa, North Carolina and Florida, behind by 10+ in Nevada and Wisconsin, and down 8% in Georgia" (
  '21 Nov 07Added Nov. 7, 2021, 3:10 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "When polls of CA-GOV looked close it was touted as an ominous danger sign for Biden and Dems, but it ended up exactly replicating its 2018 result (the result in a strong overall year for Dems), so it's been disappeared from the narrative." (
  '21 Oct 24Added Oct. 24, 2021, 12:50 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• I’m begging free market/libertarian/tech people to trust markets more. Market-based measures of expected inflation (between 5 and 10 years from today) remain totally anchored at 2%. (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 8:02 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "So, Facebook is in trouble because it made speech programmable and human nature took over, and now crypto tries to make money programable, so how's that going to turn out?" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 4:05 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• The market was weird before meme stocks. 👀 📷When Kodak said out of nowhere that it was a crypto company 🛢When Zapata (oil firm founded by the Bushes that became a fish meal company) shortened its name to http://ZAP.com & IPO’ed? 🧑‍💻When everyone bought the wrong ZOOM (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 4:05 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "If you look at epidemics/pandemics by a "% of global population lost" perspective, COVID comes in at #12... We were really good at dying from diseases (especially Bubonic plague) prior to the 1800s. Good thing we have antibiotics now." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 4:04 p.m.
  in history | a)
• "Wow, Goldman Sachs has the last year of housing price growth as the fastest since 1976: Series only goes back to '88 on FRED:" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 4:04 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "I've been very surprised by how COVID has seemed to evolve in ways we didn't expect. IIRC in 2020 we thought that COVID basically wouldn't mutate much and if it did mutate, it would mutate towards becoming *less* fatal." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 4:03 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "BEST BOOSTER? Mix it up — but depends which you had first. Switching vaccine for the booster seems to be the best—Pfizer to Moderna booster, Moderna to Pfizer for booster, and J&J should switch to Moderna / Pfizer booster." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 4:03 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Ask yourself: Could this meeting be a zoom? Could this zoom be a phone call? Could this phone call be an email? Could this email be a text? Could this text be unsent? Could we in silence retreat to the forest? Could we, by game trails & forgotten paths, vanish into the trees?" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:59 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Wow, a Pfizer booster shot results in 96% efficacy against *infection*, relative to *already double-vaccinated people*, and *during the Delta wave*. So a booster gives more protection against Delta than the two-shot regimen gave against original covid." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:59 p.m.
  in science | a)
• I'm very fair-minded so I came up with a list of the pros and cons of dying (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:58 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• It's impossible ofc to disentangle every variable (not least of which is actual pandemic spread) -- but it's notable that Biden's approval plunge began basically to the day of the CDC's updated masking guidance (July 27) (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:47 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• European case numbers are rising fast and are at a similar level to last year (and a similar trajectory). Seems likely there will be a lot of Covid in the winter and/or more restrictions. (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:47 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Usually you hear "regulations never work" nonsense from libertarians. It's worse to hear it from lefties! A few successful environmental regulations: - '76 Leaded gas control (causes blood lead) - '87 CFC control (caused ozone hole) - '95 SO2 cap-and-trade (causes acid rain)" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:37 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Vaccine mandates inducing the most low trust members of our security forces to resign seems like an added benefit, not a problem. // “Oh no the craziest 3% of cops are resigning, how terrible”" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:28 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "I, for one, would be interested in seeing what PepsiCo would've done with a navy larger than that of many nations." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:28 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "It's long past time to stop debating whether we're in a cold war, and start debating how in hell we made the mistakes that led to the first one *again*, despite now knowing how much of the first was due to mistaken and/or self-imposed risks of mutually assured destruction." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:27 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• There once was an entire country named after Maryland and I somehow never heard of this (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:23 p.m.
  in history | a)
• I am so thrilled someone finally went through and did the math on how much to update on a COVID test result (for various kinds of test). Something we've all been doing informally for a while. (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:22 p.m.
  in science | a)
• I'm not sure we're ready for ethical AGI just yet (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:22 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• Preliminary evidence says that new Delta variant AY.4.2 seems to be 10 to 15 per cent more transmissible than the original Delta variant (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:21 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "The first step in improving the world is actually caring about the problems. The second step is thinking about how you can most effectively have impact, and finding high-leverage places to change something. // Norman Borlaug, who saved hundreds of millions of lives with his work that launched the Green Revolution, originally wanted to be a forest ranger. He changed his mind after hearing about disease resistant crops and the potential to save lives via stopping hunger." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:21 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• "Here are the two dies at the same scale. The M1 Max is much larger physically; I estimate it is 20 mm wide. Its transistors are much smaller (5 nm vs 3000 nm) giving it 57 billion transistors instead of 25,000. If built with modern transistors, the ARM1 would be a tiny dot." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:12 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Bioethicist: “We don’t ask people to sacrifice themselves for the good of society” Also Bioethicist: "Stay at home and wear a mask everywhere for the next 2 years for the good of society" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:10 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "For all the talks about the state of higher education in the US, the list of Nobel winners by university since 2000 is pretty impressive – clearly this country is doing *something* right." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:10 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "I've mocked the absurdity of the McAuliffe fundraising appeals that say they need more money because they messed up and wasted the last round of donations, but at least TMac doesn't accuse me of *treason* for not giving. I joke, but honestly this is disgusting and dangerous." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:09 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Political campaign fundraising emails are such scams. It's sad this level of lying and donor manipulation is even legal. And not just Trump - these are from McAullife! (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 3:08 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "A simple thought-experiment. What happens if you simply run the 2012 to 2020 trendline forward to 2028? Obviously there's no reason to expect this, but it is something to consider given the case that recent electoral trends are an unmitigated catastrophe for Democrats" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 2:55 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• It's possible that bioethicists save millions of lives in the aggregate. It's also possible that they cost millions of lives in the aggregate. Would a bioethicist permit bioethics to exist if it were a drug rather than an academic discipline? (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 2:54 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "When you discuss with someone in person, I think you're likely to be influenced by their charisma, dominance, attractiveness, etc. Seems to me that textual communication is less biased and more focused on the quality of arguments. Though I'd like to see empirical studies." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 2:54 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "Hi, I'm a bioethicist and my position is that people who volunteer to take on risk to prevent others from dying should not be allowed to do so. Because that's what ethics means to me. (sarcasm)" (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 2:53 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "So much of our incumbent prestige system would be vaporized by visible prediction track records. It's not just Wall St, I'm afraid. // "in the late 80s … I worked at a high-end Wall Street information provider and found that analysts would not sign up for the system unless we had a feature that allowed them to delete from the system old predictions that had turned out wrong." From an anonymous (to you) email." (
  '21 Oct 23Added Oct. 23, 2021, 2:53 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Example of Enron being cited as a "good buy" (
  '21 Oct 15Added Oct. 15, 2021, 5:24 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "I sure hope that stuff like this, as destructive as it is to our democracy, might help Democrats win more elections than they otherwise would? I'm curious how #GOPCivilWar will affect 2022 / 2024 with nasty primaries and some sliver of the base not voting in the general." (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 5 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "It's very popular to say things like "It's wrong to profit off of human suffering." Somehow, people never mean that it's wrong to profit from *causing* human suffering when they say this; they mean that it's wrong to profit from *preventing* human suffering" (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:59 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Building a product in the dark without letting people use it early on is the best way to make something nobody wants (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:59 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• You don't need to be a well established reearcher to contribute to the field (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:58 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• "The Discourse has taken a lot of twists and turn. But to me, these eleven points are the core of the Shor Pill and a lot of the other stuff people are arguing about I don't have strong opinions about." (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:57 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "I'm telling you, drones are going to revolutionize urban combat. No more having to level buildings to get at soldiers taking cover behind walls. A few years ago this was science fiction. Now it's reality." (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:57 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• Time heals all wounds... unless you're bleeding out... time ain't going to heal that one. (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:57 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Gift Tax Limits: How Much Can You Gift? (
  '21 Oct 13Added Oct. 13, 2021, 4:56 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Before thermometers: philosophers mocked the idea of temperature ever being measurable, with all its nuance, complexity and subjectivity" (
  '21 Oct 11Added Oct. 11, 2021, 12:21 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "If you’re leaving comments on somebody’s Google Doc today, leave a few positive comments for them. It’ll make them so happy." (
  '21 Oct 10Added Oct. 10, 2021, 2:05 p.m.
