Monthly Archives: January 2023

For More Detail, Previously: Simulacra Levels and Their Interactions, Unifying the Simulacra Definitions, The Four Children of the Seder as the Simulacra Levels. A key source of misunderstanding and conflict is failure to distinguish between combinations of the following four … Continue reading →

A large decline in cases, right at the end of January. This week’s fun exercise is the clash between a call for the CDC to focus on being a center for disease control and offload its quixotic side quests, versus … Continue reading →

I will follow my usual procedure here – a fully spoiler-free 1-bit review, then a mostly spoiler-free short review to determine if you should see it, then a fully detailed spoiler-filled analysis. Fully Spoiler-Free 1-Bit Review – Should You See … Continue reading →

It was a quiet week. All the longer term news was as one would expect. That is good news. The only surprise was that deaths jumped again while cases fell, rather than the other way around. On net, that too … Continue reading →

Note, To say it up front: None of this, or anything ever on this blog, is investment advice. This post on the EA form, highlighted by Tyler Cowen, points out that In conclusion: There is no one in the market … Continue reading →

Quite a lot of deaths got reported by quite a lot of different states this week. Case numbers did not spike, and instead actively declined. What’s going on? It is right after Christmas and New Years, which means the least … Continue reading →

Without speculating here on how likely this is to happen, suppose that GPT-4 (or some other LLM or AI) speeds up, streamlines or improves quite a lot of things. What then? The Dilemma Samo and Ben’s dilemma: To the extent … Continue reading →

Scott Alexander points out that the media, from The New York Times to Infowars, very rarely lies explicitly and directly. Alas, the media often misleads. It implies and insinuates that which is not. It abuses the language. It selectively omits. … Continue reading →

I have a few shorter more focused posts in the works, including my practical short version of On Bounded Distrust. In the meantime, it makes sense to continue to clean out the backlog of roundup style things.