Richard Sutton's Bitter Lesson is that general methods leveraged by more computation beat specialized intuition encoded in domain-specific algorithms. The Bitter Lesson gets lots of attention these days because of its implications for artificial intelligence. But for a patent lawyer like me, it's more interesting for what it says about| Broken Symmetry
The allure of the rigor and predictive power of physical theory is a perennial temptation in the study of problems in economics and sociology. The hypothesis articulated in the The Problem of Synchronization, provides a case study. It posits that markets are fundamentally mechanisms for temporal coordination, utilizing price signals| Broken Symmetry
From the wrangling over the definition of AGI between Microsoft and OpenAI (thanks to the terms of an exclusive IP license) to the recent acqui-hires of the founders of Character.AI, Windsurf, Scale AI, and more (absent many of their colleagues) there has never been a better teaching moment for| Broken Symmetry
I've been thinking about an essay by Chris Arnade called How to build the perfect city for the last few weeks. To sum it up in my own words: Everybody, everywhere wants the sense of belonging that comes from community. Where is community in Silicon Valley? I have lived most| Broken Symmetry
The Invisible Third Rail Envy is an almost invisible third rail in social life. In a sense it's analogous to gravity. We go through our daily lives focusing more on how to satisfy our immediate physical and emotional needs. Most physics on earth is dominated by the electromagnetic and nuclear| Broken Symmetry
The High-Dimensional Life Landscape Picture each life decision happening across thousands of dimensions: career fulfillment, financial security, relationship quality, health, personal growth, family time, creative expression, social impact, location preferences, value alignment, intellectual stimulation, and countless others. 1. Most "stuck" feelings are saddle points, not true local maxima When you| Broken Symmetry
tldr; If you asked me today whether or not one should 1) learn to code, or 2) go to law school and what the future of the profession looks like for both coders and lawyers, then I would say the future is bright. AI has lowered the transactions costs to| Broken Symmetry
It seems like the common thread that binds together these different cultures is a commitment to finding win-wins through the use of science and technology to build new products and services that give people a new way to communicate.| Broken Symmetry
How vigorous competition among public political parties and private for-profit companies has promoted progress by balancing the personal interests of new entrants and incumbent elites| Broken Symmetry
I come to bury software patents, not to praise them. The evil that invalid patents do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with software patents. The noble reformers have told you software patents were ambiguous: If it were so, it was| Broken Symmetry
Industrialization as a proliferation of organizations Historians of the Industrial Revolution have often focused on technological change. As the centuries have passed, details of how technology was invented and commercialized have eroded away, leaving behind a lapidary, stylized story of the triumph of a heroic inventor. Technological change may even| Broken Symmetry
Patent professionals are not infrequently asked to analyze a portfolio of patents and provide an estimate of its quality and valuation. Since there are no standards for patent quality and valuations are idiosyncratic to the details of the needs of particular buyers and sellers, determining patent quality and valuation is| Broken Symmetry
Here's an example of what you'd get if you asked GPT-4 "Please draft a three paragraph argument in favor of open borders": Paragraph 1: Open borders have long been a subject of contentious debate; however, there are compelling reasons to consider the merits of| Broken Symmetry
The Problem of Synchronization argued that: The synchronization of buying and selling is a basic function of markets. Recent events call for an explanation of how synchronization works in banking. In the space of less than three days from March 8 to March 10, Silicon Valley Bank went from a| Broken Symmetry
Would-be inventors are now more likely than ever to spend their time and attention on building new products and services for startups and open source projects rather than filing for patents.| Broken Symmetry
An advantage of understanding markets as mechanisms for synchronizing production with consumption is that market price signals are not sacrosanct. Other theories of market price signals, such as the efficient market hypothesis, suggest that market price signals reflect perfect information about available supply and demand, leaving little room for the| Broken Symmetry
Markets play an important role in synchronizing the cycles of production of goods and services with the cycles of their consumption.| Broken Symmetry