  in management | a)
• "Why were so many predictions wrong? They were based on an assumption that Covid is a morality play — that cases rise when we take more risks (going to school, movies, football games) and fall when we strictly follow social distancing. The world is more complicated than that." (
  '21 Oct 10Added Oct. 10, 2021, 2:04 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "In this screenshot of an FB post (sorry), Ozzie shares a thought he and I jointly came up with today... how soon until a general purpose language model can start answering some queries by generating and executing arbitrary code and subsystems? If a future model could intelligently know which subsystems to use and how to use them, I think it could lead to exciting and scary places quite quickly. It also doesn't seem like we'd be too far off from this possibility." (
  '21 Oct 07Added Oct. 7, 2021, 2:03 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• Same People 2021: “How was the Instagram sale allowed?! Why didn’t regulators take it seriously!” 2012: “Haha $1 billion for pictures of food?!? Dumb. Bubble!!!” (
  '21 Oct 06Added Oct. 6, 2021, 1:35 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Impressive long-term forecast! // Back in 1970, Manabe made the first specific projection of future warming, arguing the global temps would increase by 0.57C between 1970 and 2000. He was spot-on: it warmed 0.54C." (
  '21 Oct 06Added Oct. 6, 2021, 1:33 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "There was a similar pattern of overconfidence among many pundits about the strength of our institutions, elites’ respect for norms, and restraints on mass behavior before the January 6th invasion. Best to be prepared for tail events instead of writing coup attempts off as “flops”" (
  '21 Oct 05Added Oct. 5, 2021, 9:33 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Apparently the most prescribed medicine right now is Atorvastatin (aka Lipitor) which manages cholestorol. (
  '21 Oct 05Added Oct. 5, 2021, 8:47 p.m.
  in science | a)
• It's almost like the forces of supply and demand roughly correlate with market prices or something // Cost burdens almost perfectly correlated with the supply of homes per adult (
  '21 Oct 02Added Oct. 2, 2021, 6:44 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "We sure have improved car safety a lot in the past fifty years. Intentional crumple zones, airbags, and widespread seatbelts seem like the biggest improvements." (
  '21 Oct 02Added Oct. 2, 2021, 6:43 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "The big thing here is that explicit liberalism, across racial lines, primarily appeals to highly educated/secular people, and as we’ve taken over the party and redefined it in our image it has driven away working class people of all races who do not share our values" (
  '21 Oct 02Added Oct. 2, 2021, 6:42 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Many often dislike companies hiring lobbyists to influence legislators considering regulating their industry; but legislators often don't even understand what they're proposing to regulate, and if they make bad regulations based on poor understanding, they can ruin that industry" (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:27 a.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Why do large models do worse? In the image, small sizes of GPT3 give true but less informative answers. Larger sizes know enough to mimic human superstitions and conspiracy theories." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:27 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• I always wondered how long dollar stores could coexist with inflation Quote Tweet (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:26 a.m.
  in economics | a)
• "One theory on declining birthrates is that it's driven by pessimism: the world will end soon, so why bring kids into that? We must return to the 1950s, when nobody worried about the annihilation of humanity." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:26 a.m.
  in culture | a)
• "Retroactive reporting by the elderly (or getting there) of the best year of their lives. I'm near the peak now, and my life is pretty great. But I always figured the best years of my life would be my 50s. I want my version of Kant's critical period." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:26 a.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The engineers mostly fixed oil spills (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:25 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "People act like getting a COVID vaccine is a personal choice, but it's also a choice that - directly or indirectly - can kill *other* innocent people." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:25 a.m.
  in policy | a)
• Speaking of interesting facts from analyzing conferences: Google is 3-10x the size of any other AI research lab. That's not even including DeepMind which ranks 3rd. (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:25 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "4 misleading/inaccurate narratives that drive me nuts: 1. "100 corporations are responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions" 2. "for every homeless person there are six vacant homes" 3. "we only got one $2k check" 4. "blackrock/zillow are buying all the houses" (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:25 a.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "Somehow, the idea of “Trump may do a coup successfully but I will just lead to counter-coup and then more coups and counter-coups” does not make me feel any better about this than Kagan’s original piece did." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:24 a.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "An update to the classic "what happens if you miss the 10 best days in the market" where advisors tell you that "it is not timing the market but time IN the market that matters" But here we show the other side where you can also miss the 10 WORST days in the market." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:24 a.m.
  in economics | a)
• Goodhart's Law in action (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:24 a.m.
  in policy | a)
• "The year is 2031. Your car requires you to change your car password because it has been more than 90 days since you last reset. Your car password must contain a number, a capital letter, a symbol, and a unique combination from turning the steering wheel." (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:23 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• Apparently 2010 was peak camera (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:23 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Boris Johnson, first longtermist PM?" (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:23 a.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• The Ern Malley hoax is wild (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:23 a.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Latest fashion trend: adversarial make-up (
  '21 Oct 01Added Oct. 1, 2021, 11:22 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Depressingly a debunked theory is believed by the vast majority of teachers. The belief in Learning Styles (that some people are auditory learners visual learners etc) is not only wrong it can hurt. But the research shows that when teachers learn why they change." (
  '21 Sep 29Added Sept. 29, 2021, 3:36 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "This is a sobering reality check for anyone who thinks a cell-cultured meat future (aka cultivated/lab-grown etc) is around the corner. Don't believe the hype! BUT that doesn't mean we should abandon the science either. 🧵 1/" (
  '21 Sep 29Added Sept. 29, 2021, 3:21 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• "Incarcerated people are slaughtering cows in 8 inches of sewage and they still refer to it as "Humane Handling." (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:51 a.m.
  in animals | a)
• "The year is 2041. Unaligned AI is coming for us, but the AI gets stuck in a rug." (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:50 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Seems like this would help for a lot of diseases, not just COVID. Why do we still underinvest in filtration?" (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:50 a.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Another sign that a non-trivial number of people like making stuff up for survey answers: among those *fully vaccinated*, 9% agree that "The U.S. government is using the COVID-19 vaccine to microchip the population"." (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:48 a.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Learning a second language is great for communicating, but doesn't bring spillover cognitive benefits, even if you were told it did. Recent research, including a meta-analyses of 157 studies, has found no advantage in any cognitive dimension for learning additional languages." (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:48 a.m.
  in rationality | a)
• "The tier list for how difficult it is for English speakers to learn a new language. It takes around four times as long to learn Chinese, Arabic, or Japanese as it does to learn French, German or Italian." (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:48 a.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Here was the six-point plan to overthrow the government. It is not partisan hysteria to acknowledge this is really bad. It is also not partisan hysteria to acknowledge that we are not yet out of the woods on this threat. (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:47 a.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "Insecure people are more boastful" is a paradox." (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:47 a.m.
  in culture | a)
• "If you are a vaccinated adult and living a relatively normal life, but find waiting for a pediatric vax "intolerable," please understand that your unvaccinated child is at a significantly lower risk than you" (
  '21 Sep 21Added Sept. 21, 2021, 12:47 a.m.
  in science | a)
• We know that the best upgrades in ventilation systems could make a substantial difference in viral transmission. AND I'm confident that some upgrades are 10X better than others due to the specifics of the new install baseline performance number people benefiting etc. (
  '21 Sep 18Added Sept. 18, 2021, 2:32 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Working in the U.S. helped us get more money to international recipients (
  '21 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2021, 10:47 p.m.
