One of the many stupid things about this very stupid discourse: the data on usaspending.gov has been publicly available for years. Anyone could have looked up the cost of the government’s politico pro subscriptions in 2024 or 2022 or 2020.

Perhaps the most damning thing Trump said in the debate was that they were ready to vaccinate 200,000 people per day. At that rate it would take more than 4 years to vaccinate the population. So either he has a terrible plan or he has no idea what he's talking about.

I bet people under 30 have no conception of how mind-blowing the concept of an infinitely scrollable and zoomable global map seemed in 2005. There wasn’t anything remotely like it prior to 2005.

According to the NYT, Facebook knows perfectly well how to slow the spread of misinformation on its platform. It has mostly chosen not to do so because the company is run by a sociopath. nytimes.com/2020/11/24/techn…

I actually think this illustrates a challenge with the modern-day abundance agenda. What's the expensive thing that rich people today have but isn't "in every home" yet? It's hard to think of anything.

This is pretty bad.

I still think it's weird that so many people are like "I was radicalized by policy mistakes the government made in 2020. So in 2024 I voted for the guy who was president in 2020."

Maybe Twitter should alert it's users that some of the claims in this tweet are disputed.

Email from Twitter spokesperson: "This Tweet is not in violation of our policies." Cc: @jbarro

It’s an amazing branding decision to have a model called GPT-4o and another one called o4.

Population of the last 10 states at admission: Montana (1889) 140k Washington (1889) 350k Idaho (1890) 90k Wyoming (1890) 60k Utah (1896) 250k Oklahoma (1907) 1.4M New Mexico (1912) 330k Arizona (1912) 210k Alaska (1959) 230k Hawaii (1959) 650k DC in 2019: 690k PR in 2019: 3.1M

I think a lot of liberals underestimate how much this kind of behavior erodes the norms of social trust and solidarity that make societies work well.

Maybe blue states should let people build homes.

Guys I really don’t think “scientific studies that can be made to sound ridiculous if you summarize them uncharitably” is a major contributor to government waste.

Did social media rot Elon’s brain? Or does he know exactly what he is doing with posts like this?

"I'm am not a terrorist. I'm just a guy whose actions perfectly fit the dictionary definition of terrorism."

Sorry, if you earn $150k/year, you are rich. That's 3 to 4 times what a typical worker makes.

NYTimes article quotes someone saying they are "terrified" of Waymo in paragraph 6. Waits until paragraph 33 (out of 44 paragraphs) to mention that they are 91 percent safer than human drivers. How outraged would liberals be if a news outlet covered vaccines like this?

This quote made me wonder if Dario has ever seen a train.

Man, this could save a lot of lives.

The data here is really striking. A lot of Americans seem to assume it's impossible to eradicate the coronavirus and we'll just have to live with it until a vaccine arrives. Experiences in other countries show that's not true. endcoronavirus.org/countries

I'm sorry but this is magic.

Nobody is going to want to hear this but George W Bush’s proposal to partially privatize social security would have worked out well for workers. Stock market returns over the last 15 years have been 🔥

I am not as talented as Luke Farritor, but 22-year-old me had a lot in common with him (programmer, hard-core libertarian, very online) and I'm grateful nobody gave 22-year-old me the opportunity to put my policy views into practice at a national scale.

It wasn’t considered a scandal before because subscribing to services like it is a normal thing many large organizations do.

I didn’t like it at the time but Chuck Schumer’s decision to duck a confrontation over the continuing resolution is looking better after the last week. The near invisibility of democrats in recent weeks means there will be no doubt who owns the economic crisis that’s coming.

I don't understand why fact-checking sites twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels like this. snopes.com/fact-check/biden-…

Rich people live in nicer neighborhoods, send their kids to nicer schools, go on nicer vacations, and get better health care. But the manufactured goods in their homes isn't that different from the stuff in the average American's home.

