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Imagine an infinite library of new fields of study

Every problem scope has different key features derived from within its own system. For buildings, tensile strength. For pipes, fluid flow. For circuits, voltage and current. For interplanetary travel, lightspeed travel and cryonics. Without the fields that house these features, they would be nameless—we do not care for features that do not belong to a system of interest.  Systems of interest give names to nameless features—they turn sound waves into music, binary into data formats, or prime numbers into cryptography. Intent births fields, fields define systems, and systems house features. Interest, like the big bang, expands our universe. Imagine if we charge an AI to create new fields of interest. AI seems well suited to this—imagine giving an AI the task of building a building in an open world physics engine. Would it not derive the importance of features such as tensile strength?  AI seems uniquely suited for declaring an interest and optimizing for that interest, and in th...
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Heresy - a further explanation

In Paul Graham's essay, " Heresy ", he asks: " Why? Why has [heresy,] this antiquated-sounding religious concept come back in a secular form? And why now?" And his answer: You need two ingredients for a wave of intolerance: intolerant people, and an ideology to guide them... In the late 1980s a new ideology of this type appeared in US universities... His explanation is essentially, new ideologies gained footholds in the US, which enabled intolerant people to cry heresy once more.  I find this to be lacking substance, so I'll add a bit more. --- Tanner Greer, who writes on the blog "The Scholar's Stage", wrote a post on  the postmodern transition from a culture of dignity to a culture of victimhood . I highly recommend to read it if you're interested in theories of culture.  It expounds 3 types of cultures in human history in relation to conflict resolution: A culture of honor (Ancient history) - In societies where law enforcement is weak, ...
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Reflections on being young

Reflections on being young You felt the draw of chasing after, The call of proving yourself, Insecure voices hasten you to run, To find a practice, a position, a piece of the world, To call yourself educated, upper middle, Rational, respected, and responsible Not undeserving of your own position. You fell into chasing after, Like a part on the factory line. Society is an unwavering march, A tidal flood of billions, Going the same direction,  Each losing their own way. When you began the chase, you still had feelings, The unease that surrounded victories, The body's revolt, the wayward tug, Silenced and stifled to chase after progress, Rooted out, until what matters is reasoned, not felt. The chase leads you into the climb, The climb leads you into wealth, The wealth leads you into belief You're on the right track, You've not lost your way, You're living the best possible life you can. Eventually the chase swallows you For the chase you've given up a lot But until th...
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Value creation, capture, and distribution

Economics is equal parts value creation, capture and distribution.  If we define "good" as promoting social stability, "good" economic policy allows value capture to enable value creation while maximizing value distribution. Or in English, it allows continuous investment into society in ways that makes all people live better lives. We value stability because lack of stability means collapse. A stable society is when everyone has enough share of the growing value created in the world and perceive their slice of value is increasing over time. If economic policies distribute value perfectly (disallow value capture), we may not have value creation. The cycle of capturing value and reinvesting it back into value creation is important for increasing the quality and quantity of value created. Amassing resources is needed to develop sophisticated services, goods, scientific achievements, or means of production.  However, value capture does not always go to or come from valu...
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When is the pandemic over?

It's almost June of 2021, a year and a half after covid first turned the world upside down, and yet globally we're far from returning to normal. While some countries like the US seem to be on track, other countries like India and Brazil are still battling the worst spread of the virus to date, and countries like Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia are re-engaging in lockdowns as covid cases spike.  This all begs the question - when is the pandemic  truly over? Covid cases will never return to zero; we can never completely go back to pre-covid times. However, we've reshaped our lives to combat covid's impact with quarantine rules, work from home, travel restrictions, face masks, lockdown, alcohol wipes, travel bubbles, and more - but a lot of these inconveniences we'd expect to go away. So... when's that happening? The answer for those in the US and Europe is now. For them, the pandemic is already over; borders are about to open and citizens are returning to their pr...
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Upholding values is a dangerous game

Value , n. - principles or standards of behaviour; one's judgement of what is important in life. Values are extremely useful. They're shortcuts for how to live a good life. They range in size from small to great; from "brush your teeth twice a day", to "all men are created equal". Values are also extremely dangerous. They can fall short of solving the real problem but give a false sense of security that the problem is solved. Values are relied on because staying alive and happy is difficult, and a good set of them makes that easier. They uphold everything in human society - culture, social norms, ideologies, economics, law, morality, identity, and more.  But should they?  --- Biologists don't usually ask if traits are universal - they instead ask which traits are evolutionarily beneficial. And some positive traits in one species can be detrimental to the next. Take bravery, for instance; needed for lions or cheetahs, might get you killed as a rabbit. Ind...
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A Policy of Activism in the Workplace is Anti-fellowship

Of course, this is a reflection on the happenings in Basecamp. If you are all Basecamp'd out, please ignore. --- A policy of activism in the workplace is anti-fellowship.  A fellowship is "a group of people that join together for a common purpose or interest". This dictionary definition fails to capture the benefits of fellowship - namely, through an aligned sense of purpose, the group can fully apply the group's collective resources, willpower and intelligence towards one direction and mission. The classic book - "The Fellowship of the Ring" - vividly showcases the benefits, struggles, and nuances of fellowship. What drives the story is the characters putting away their personal preferences and goals to accomplish something greater than themselves. Everyone has to put away something; hatred of other races, pride, fear, ambition, and mistrust of one another, and it is the great sacrifices from all parties that allows the mission to succeed. The book preaches...
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