  in effectivealtruism | a)
• A much cooler version of an optical illusion I tweeted about previously (as well as an explanation for how it works) (
  '21 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2021, 6:24 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Motivated reasoning at The World Bank! (
  '21 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2021, 6:24 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Trump is still attempting a coup. Like right now. While Politico is writing stupid shit about columnists who call them out for sucking. (
  '21 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2021, 6:24 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Markets for forecasts > pundits with conflicts of interests. This is a trend to watch for how the news and media talk about the future. (
  '21 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2021, 6:23 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "evidence seems message matters, not who votes, e.g. • “extremists... activate the opposing party”" (
  '21 Sep 17Added Sept. 17, 2021, 6:04 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Two of the enduring patterns of polling over the past 20 years are (a) that pre-election polls tend to underestimate the dominant party in a given state, especially lopsided ones (like California) & (b) that polls underestimate the status quo option on referenda and recalls." (
  '21 Sep 16Added Sept. 16, 2021, 9:21 a.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "alright, mathematicians have lost it" (
  '21 Sep 15Added Sept. 15, 2021, 10:57 a.m.
  in math | a)
• Four charts showing the social and moral progress of America (
  '21 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2021, 1:51 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "A result I think about often: People (whether founders or pundits) who correctly predicts a big hit or extreme event that no one else did are usually THE WORST at predictions. Rather then being insightful, they tend to be bad data analysts who got lucky!" (
  '21 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2021, 1:27 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• These two maps show the last time a Republican won a state in a presidential election and the last time a Democrat won a state in a Presidential election (before Trump 2016). (
  '21 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2021, 1:23 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Two researchers do a replication and disconfirm their result. They could publish, but choose not to, hurting their own careers. This shows incentives are bad in science." (
  '21 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2021, 1:13 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• The four most important charts in science & technology (
  '21 Sep 12Added Sept. 12, 2021, 1:07 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Paul Poast on Twitter: "The Emancipation Proclamation is a crucial document not least of all because it ensured the Union could win the American Civil War. [A #JuneTeenth2021 Thread] https://t.co/9IvQeLZaek" / Twitter" (
  '21 Sep 11Added Sept. 11, 2021, 3:49 p.m.
  in history | a)
• The world might soon be in the situation that the CO₂ emissions of some of the richest countries are lower than in the world's big middle-income countries. (
  '21 Sep 11Added Sept. 11, 2021, 2:35 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Lakshya Jain on Twitter: "Again there was never much of an argument for moving #CAGov to anything more bearish than Likely Democratic in a Biden +29 universal VBM state unless you overreacted to a mathematically impossible SurveyUSA poll and some outliers with insanely Republican Likely Voter screens." / Twitter" (
  '21 Sep 11Added Sept. 11, 2021, 2:21 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Everyone on Twitter (including me) needs to keep in mind how far they are from normal (
  '21 Sep 10Added Sept. 10, 2021, 1:37 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• "Looks like explicitly framing and promoting "high-skilled immigration" is a good way of achieving more immigration" (
  '21 Sep 10Added Sept. 10, 2021, 12:58 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "The survey of incoming Harvard students below [shows] that it's selection, not any indoctrination [that makes campuses liberal]" (
  '21 Sep 10Added Sept. 10, 2021, 12:20 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• it’s important to ask questions about new technologies that go beyond first impressions. Steam locomotive “Looks like a toy” → How fast will it improve? Money bag “Too expensive”→ How fast will the price come down? 🛠 “Doesn’t solve a problem” → Does it provide new capabilities? (
  '21 Sep 07Added Sept. 7, 2021, 7:34 a.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Until the late 1970s, the Soviet Union was enjoying impressive catch-up growth. They were doing great on infrastructure (the Moscow Metro is fantastic) and had awesome prestige projects (Sputnik!). Very similar to how China is seen today." (
  '21 Sep 07Added Sept. 7, 2021, 7:28 a.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• It's wild how better educated we as a populace are than even just 80 years ago (
  '21 Sep 07Added Sept. 7, 2021, 6:07 a.m.
  in history | a)
• "Hypothesis: The American public generally only has nebulous foreign policy ideologies (e.g. communism is bad), but dislikes seeing Americans being harmed. Seeing Americans in harm way will make Americans unhappy with foreign policy choices, not seeing that makes the public happy." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:49 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Something I was wrong about too. Suicide [during COVID] went down, not up. Again and again, I find that many smart people are way overestimating their ability to predict changes in harm. Rather than an embarrassing technicality, this seems of central importance to many disagreements." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:49 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• 7 habits of highly successful people: 1. Lose 2. Lose 3. Lose 4. Lose 5. Lose 6. Lose 7. Win 20X and more than make up for all the losses because you sized your damn bets appropriately (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:48 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Whenever I get a service window, like "our tech will arrive between noon and 2pm", I think in practice this ends up like a 75% CI where there is a 10% chance they come earlier than the window and a 15% chance they come later than their window (or not at all)" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:48 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Thinking about how Silicon Valley gloated about autonomous vehicles and every Davos attendee bellyached about how automation is the source of inequality (“and truck drivers are next!”), only for it to be revealed that weak staffing & compensation are the chronic challenges rn" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:48 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "nice policy you got there, be a real shame if someone tried to implement it at the average bureaucrat's level of competence ...and with the average degree of implementation planning, political contention, appointee meddling, public comment period delays, insufficient resources allocated to new projects, and legal barriers and oversight put in place to reduce bureaucratic flexibility." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:47 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• A visual history of U.S. immigration (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:47 p.m.
  in history | a)
• I think that most of the decline in Biden's job approval over the past two weeks is just due to non-response bias as pollsters that control for partisanship like YouGov and Civiqs are seeing much less movement than pollsters that don't control for partisanship (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:46 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "If Trump runs against Biden in 2024, it will be the 7th rematch in US history" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:46 p.m.
  in history | a)
• It’s often better to replace giving advice (“I think you should do X”) with giving thought experiments (“what do you think would happen if you tried to do X?”) People understand their situation far better than you. It’s critical to test your ideas against their understanding. (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:45 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• The most visible members of any field are not representative of it. They are the ones most willing to make bold or controversial statements that get picked up by (social) media. This seems problematic and means many people's perceptions of the field are off. Is this fixable? (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:45 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• "this stacks up with my analysis of referendum data in places like Maine, which shows that your average Obama-Trump-Biden voter is a rural non-college-white who likes gay marriage and Medicare. They were open to Trump in 2016 but ditched after they saw he was really just another R" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:44 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "In the past, it looked like an inverse tradeoff between population and wages. It would be so easy to be marxist because it looks like a fixed pie. But then the industrial era showed everyone can get rich, even with many more people. // And then the really wild part is that we eventually learned to beat up our planet less even as our populations and economies continued to grow." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:44 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• Mindblowing history fact: Betsy Ross was a fraud! (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:40 p.m.