In 2013, the Washington Post made me sell 56 bitcoins for $112 each. They'd be worth $2 million today. rethinking.news/how-journali…

Last month's hearing in Boston on self-driving car was like a parody of the attitudes @DKThomp and @ezraklein critiqued in Abundance.

No, this is wrong. Waymo's overall crash frequency is 3-5 times lower than the average human, suggesting that Waymo anticipates and prevents many human-caused crashes. But there are always going to be a few crashes you can't prevent. Like when you're already stopped at a light.

Meme lawn sign.

Back in April, I set out to write an explainer on how large language models work. First I had to learn how they worked, and that was harder than I expected. This article is the culmination of 2+ months of in-depth research. I hope people find it useful. understandingai.org/p/large-…

I made a chart. On average, blue states have seen steadily declining coronavirus infections since mid-April. On average, red states have... not.

My story on this arstechnica.com/tech-policy/…

Most CEOs report to a board that in turn is accountable to shareholders. So a CEO risks getting fired if he fails to maximize profits. But Zuckerberg has super-voting shares that give him total control. If he chose to prioritize quality over profits no one could stop him.

I see this sentiment a lot and it's remarkably childish. People seem to think that coronavirus-fighting efforts are favors the public does for public health experts, rather than precautions we all take to protect ourselves and our loved ones.

Interestingly, Democrats in the House passed legislation last year requiring post-election auditing (not specific to mail-in ballots). The bill died in the Republican-controlled Senate. nytimes.com/2019/06/27/us/po…

Before I became a parent I had no idea what an insane feat of endurance single motherhood is.

If the NTSB's diagnosis of the Uber crash is right, this is totally insane. ntsb.gov/investigations/Acci…

This is a remarkable level of dishonesty from the Times. Scott Alexander once expressed agreement with Charles Murray on a topic unrelated to race and IQ. The Times wrote a paragraph strongly implying Alexander endorsed Murray's views on race and IQ. astralcodexten.substack.com/…

On the one hand this is why we need an abundance agenda—housing, health care, etc. are more prone to regulatory bottlenecks than televisions or telephones. But on the other hand it's not obvious it's possible for life to get radically better the way it did in the 20th century.

I was really surprised when I first saw this chart on water use by data centers. Given how much it gets discussed as a supposed problem I would have expected it to be more than this.

People responded to this thread by asking whether we can trust Zuck to decide what news people should read. But he's *already* deciding. He's delegating day-to-day decisions to an algorithm, but "promote whatever content people click on" is an editorial philosophy. And a bad one.

I might have to steal this line.

I feel like people who think there's something uniquely inefficient about government bureaucracies has never had to deal with a private-sector bureaucracy.

😕

I've seen some reports that the narrowest part of the cave is roughly 72 cm by 38 cm (see attached diagram for instance). What is the diameter of the tube? If it's over 38 cm, wouldn't it get stuck in this spot? Or are these diagrams wrong?

It's ludicrous that the party that represents Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota in the Senate is describing it as a "power grab" to give DC voters like me the same rights as voters in those states. news.google.com/articles/CAI…

I think the most plausible explanation for why Joe Biden is so unpopular is that we've developed a media ecosystem that's good at convincing everyone that everything is bad all the time, regardless of what happens.

I have emailed Twitter to ask whether the tweet violates Twitter's rule against hateful conduct.

California regulators just approved a huge Waymo expansion: all the way down the SF penninsula and a big chunk of the LA metro area. cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-web…

This might be the single most important chart for understanding the current inflation situation. For 25 years prior to 2020, the prices of durable goods like cars, washing machines, and couches fell every single year. Then in 2021 that suddenly and dramatically reversed.

The fact that three different companies have apparently made COVID vaccines in ~8 months makes me wonder if there's room to be a lot more ambitious about other technology projects. Like maybe we should follow the UK and ban internal combustion engines in 2030.

