This is a linkpost for https://rootsofprogress.org/links-and-tweets-2023-02-22
Announcements
- Introducing Speculative Technologies, a private DARPA-like research organization. See also coverage in Forbes and Ben Reinhardt’s AMA here on the Progress Forum
- I’ll be speaking on how to write about progress at the Thesis Festival this weekend
- Day One policy memo on enabling faster NIH funding timelines (via @LNuzhna)
Opportunities
- Convergent Research is hiring a Director of Development (via @AGamick)
- Dwarkesh is looking for help with his podcast
Links
- A case for more techno-optimistic storytelling
- Patrick Collison interviewed by Reid Hoffman
- David Deutsch interviewed by Naval Ravikant
- Marc Andreessen interviewed by Dwarkesh Patel
- OpenAI will let you “define your AI’s values”
- “Most of the rank and file at the NRC are not anti-nuclear”
Queries
Quotes
- Why was the wind never used on roads? Why no carriages or wagons with sails?
- When Carnegie hired a staff chemist: “great secrets did the doctor open up to us”
- Why corporate R&D in the 1980s was mediocre compared to Bell Labs and GE
- “Even the aspiration” to sustainability is dangerous, says David Deutsch
- Francis Bacon with the understatement of the millennium
- “It can be done”
Tweets & retweets
- The Martian as one of the only tech positive films out there (@brian_armstrong)
- Katalin Karikó has received enough awards to fill a cabinet
- Why is it so expensive to build transit in the US? Summary findings
- LLMs are just a massively scaled up version of the “travesty generator”
- Toolformer lets language models use tools like web search, calculators, and APIs. Original paper on arXiv
- “Within a decade solar will be cheap enough that CO2 will be the best place to get carbon.” And how that will change the economy
- Quantifying healthspan in dogs for longevity research (@celinehalioua)
- Spy balloons have a long history
Charts