  in history | a)
• "It's clear as can be here, too: Gen X is more likely to believe in God without a doubt in 2018 than they were in the 1990's. Big portions of millennials lost belief as they aged into adulthood. Gen X's belief got stronger." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:39 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "While China is a threat, the US is still outspending China on military 3 to 1. This increases to 3.7:1 if you look at Quad+2 vs. China and increases to 4.2:1 if you include key NATO allies (Germany, France, UK, Canada) on the Quad-side." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:39 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "President Ashraf Ghani, who has now fled the country, quite literally wrote the book on fixing failed states" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:38 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• We still have to beg people 18 months into the pandemic to take ventilation seriously (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:38 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Two major confounders that make vaccines look weaker at first glance than they actually are: 1. Vaccination status & risk of severe disease are both correlated with age! 2. Many unvaccinated have immunity from prior infection! (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:37 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "I sort of wish there were a market in replication bounties or something so you could “short” a paper, though I wonder whether there would be sufficient alpha to justify reading papers versus just shorting entire disciplines at once and accepting they may occasionally have results" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:37 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• Voters are amazing (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:36 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "As ways to cheat go, academic fraud feels much more consequential to me than doping, yet even famed athletes are ~banned for life for doping and academic fraudsters don't even get a slap on the wrist. Why are standards so high in sports and how can researchers emulate them?" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:36 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• It’s unfortunate that the two dominant foreign policy positions are: - Pro-long war with no end in sight - Rest of the world doesn’t matter If only “America should care about the rest of the world and pursue pro-global health/immigration/anti-poverty policies” was powerful. (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:35 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• Probably that Americans won’t give a shit about Afghanistan 30 days from now UNLESS we’ve got refugees coming in (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:35 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Public support for wars tends to decrease non-linearly over time, with a few shocks changing trends in predictable ways. But the curve always goes down. See this figure from John Mueller" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:35 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "I’m skeptical about #Afghanistan having a big effect on public opinion, but there are two points that make me pause: (1) Contingent on every American making out alive. (2) Elite opinion is scalding re Biden (though also on Trump). How much will trickle down to masses?" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:34 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "I wish more people in July had made concrete quantified forecasts about how the Taliban takeover would play out. A lot of "I told you so" in retrospect happening this week, but not a lot of people actually having told us so AFAICT" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:33 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• I think the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is the first thing since Covid in January 2020 that went from 1-4 on what I like to call the McMahon Scale in about 2 weeks (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:33 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "How the FDA makes medicine much more expensive than it needs to be, in one enraging case study" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:33 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Maybe I sound like a broken record, but it seems the developed world STILL, somehow, never tried throwing lots of money at the parts of the system that constrain supply. Nor purchasing vaccines for the rest of the world to stop variants. (It's a great deal, given the costs.)" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:32 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "COVID-19 is causing this, but it isn't about COVID-19. These are exactly the failures that health security researchers have been calling out for decades - a hospital system optimized for efficiency has no slack, so *every* emergency will lead to shortage and excess deaths." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:32 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "One underrated aspect of education polarization is that non-voters, who were a strongly Dem-leaning group during the Obama years, now are probably somewhat more Republican than the country overall. It's no longer usually true that Democrats would benefit from higher turnout. Quote Tweet" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:31 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Vaccines are a gift to humanity. Soon after introduction of vaccination measles were eradicated. How good is it to not have the measles around anymore! Go to the link to see similar charts for other vaccines. (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:31 p.m.
  in science | a)
• The Taliban advance is truly stunning and not at all what I expected. This seems to require me to update my opinions on foreign policy but I'm not really sure what to think. (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:31 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "Honestly this is the only way I trust communicating models to the public // No point projections, no probabilities; we’re focusing on highlighting ranges in outcomes" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:29 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Another fun fact: the cost of discovering, developing, and producing the atomic bomb was not as expensive as the cost of designing and developing the bomber that carried the atomic bomb." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:28 p.m.
  in history | a)
• "I didn't know that in the 1850s, the US was at war with Mormonse" (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:28 p.m.
  in history | a)
• "If you think books in the "nonfiction" category usually do not include information that's opinion or "facts" that are demonstrably untrue, I have some bad news for you. cf humor, most business books, most political books, Malcolm Gladwell, Sapiens, Why We Sleep, etc." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:27 p.m.
  in metascience | a)
• There are 2 kinds of people in this world. (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:27 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Post-hoc, the worst outcomes are always going to be confluences - but the number of variables that could have gone wrong is still far larger. The surprising things about disasters is how rare they are - systems are usually kept within the narrow bands that prevent them." (
  '21 Sep 06Added Sept. 6, 2021, 10:27 p.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• The 1831 Great Chicago Fire had so much bad luck: - widespread wood - severe drought - strong southwest winds bringing fire toward city - initial firefighters sent to wrong place - flammable waste accumulated by river from years of improper disposal (
  '21 Sep 05Added Sept. 5, 2021, 1:04 a.m.
  in history | a)
• Willingness to question your own assumptions and reverse course instead of entrenching yourself in an opinion once you'd put it out there is a very good superforecaster skill! (
  '21 Aug 01Added Aug. 1, 2021, 3:17 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Optical illusion technology is becoming a bit too powerful, pt VI" (
  '21 Jul 31Added July 31, 2021, 1:10 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Be careful reading things from Politico and sites like it. They're celebrity gossip magazines for politics and they don't have a good forecasting track record. [Thread with examples] (
  '21 Jul 31Added July 31, 2021, 12:49 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "I think we got lucky on COVID. I shudder to think about what COVID deaths would've been like if original COVID was the Delta variant, and/or if vaccines took the original expected amount of time. I was also wrong about how long and bad the COVID-induced economic recession would be in the US. I guess economic stimulus was much larger, broader, and more effective than I expected." (
  '21 Jul 31Added July 31, 2021, 12:49 p.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• Another example of why you should trust superforecasters instead of the news (
  '21 Jul 31Added July 31, 2021, 12:46 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you have the law, pound the law. When you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table." Given how many people operationalize this advice, if you start pounding the table, you will be perceived as likely lacking in the facts and law departments. So, when you're not, the way to get what you want is to be brisk, organized, professional, and to-the-point." (
  '21 Jul 31Added July 31, 2021, 12:46 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "How to build friendships in adulthood: Try saying, "We're doing X on Saturday at 6pm, want to join?" ...instead of just asking "want to hang out soon?" When there's a plan that's happening with or without them, people will often choose to show up." (
  '21 Jul 31Added July 31, 2021, 12:45 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• It would honestly be more historically appropriate for Chomper to appear alongside Alexander Hamilton in the Hamilton play than for Chomper to appear alongside Littlefoot. (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:57 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Still the best tweet from all of COVID (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:57 p.m.
  in random | a)
• P(we live in a simulation?) [poll] (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:57 p.m.
  in philosophy | a)
• TBH I wouldn't be surprised if we quickly went back to underestimating pandemic risk. We're already seeing this happen with the $30B pandemic preparedness budget potentially being cut in the upcoming infrastructure bill. (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:57 p.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• Trump's entire life over the past 15 years is basically a WWE storyline that got out of hand (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:56 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "People overrate electoral trends. They are largely unpredictable more than one cycle down the line. Trends *exist,* obviously, but they're also there until they aren't. It is highly susceptible to overfitting." (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:56 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Expect even top forecasters to make lots of mistakes. So, focus on overall track records & capacity to learn. When smart forecasters are consistently over-confident, start suspecting they're not playing a pure-accuracy game (e.g. publicity or policy-advocacy games)" (
  '21 Jul 28Added July 28, 2021, 11:55 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Just spent 90 minutes working through my subscriptions with my wife and cancelling the ones we didn't feel like we were using enough to justify the price. Ended up saving $1157/yr. This activity just generated $771.33/hr (in the first year, and more next year). I recommend it!" (
  '21 Jul 25Added July 25, 2021, 5:34 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "We are happy to inform you that due to recent advances, nuclear fusion is no longer perpetually 50 years away. It is now perpetually 20-30 years away" (
  '21 Jul 24Added July 24, 2021, 11:39 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• None of the dinosaurs in The Land Before Time would've lived contemporaneously. (
  '21 Jul 24Added July 24, 2021, 11:38 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "All the data we have suggests vaccines are working remarkably well. Far beyond what had been hoped for a year ago. For example, a fully-vaxxed 80-year-old now has the same risk of dying from Covid as an unvaxxxed 50-year-old. That's an enormous drop in risk!" (
  '21 Jul 24Added July 24, 2021, 11:37 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Vaccines (even the weaker non-MRNA ones) are doing a great job at turning a wave of cases into just that - not hospitalizations or deaths. Given this, we should recalibrate how alarmed we get by upcoming explosions in cases." (
  '21 Jul 20Added July 20, 2021, 5:47 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• The world's catching on to how much more accurate @PolymarketHQ is vs. what's on your newsfeed. Information Markets are the solution to our disinformation crisis: realigning the incentives of how news spreads such that the truth prevails. (
  '21 Jul 19Added July 19, 2021, 5:14 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "If everyone wears seatbelts when they're in a car, then 100 percent of auto fatalities will be among people wearing seatbelts." (
  '21 Jul 19Added July 19, 2021, 5:13 p.m.