Joe Biden thinks market forces, not government bureaucrats, should determine what kind of housing gets built. And a lot of Republicans aren't happy about it. nypost.com/2020/07/21/joe-bi…

Clinton's most effective tactic: bring up a controversy from Trump's past and let him incriminate himself with his "defense."

This is exactly backwards. The GME fiasco demonstrates that short-term swings in the market are often driven by random, arbitrary factors. But if you buy into an index fund and plan to hold it for 30 years you can tune all the noise out because it doesn't matter.

People are dogpiling @mattyglesias for his completely reasonable view that copyrights should last for about 30 years. One of the more ridiculous counter-arguments is that royalties from old books can serve as an author's pension.

One of the most ridiculous common beliefs in Silicon Valley is the idea that online instruction is going to replace face-to-face learning. It's like predicting that instructional videos will replace yoga classes or coffee machines will replace coffee shops.

Some 🔥from @mattyglesias. (If you aren’t subscribed to his substack you are missing out)

I don’t know how any constitutional conservative could root for a guy who casually describes constitutionally protect speech as criminal.

I don't think people appreciate what a big accomplishment this was. We easily could have had another lost decade. fullstackeconomics.com/18-ch…

This is the sassiest lead I've ever seen in a NYT news story. nytimes.com/2018/01/17/busin…

In functional, high-trust societies you don't need much formal enforcement of the rules by law enforcement because most people comply voluntarily based on shared social expectations.

This is a good @mattyglesias take on the musk/Twitter situation. slowboring.com/p/under-the-t…

Elon Musk is convincing me I've underestimated how big of an impact a single determined individual can have on the world even without political power. arstechnica.com/science/2020…

The average American enjoys one of the highest standards of living in world history but a lot of people think we live in a “late stage capitalist hellscape.”

A large majority of serious Waymo crashes are "Waymo scrupulously following the law, lunatic human driver breaks the law and crashes into the Waymo."

Tesla fans put a lot of weight on the premise that lidar is going to be expensive forever, and therefore Waymo requires "niche hardware" that can never reach a mass market. But one of the most predictable things in the universe is that electronics gets cheaper with scale.

One of the worst aspects of current politics is the bipartisan consensus that America kind of sucks. On the left you have the relentless negativity of woke politics. On the right you have the relentless negativity of Trumpism.

If Tesla became seen as a right wing brand that would be a win for the climate. Liberals will buy an electric car from somebody else. Conservatives are more likely to be switching from an ICE.

My hobby: writing extremely polite responses to angry emails. Often the person realizes they were being a dick and apologizes.

The House should impeach Trump tomorrow and the Senate should convict on Friday.

It's not just that driverless Waymo vehicles get into far fewer serious crashes than human-driven ones. The crashes that do happen are overwhelmingly the fault of the other driver. Lots of human drivers rear-ending Waymos and running red lights. understandingai.org/p/human-…

People who think agi is imminent aren’t overestimating how quickly ai will improve. They are underestimating how complex the world is. Being an expert on deep learning doesn’t necessarily make you an expert on how the world works.

I do not want the US to become like Greece or Italy where the general view is that you're a sucker if you fill out your taxes honestly. Fare jumping isn't exactly the same but I think it's more similar than some people would like to admit.

Buying milk that will outlast the trump administration.

I hate this pattern. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, now this. Our Constitutional system only works if Senators are able to occasionally oppose a president from their own party without it being a political death sentence.

This NYT report is suggesting the opposite! They have a switch they can throw that feeds people more real information and less garbage. Zuck is just choosing not to flip it because he's a bad person.

If you "don't feel competent to even attempt math," maybe you shouldn't be making claims involving math on national television.

I went through all 1,566 pages of the 1980 Sears catalog to find items I could easily compare with present-day products. Almost every item I looked at saw significant declines in the hours of work required it buy it. fullstackeconomics.com/24-ch…

For a "tech" candidate, Andrew Yang has an uncanny knack for forming bad opinions about technology. We don't need PowerPoint in the State of the Union. Blockchain voting is a terrible idea. Robots aren't going to cause mass unemployment.

