“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost.” – Leonard Cohen, Every…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Epistemic Status: Confident this is the perspective I find most useful. This is intended to both be a stand-alone post and to be the second post in the Simulacra sequence, with the first being Simu…| Don't Worry About the Vase
There are lots of great charitable giving opportunities out there right now. The first time that I served as a recommender in the Survival and Flourishing Fund (SFF) was back in 2021. I wrote in de…| Don't Worry About the Vase
People don’t give thanks enough, and it’s actual Thanksgiving, so here goes. Thank you for continuing to take this journey with me every week. It’s a lot of words. Even if you pick and choose, and …| Don't Worry About the Vase
Balsa Policy Institute chose as its first mission to lay groundwork for the potential repeal, or partial repeal, of section 27 of the Jones Act of 1920. I believe that this is an important cause bo…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Did DeepSeek effectively release an o1-preview clone within nine weeks? The benchmarks largely say yes. Certainly it is an actual attempt at a similar style of product, and is if anything more capa…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Previously: Long-Term Charities: Apply For SFF Funding, Zvi’s Thoughts on SFF There are lots of great charitable giving opportunities out there right now. I recently had the opportunity to be a rec…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Young People are Young and Stupid As a reminder that yes college students are often young and stupid and wrong about everything, remember the time they were behind a ban on paid public toilets? Thi…| Don't Worry About the Vase
As the Trump transition continues and we try to steer and anticipate its decisions on AI as best we can, there was continued discussion about one of the AI debate’s favorite questions: Are we makin…| Don't Worry About the Vase
(This was supposed to be on Thursday but I forgot to cross-post) Will AI ever make art? Fully do your coding? Take all the jobs? Kill all the humans? Most of the time, the question comes down to a …| Don't Worry About the Vase
Google DeepMind got a silver metal at the IMO, only one point short of the gold. That’s really exciting. We continuously have people saying ‘AI progress is stalling, it’s all a bubble’ and things l…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Some in the tech industry decided now was the time to raise alarm about AB 3211. As Dean Ball points out, there’s a lot of bills out there. One must do triage. Dean Ball: But SB 1047 is far from th…| Don't Worry About the Vase
We got two big model releases this week. GPT-4o Mini is covered here. Llama 3.1-405B (and 70B and 8B) is mostly covered in yesterday’s post, this has some follow up.| Don't Worry About the Vase
Epistemic Status: Reference post. Strong beliefs strongly held after much thought, but hard to explain well. Intentionally abstract. Disambiguation: This does not refer to any physical good, app or…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Previously: Covid-19: My Current Model, On Negative Feedback and Simulacra This post aims to unpack and explain simulacra levels of action using the threat of covid-19 as its central example. My in…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Epistemic Status: Love the player, love the game Also consider: Playing on Easy Mode Raymond Arnold asked me, why do you insist on playing in hard mode? Hard mode is harder. The reason to Play in H…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Epistemic Status: Reference. Expanded From: Against Facebook, as the post originally intended. Some things are fundamentally Out to Get You. They seek resources at your expense. Fees are hidden. E…| Don't Worry About the Vase
Epistemic Status: Love the player, love the game Also consider: Playing on Hard Mode Raymond Arnold asked me, why not play in easy mode? Easy Mode is easier. The reason to Play in Easy Mode is beca…| Don't Worry About the Vase