  in statistics | a)
• "I, too, would be upset if I spent a good chunk of my life getting a PhD in economics only to have a non-economist do a better job than I ever could as Fed chair" (
  '21 Jul 19Added July 19, 2021, 5:13 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• About half of Americans believe in ghosts and demons (
  '21 Jul 19Added July 19, 2021, 10:20 a.m.
  in psychology | a)
• "Was curious if county presidential swings were predictable based on how they had swung in the previous election. Most cycles have some correlation with the previous cycle, more than we see when comparing state swings over time (see QT), but the R^2s are still low." (
  '21 Jul 18Added July 18, 2021, 1:54 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "One of my best decisions as an engineering manager: Schedule a cleanup release 2-4 weeks immediately after the set-in-stone, we’ve-committed-to-users, press-and-blog-post-scheduled product release. 9000% APR loans are cheapest when paid back immediately." (
  '21 Jul 18Added July 18, 2021, 1:54 p.m.
  in management | a)
• "Here are oldest companies in the world, most are in hospitality, or else quasi-governmental or religious institutions. Note the lack of large companies. They don't last that long." (
  '21 Jul 18Added July 18, 2021, 1:53 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• "Really interesting how difficult it's been for people to separate their moral intuition and fairness instincts from disease prevention. Widespread belief that fun things somehow "must" be risky, and morally good things "must" be safe" (
  '21 Jul 18Added July 18, 2021, 1:18 p.m.
  in psychology | a)
• "Don't know why, but this sort of discussion happens without irony all the time (sampling bias from taking surveys)." (
  '21 Jul 17Added July 17, 2021, 11:31 a.m.
  in statistics | a)
• "why is grad school so awful for many people who did great in undergrad, IMO/IME? tl;dr (1) it's more job-like, but lacks much of the structure/support of a good workplace (2) the starkest possible transition of clarity/tractability, straight from "homework" to "research" (
  '21 Jul 15Added July 15, 2021, 12:09 a.m.
  in management | a)
• "I feel like I used to be a lot less critical than I am now, especially about research. These days, if I read research carefully and don't spot a hole that diminishes my trust in the paper by >20%, my default assumption is that I'm not smart or careful enough to spot the hole." (
  '21 Jul 13Added July 13, 2021, 3:50 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Whenever I feel sad, I take solace in knowing that it will just be a few days - a week at most - until I feel happy again. Whenever I feel happy, I take gratitude and respect in knowing that it will just be a few weeks - a month at most - until I feel sad about something again." (
  '21 Jul 12Added July 12, 2021, 2:07 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Alignment problem part 1042 (
  '21 Jul 12Added July 12, 2021, 12:06 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "I'm also curious about this [likelihood of extraterrestrial life]. It also would dramatically affect how much humans and human values can be expected to dominate the universe. Plus if alien values are also good, it gives us an x-risk backup - we can worry less about ensuring the survival of human values." (
  '21 Jul 11Added July 11, 2021, 9:14 a.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• This algebra fact blew my little mind (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:55 p.m.
  in math | a)
• Get ready for the next solar eclipse! (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:53 p.m.
  in science | a)
• Another person learns about the Lizardman's Constant (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:52 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• I learned about the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon and now I'm hearing about it everywhere (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:51 p.m.
  in psychology | a)
• "I spent several hours doing some careful Twitter curation. Also, I don't use The Algorithm - I just use "Latest Tweets as they Happen". As a result, my Twitter experience is like 20x better - from meh to among my top four favorite places on the internet." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:50 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Really strange to me how pundits can both simultaneously underrate the status quo (think *everything* is a game changer) and overrate the status quo (think *nothing* is a game changer). (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:49 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• CV Dazzle sets up an awesome cyberpunk movie where all the characters have super cool looking costumes and the plot justification is “to circumvent facial recognition software” (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:48 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• How moderates proliferate (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:48 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Another example for the Lizardmen Constant scrapbook // In a Gallup poll last year, six percent of Americans defined SOCIALISM as “talking to people, being social, social media.”" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:47 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "...in one poll" is the new "...in mice" that we need to make sure to add to the end of everything where it is relevant" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:46 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Looks like Netflix has the Strategic Television Reserve we were all hoping for. (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:45 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• We live in the cyberpunk future (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:42 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• I love this meme format (Buff Guys Help Out Nerdy Kid) (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:41 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Really wild, sad, and infuriating to see all the police brutality collated in one place" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:38 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Don't let rightful anger at racism let you miss that democracy itself is under serious attack. We can and need to deal with both (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:36 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "As bad as the 2020 election was, it's a miracle it wasn't much worse. I think there was an ex post ~20% chance that there would've been genuine doubt in who won the election (+ Trump not conceding). We're lucky the Big Lie is a clear lie. We may not be that lucky next time." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:35 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "Wow, really interesting that trust has declined so much over the past 50 years." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:21 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Positive spin - this is an impressive amount of social change! 48% to 87% [support of interracial marriage] over just 18 years... 4% to 48% over just 32 years (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:21 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• I'm still amazed and saddened that getting COVID advice from LessWrong and Twitter was and has been much more useful than getting COVID advice from the CDC. (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:20 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Our cyberpunk future, pt II" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:19 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Great real-life example of tail divergence. Of course height is strongly associated with success in basketball, but at the extreme end of basketball skill (pro-level) there is not always the extreme end of height (>7ft) ...and vice-versa" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:19 p.m.
  in statistics | a)
• "Interesting survey from Ipsos UK in October 2019 [on who the public trusts]. I wonder how different it is today, post-COVID? Pollsters again, ironically, don't do so well." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:17 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• We in the United States have made very rapid progress on getting chickens out of cages! Change is possible! (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:16 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• It amazes me how much of science is powered by a single Kazakhstani woman who does crimes (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:16 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Three things I feel like I didn't quite realize about the solar system until just now: (1) The Earth and Venus are so much larger than Mars and Mercury, (2) Jupiter and Saturn are so much larger than Uranus and Neptune, and (3) the sun really is very huge" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:15 p.m.
  in physics | a)
• TREES FOR ALL TREE NEW DEAL (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:12 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• “Why can I never discuss publicly how I think cancel culture is bad” says person who is discussing publicly how they think cancel culture is bad with zero consequences (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:12 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Belief in various conspiracy theories (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:09 p.m.
  in psychology | a)
• Changing US views toward China (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:08 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• I feel like this is the single poll that has done the most to make me question my worldview and way of doing things (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 3:04 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "1.) Make a well-defined @metaculus question. And then - presto - you get a ton of custom analysis, articles, as well as top-line takeaways. 2.) Wikipedia Current News Portal" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 2:55 p.m.
  in NaN | a)
• "Wow, I guess Likert scales are balanced for a reason. Belief in conspiracy drops from ~20% to ~1% when given balanced options." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 2:54 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• It's pretty amazing the degree to which Trump scams his own supporters (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 2:39 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "India will have more people than China before the end of the decade. As China increasingly becomes "the next USA", India is increasingly becoming "the next China". (And maybe Nigeria might become "the next India")" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:49 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• "So, to get a sense for how much *news* there is in the a given election year, we looked at how many full-width headlines there are in the NYT from Jan. 1 through Election Day in election years going back to 1968. 2020 is, uh, pretty special..." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:47 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• Colliders may be one of the most underdiscussed statistical traps... just as bad as confounders (failing to control for an important variable) but discussed so much less (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:46 p.m.