The scene at the cvs in Columbia Heights, near where I live in Washington DC. Most shelves empty, a few shelves with merchandise behind glass. Talked to a staffer who said people keep stealing stuff and the police aren’t doing anything about it.

Elon Musk is an asshole.

I think Elon Musk buying Twitter is like a normal billionaire buying a major-league sports franchise. The business may or may not make money, but the point is to be a famous patron in your favorite hobbyist community.

Here in the US, some states are doing well. A lot are... not.

I've developed a bit of a reputation as an "AI skeptic," but I think I was just accurately reporting on the slow pace of LLM progress following GPT-4. o1 is a totally different story. It's by far the biggest jump in performance since GPT-4.

In 1972, the median family income was $11,116, or about 2,800 times the cost of a KFC family meal. In 2020, median household income was $84,000, or 3,200 times the cost of a KFC meal. So the average family's income goes about 14 percent further, relative to KFC meals.

When that breaks down, institutions have to fall back on much more expensive and intrusive enforcement mechanisms. Think drug stores where you have to ask a clerk to get you razor blades from behind a plastic barrier.

There are households pulling in $400k/year in Manhattan struggling to cover the mortgage on their $3M house and the $40,000 tuition on their kids' private schools. They'll insist they're not rich compared to their neighbor making $750k and living in a $5M house.

Finally got to listen to Ed Snowden's book and it's really good. The man is a hero and Joe Biden should pardon him. amazon.com/Permanent-Record-…

Compromise proposal: Democrats agree to preserve the filibuster for this Congress, Republicans agree not to filibuster DC and PR statehood.

I don't find Elon's excuses about how he's blocking journalists to protect his privacy at all persuasive, but the real tell is the fact that they're indiscriminately blocking Mastadon links. That's an act of desperation.

Waymo: $45 billion GM: $55 billion Tesla: $780 billion Tesla sells fewer cars than GM and has worse self-driving tech than Waymo. Hard to see how it could be worth 8x as much as Waymo and GM put together. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

I wish the "Waymo isn't scalable because they need maps" people would do some back-of-the-napkin math. The SF metro area has 43,000 lane-miles of roads. Say it costs $10 to map each mile. That's $430,000 for the whole region. Trivial relative to the potential market.

This is so dumb. Vivek wants to end the Fed's dual mandate (inflation/employment) because it's like "trying to hit two targets with one arrow." Instead the Fed will "stabilize the US dollar against gold, silver, nickel, agriculture, and farm commodities." So that's five targets?

Some people weren't sure what I meant by superintelligence not being a thing so maybe an analogy would help. Say you've got an college physics major, and every month you chart her performance on a test of physics understanding against the number of textbook pages she's read. Throughout her undergraduate years, you'd see a pretty consistent relationship where more pages read leads to better performance. Someone could extrapolate this curve out and predict that if she keeps reading physics textbooks, she'll be the next Einstein some time in the 2030s. But what will actually happen is that some time early in grad school she'll reach the frontiers of physics knowledge and switch from learning about other people's physics discoveries in textbooks to trying to make her own. And at this point the progress of her understanding of physics will, in some sense, slow way down. You could say that she "ran out of training data" but the problem wouldn't be that there are no more textbooks she can read. Rather, it would be that she already knows most of what's in the textbook. What she ran out of is new knowledge that can be readily assimilated. By the same token, we might reach a point where LLMs have achieved human levels of understanding of a wide range of topics. At this point, providing more words of training data might become unhelpful because while there might still be plenty of new words available, they might just be different ways of saying stuff the LLM already knows (like a physics major reading her 20th textbook).

News: Waymo just announce driverless testing in Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Meanwhile, legal barriers are preventing expansion to Boston, NYC, or Washington DC. Is this the future Democrats want?