  in statistics | a)
• "Alternative work schedules to consider for productivity: (1) Start early, end early; (2) Work, take a long afternoon break, then have a second period at night; (3) Work 6-7 days a week but for 6-7hrs/day instead of 8hrs/day; (4) Work one weekend day each week but take off every Wednesday" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:44 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• Seven times a week I get a new day. This feels very unfair to my opponents. There is so much I can do with a new day. (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:43 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• At all times we should remember that the modal American is a 35yo white person without a college degree living in the suburbs without a Twitter account (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:43 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Life has been changing a lot since 1970 (average age at first marriage) (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:42 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• "One important thing to keep in mind when you see a poll about how voters want a certain major policy change... when you explain to voters why things are the way they are, they usually end up being sympathetic and support for the change goes down." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:41 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• We need ways of identifying and promoting capable people that don't involve getting a PhD. So many of my most capable friends end up getting PhD eventually because they can't do research or be taken seriously without one. But it often just locks away their talent for 3-7 years. (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:41 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Wow, things have gotten so bad that it is now literally "Blade Runner" outside" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:40 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Good chart showing the progress of technology over the years. CDs reigned 1990-2010, then switched to downloads, and then streaming exploded in 2015 Ringtones were also a fun blip from 2005-2010" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:39 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• The balance of power between China and the US+allies continues to be tenuous... I'd imagine that the US+allies would still have more long-term production/redeployment capabilities for the foreseeable future in a full war scenario though? (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:38 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• There's a lobby for everything (balloon lobby) (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 1:34 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” - Amos Tversky (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 12:27 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• From a Jan 2000 article predicting Amazon revenue in 2010 and 2020. Vast underestimate. Errors in predicting the future are greatly magnified by compounding uncertainty in the shape of growth. (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 12:05 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• This is the only true way to have political debates - everything else is just noise // Does anyone care to make a forecast of the form “states that adopt [good/bad] laws banning ‘Critical Race Theory’ will see [benefits/harms] to [someone] that we can measure [somehow] within [timespan]”? (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 10:49 a.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "I wonder whether in 2035 whether we have a lot of socialist candidates winning everywhere or whether the 18-29 age group will slide against socialism. A lot changes in 15 yrs - maybe automation will make people more socialist, maybe competition with China will make people less?" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 10:01 a.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "With all the talk lately of "Rooseveltian" Foreign Policy (and whether it describes Biden), I decided to update my US Foreign Policy 2x2. At the moment, I agree that Biden is close to "Late FDR" in his foreign policy approach." (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 9:56 a.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "The paradox of content today: money comes in a U-shaped curve by audience size. A thousand paying readers or a million free readers are worth money, but 10k or 100k free readers are worth very little money, and converting them to pay means you give up your audience" (
  '21 Jul 10Added July 10, 2021, 9:55 a.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• Still pretty wide intervals on the impact of lead on crime. This is where a probability distribution of expected effect size could be really handy. (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 9:23 p.m.
  in NaN | a)
• "California is planning to shut down its last nuclear plant soon. From a carbon-free electricity standpoint, this is the equivalent of tearing down every wind turbine in the state, or half of our solar panels" (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 9:22 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Long Covid still strikes me as massively under-discussed given how prevalent it is. Majority of focus is still on deaths and hospitalisations; many think that, as long as these things are under control, all is okay. But that isn't necessarily true" (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 7:34 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Don't worry, this time I'll pick up the phone for sure!" - low social trust voter" (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 7:28 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Hear me out, we let a lot of new housing be built and then we use it to house the homeless (and lots of other people)." (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 7:27 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "This is why we need a strong alternative to academia. I nominate @RethinkPriors as an example. No publish or perish, research is aligned with actually advancing the public interest (rather than myopic metrics), everyone is already well-funded, and we work as a collaborative team" (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 7:05 p.m.
  in management | a)
• How the rural-urban gap plays out in China may be an important trend in China's rise as a global power (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 6:17 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "Optical illusion technology is becoming a bit too powerful, pt V" (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 5:29 p.m.
  in random | a)
• It's also entertaining to see these hypothetical buildings and superstructures (
  '21 Jul 09Added July 9, 2021, 5:24 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Arms-race pressures on the US will be very intense as China tries to catch up. Arms control is viable when at least one side believes an unmitigated race is too expensive and/or dangerous. Neither US nor PRC seem to be in that zone atm. (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 7:27 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "Optical illusion technology is becoming a bit too powerful, pt IV" (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 6:48 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Reminds me of an amusing strategy @patio11 shared a while ago for helping colleagues: after reviewing a draft, ask, "So what are you really trying to say here?" They'll often answer much more plainly and directly than the prose, then then you can say: "Great, write that!" (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 6:35 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Top ideas for happiness, sorted by effectiveness and feasibility per expert ratings: Invest in friends + family, join a club / volunteer, be active physically and mentally, get regular sleep, regularly experience nature, socialize with colleagues outside of work, and be generous" (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 6:30 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "I didn't know you could do this: Juul, fighting FDA ban, buys entire issue of scientific journal and fills it with company-made studies showing how great vaping is" (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 6:29 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "We think of technology as marching forward, but sometimes it doesn’t. Why has some technology development beenslow? Here’s my current understanding (very much open to revision) influenced by many different thinkers and doers (numerous hat tips at the bottom) [progress thread]" (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 6:28 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• Agatha Christie fun facts (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 6:19 p.m.
  in history | a)
• "Giving up straws and plastic bags is not going to make much difference to the amount of plastic in the ocean. Especially if you don't throw them in a river. 80% of ocean plastic comes from rivers, but over 80% is from Asia. Europe only 0.6%" (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 3:06 p.m.
  in activism | a)
• "The evidence-based movement is v limited by the lack of hard evidence on the most important questions. I hope its next wave might be integrating evidence with expert judgement, using superforecasting and bayesianism." (
  '21 Jul 08Added July 8, 2021, 3:05 p.m.
  in rationality | a)
• Holistic admissions are absurd. There is no reason that a bunch of people in an admission office should make subjecti ve decisions like this (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:44 p.m.
  in education | a)
• "Despite the widespread modern belief that the Library of Alexandria was burned once and cataclysmically destroyed, the Library actually declined gradually over the course of several centuries" ...seems like a metaphor for something" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:44 p.m.
  in history | a)
• "If you want to be a better thinker you should probably only or primarily debate with people who are plausibly smarter/more careful etc than you, rather than dunking on randos (including randos with credentials). This is a hard lesson to learn and worth repeating to yourself." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:43 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "A classic VC question used to be "what will you do if Google launch a competitor to what you're building" - the answer today seems pretty easy: "remind my customers that Google will probably shut it down again in six months time" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:42 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• "it might seem almost too simple to work, but it really does: think back about your happy moments in everyday life, and recreate those conditions deliberately // Yesterday, i went grocery shopping and spent an hour cooking my dinner and in that moment i realized i was ridiculously happy. So that will be my new metricfrom now on, how to design my life so i can cook more than 75% of my meals" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:39 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "I feel like every time I find a smart analyst on Twitter who has been correct again and again over the status quo, they always have ~1-2K followers, whereas nearly all the people with >50K followers are wrong over and over and don't seem to even know what they are talking about." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:38 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Who were the virologists or PH people who were pretty convinced by ~May 2020 about widespread SARS-2 mutation late 2020/early 2021? My impression is that the forecasting world largely missed this, so I'd be curious if this is one area where domain experts did much better." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:38 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Sunrise actually did help biden – by portraying him as anti-climate when he was actually incredibly pro-climate, they assuaged centrist fears that he was a radical" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:38 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Picard management tip: Take your leisure time seriously. A relaxed captain is a sane captain. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:37 p.m.
  in management | a)
• "I spent three months as an unpaid Senate intern. I have always been amazed at how the US government, with access to literally trillions of dollars, relies so much on exploiting unpaid labor." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:37 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Delayed adulting in 1 chart (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:36 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• "Illusion technology is becoming a bit too powerful, pt III" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:36 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "threats to D's 2022 electoral chances, ranked: 1. redistricting 2. cyclical forces (midterm opposition strength) 3. whatever issue-based stuff you want to imagine" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:35 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Self-defense: Don't spend time in bad places and keep your ego in check. If you aren't with people you need to defend, run. "With today's firepower, wanton regard for life, and litigious culture, negotiation and track lessons are a better investment than self-defense." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:35 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "Forget the 80-20 rule, 54% of App Store in-app revenue comes from 0.5% of users. The free-to-play game market has always relied on a a small number of whales, who spend a lot on games, but this is a pretty extreme distribution even in the world of FTP games." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:34 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Optical illusion technology is becoming a bit too powerful, pt II" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:34 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Great thread on the current state of Hong Kong and how it will just continue to decline unless investors can coordinate to enforce red lines. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:33 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "If the Catholic bishops want to deny Communion to Biden for his views on abortion, why not apply that to every parishioner? It looks like they would likely have to refuse the Host to at least 40% of the people coming forward during Mass." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:32 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "If we could automate coding, that would be huge. But how should we gauge progress towards this goal? Dan Hendrycks et al. have produced an awesome benchmark." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:31 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• Human have almost stopped killing whales (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:31 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Here’s the key table from @PHE_uk new report on vaccine efficacy against hospitalisation with Delta variant: (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:30 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Six qualities you can foster to bolster your reputation, in rough order of importance: Conscientiousness, Reliable, communication, Supportiveness (toward peers/teammates), Graciousness (especially w authorship), Intellectual engagement, Work ethic." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:30 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• "On Metaculus, legal issues are the hardest to predict, and social issues are the easiest." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:11 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Where's the best list of important technicalish things that should have (at least maybe) been done differently with Covid? (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:08 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "1992-2006, >75% of all day-traders quit w/i 2 years • Negative Aggregate performance of all traders over 15-years. •Only 1 out of 100 day traders earned profits over time. Are ya feeling lucky?" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:08 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• AI now has superhuman chip design skills? (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:07 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• "Buying a billboard and promoting the billboard on Twitter - Total ad spent: $24.46 (or 1.6¢ per 1,000 views)" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:07 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• "To make yourself happy, buy time! This big study found that people using 💰to buy time (like hiring people to do tasks that they don’t enjoy) increased happiness more than spending the same 💰on stuff or experiences." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:06 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• How many of these misconceptions did you incorrectly believe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions. For me it was 65 (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:06 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "People think startups are a young person's game, but two big papers show this is wrong: 1) In the US, the median age for launching a 1-in-1000 fastest growing company is 45 & the average age of founders is 42, 2) Worldwide, this paper shows older founders outperform younger ones" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:05 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• "Will humanity survive the next 100 years or will we end all human life on earth? If we do end, how will it happen? Here is one great view of the odds" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:05 p.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• "Bad execution: Pick two—time, quality, or cost. Good execution: Thoughtfully choosing the scope such that things are built on time, on budget, and at a high level of quality." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:04 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• I've been wrong [on COVID] due to [...] 1) following immediate / overconfident expert opinion more than was justified 2) not realizing how poorly the delay of infections + exponential dynamics were understood by decision makers (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:04 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• normalize pots with architecture for insects (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:03 p.m.
  in random | a)
• This is a six figure meme making job at a legit company. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:02 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• The accuracy of Spock's predictions. Not great. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:02 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• The IDF has been using small drones to drop tear gas on protesters in Ramallah in the West Bank. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:02 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• There are no minor exits for start-ups (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:01 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• I still am genuinely curious if we'd see a Trump dimension in the next DW-NOMINATE data (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:01 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Gonna say now, before the data is complete, that I think % vaccinated will be a useful predictor of voting in the future." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11:01 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Optical illusion technology is becoming a bit too powerful. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "Database of political scandals - a politician facing a scandal will eventually resign, retire, or be removed 56% of the time and will go on to win re-election and keep being a politician 21% of the time" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 11 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Graph of the rise and fall and re-rise of Democracy since 1800 (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:59 p.m.
  in history | a)
• Sinema and Kelly are following two very different electoral strategies. Will be interesting to see what happens when they are both up for re-election in 2022 (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:59 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "How is it that we have >100T parameter deep neural net models now, but as far as I know we still can't simulateall 959 cells (302 neurons) of the C. elegans worm?" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:58 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• It has been an amazing last 15 days for animals! Four great pieces of news (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:58 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Many Americans think a lot of animals - including bugs - have the capacity to suffer (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:57 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• Final results from the Nordic natural experiment - Sweden did worse on both COVID and economy (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:57 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• How to 12x your money based on some billionaire being on SNL (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:57 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• What might be the next catastrophe after COVID-19? Don't fight the last battle: Metaculus forecasts suggest we should be equally worried about nuclear & AI risk as another pandemic. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:55 p.m.
  in xrisk | a)
• "Just remember that "curves have matched the data fairly well" does not mean you're going to have a good model" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:55 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Consumers deserve to make informed choices about their products, but maybe we shouldn't listen *too* much to what mandatory labeling consumers want" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:54 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "In the intermediate term, there's a clear seniority gradient where 12% of Senate R's, 65% of house R's, and ~90% of state legislative R's voted in various ways to overturn the 2020 election, so things should get worse over the next decade just via retirements." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:50 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Three omens that Dems could be in for a rough 2022 (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:49 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• It's pretty wild that the amount of time between when velociraptors roamed the Earth and today is about the same as the amount of time as between when velociraptors roamed the Earth and when Stegosauruses roamed the Earth (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:49 p.m.
  in history | a)
• describing the proposed min wage as $9.50 + $1.50 each year instead of $15 by a date increases support quite a bit (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:44 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "People who ask how anyone could possibly bring a baby into the world today don't really seem to understand the conditions under which most babies, in the lengthy history of baby-making, have been born" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:44 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• "while I think the concerns around 'peer disagreement' are sound, I believe people should still usually just assert their personal impressions" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:43 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• The most understandable explainer of NFTs you'll ever see. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:43 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• I think public opinion polling would be a lot better if we all just understood that a lot of the public do not have and will not have consistent policy preferences (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:38 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Thermostatic public opinion! (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:37 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "One more data point... looking at 59 California ballot initiatives 2008 to 2020, a single poll had a correlation with the actual outcome of 0.7... average of polls 0.73. Polls were off by about 6.8pp on average. A typical poll was "right" 79% of the time... average was right 81%" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:37 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• To my wife Marganit and my children Ella Rose and Daniel Adam without whom this book would have been completed two years earlier (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:36 p.m.
  in random | a)
• Who will win... the entire CDC or one guy with a Python script? (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:28 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• The best way for the US to compete with China is to bring a lot of Chinese people to the US! (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:28 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• "Because "The 'Rona" is so much more transmissible than flu, people following protocols that keep the spread of COVID-19 under control just annihilate influenza." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:27 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "Can't forget the worst policy of all time, that still somehow has 15% support!" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:27 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "Even more data on best and worst states, this time as ranked by Democrats vs. Republicans" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:26 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "While presidents use political appointments to align ideology, there are no political cycles in the career civil service – the bureaucracy works as designed." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:26 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• People strongly like farming but strongly dislike factory farming! (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:26 p.m.
  in animals | a)
• RATIOS DEMAND LOG SCALE (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:25 p.m.
  in statistics | a)
• The ultimate productivity hack is being able to hire a team (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:25 p.m.
  in management | a)
• Peter Turchin predicted 2020 uphevel in 2012! (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:24 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• It's amazing what you can get when you have a lot of well-informed laypeople and reward them solely for accuracy (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:23 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Twitter could become the most valuable news / science platform by far if only @Twitter could make large improvements to the quality of search (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 10:23 p.m.
  in technology | a)
• it actually turns out that the US had one of the most generous COVID responses (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:07 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• One thing I like about the Jeremy Lin example is that it comes from the stats-driven recruiting era; teams have sophisticated models as well as fine-grained performance data They still overrode the data due to stereotypes! (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:06 p.m.
  in management | a)
• "collected a bunch of comments from "People living in third world countries, what is something that is a part of your everyday life that people in first world countries would not understand / cope with?" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:05 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• Pretty amazing how China is getting so unpopular across the developed world (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:04 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• Should Americans be concerned about the US National Debt? As I tell my students: No. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:04 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "An Ohio political play, in four acts" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:03 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• Democrats dominate 2020 dark money (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:03 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "There is an inclination to think that contemporary vices—alcohol, drugs, caffeine, sex, whatever—must be more pronounced than what the old prudes were doing a few generations back but until the 1970s the whole country was absolutely tweaked on amphetamine diet pills" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:03 p.m.
  in history | a)
• I am begging people to stop collapsing all case/death/hospitalization data from the entire time-course of the pandemic in order to mount between state comparisons. It makes my brain hurt and *not* in a good way. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:02 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "How did the myth that live caller polls are the most accurate ever get started? Even filtering only to polls *before* 2016, live caller polls are not any more accurate than online" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:01 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• I was thinking about Prohibition and I don’t think people know just how much alcohol Americans drank in the early 19th century. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7:01 p.m.
  in history | a)
• Not believing in dark matter is the opinion I arrogantly hold with the least amount of proper justification (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7 p.m.
  in psychology | a)
• The markets have a long history of prematurely anticipating Fed rate hikes (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 7 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "I'm not sure I understand the part about taxes where the government knows exactly how much you owe, but makes you guess the answer, and then charges you a penalty if you guess wrong." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:59 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "The renowned marshmallow test goes belly-up, failing to forecast individuals' future" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:58 p.m.
  in psychology | a)
• American views of China have reached the lowest point since the establishment of diplomatic relations. Gallup poll 1979-Feb 2021: (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:57 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)
• This is still one of the most confusing concepts to me in the entire English language (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:57 p.m.
  in linguistics | a)
• "Laws requires egg-laying hens to be raised in a cage-free environment, passed in many states, are now way more popular: Per our polling at @RethinkPriors, we found 64% US national support on 30 Jan 2019, but 76% support in 20 Oct 2020!" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:56 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• the US/EU have handled Covid-19 really badly compared to Asia+islands (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:56 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "61% of Americans go to church at least occasionally, believe in God, and chose a religious tradition on surveys. Here's how the rest of America breaks down on those three dimensions. Very few Americans don't believe in God but attend church and/or affiliate w/a tradition." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:55 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "TIL Chinese is really, truly, no-but-actually not a language. There is no shared language in China!" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:54 p.m.
  in linguistics | a)
• "Having strong opinions on fields I know nothing about (and feeling and being dumb) is my whole thing, but hopefully I can distinguish myself by making quantified forecasts with analysis on my track record, so as to improve over time?" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:53 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Maybe we can fix polling errors by taking the margins of error and roughly doubling them? (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:53 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "While it's true that only ~10% floats above the surface of the water, the "classic" orientation is unstable and would actually not be found in nature. An elongated iceberg would not float on its head, but instead on its side" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:52 p.m.
  in science | a)
• What’s that old saying about being “mugged by reality?” (defund the police) (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:52 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Today's geographic temperature variation is really something... 25F in Houston but 66F in Tampa (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:51 p.m.
  in science | a)
• "COVID is hard to predict -- the CDC created an esemble of many models created by many professionals, and the actual outcome was still dramatically outside the CDC's 95% confidence interval!" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:50 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Crypto doesn't seem to be a viable path forward for financial inclusion. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:49 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• Don’t understand an investment? Don’t invest in it. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:45 p.m.
  in economics | a)
• "In general, senators not up for election for awhile or retiring are wildcards." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:44 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Double masking is 90% effective: likely about as good as the vaccine (alone) at avoiding transmission. Do it. Oreven better, wear a 95%+ effective mask like a KN95 or N95. And get the vaccine as soon as you’re eligible." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:44 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "The bubble in people saying "higher education bubble" popped in 2014" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:43 p.m.
  in education | a)
• "Elon Musk is a bullshitter who delivers. This breaks a lot of people's pattern-matching, in both directions." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:42 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• "The large difference between Sanders, AOC, and Omar is instructive. Also Boebert / Hawley / Taylor Greene have small fanbases -- even smaller than AOC / Omar." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:41 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Half of the GOP thinking Trump won the 2020 election is also a good set up for #GOPCivilWar (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:41 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• "Trump voters know that politics is about the culture war, while Democrats for some reason naïvely think politics might actually be about policy." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:40 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• What influenced votes the most to vote? Television (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:37 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• the fact that the Department of Education now releases median salaries by major two years after graduation for tons of universities has not gotten appropriate attention (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:36 p.m.
  in education | a)
• "For most people, all of the different issues in forecasting accuracy come down to one of motivation, not lack of opportunity to improve." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:36 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• Sometimes I think about the '84 election and how insane this map outcome would be if it happened today (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:35 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• 2020 presidential election if every state allocated like Maine and Nebraska (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:34 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "What's the very worst thing Donald Trump did on Twitter as President, according to the US public? Dissing Mark Cuban" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:34 p.m.
  in culturewar | a)
• The average of models in the political science literature actually predicted the 2016 and 2020 elections (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:33 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Biden won: - 95% of counties w/ just a Whole Foods - 77% w/ both a Whole Foods & Cracker Barrel - 18% w/ just a Cracker Barrel - 12% w/ neither (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:33 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• Leafblowers are even worse than I thought (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:32 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Interesting use of vegetarianism as a partisan tribal signal (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:32 p.m.
  in culture | a)
• Leafblowers are bad. They also make things way too noisy. All to just get some leaves out of the way that should be really joyful. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:32 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• You'd think after the sixteenth or seventeenth failed bounce back they would begin to re-evaluate? Though it is easy to heckle with hindsight and I don't really understand what is going on here. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:31 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• I love this meme format (Medium Place) (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:30 p.m.
  in random | a)
• "2x "not sure" for me on this conspiracy index" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:30 p.m.
  in psychology | a)
• "Betting markets are cool, but sometimes your probabilities sum to 118%" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:29 p.m.
  in forecasting | a)
• "Wow, we sure spent a lot of money on the 2020 election" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:29 p.m.
  in NaN | a)
• "Control of US government by political party, 1855-2021" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:28 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Apparently the answer to polling errors was not "shy Trump voter" but "gregarious Biden voter" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:28 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Reminder #2 that states aren't destiny and the Electoral College map changes over time (sometimes quite wildly, see the elections *before* 2000)" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:25 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• I sure hope the US doesn't become like Hong Kong... we're all free until we aren't (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:24 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• Lack of social trust causing polling error has been @davidshor ’s theory for awhile. His chart showing that education adjustment doesn’t do the work pollsters wanted is here. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:23 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• A carbon tax isn't going to happen... time to get behind R&D subsidies instead (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:22 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "I really think at this point we need to stop saying "Polls put Biden+2 in Florida" and start saying "Polls put an 80% chance of the result being somewhere between Trump+1 to Biden+7 in Florida"... while less immediately satisfying, will be much more accurate" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:21 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "For fun, let's look at polling errors! Since 1972, polls have been off by an average of 2.5 points. Polling errors have been in the favor of Dems 45.5% of the time." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:21 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Q1. "What is the root goal of this project?" Q2: "What are the pros and cons of each approach?" Q3: "Is there a way of getting all of the pros of both approaches, and none of the cons?" (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:20 p.m.
  in productivity | a)
• I really do look forward to these cities existing some day. (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:19 p.m.
  in policy | a)
• "The key to getting things done in a mid-sized (100-1200) company, especially one that's grown a lot recently, is your willingness to see things through to the end and internal refusal to be blocked." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:18 p.m.
  in entrepreneurship | a)
• Is this special election a sign of things to come? A flowchart: (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:18 p.m.
  in politicalscience | a)
• "Previously I retweeted something that Chinese startups were dramatically declining. It looks like that was false. Now I'm confused about what is happening, but I'm still bullish on the US and bearish on China." (
  '21 Jul 07Added July 7, 2021, 6:12 p.m.
  in nationalsecurity | a)