Links & What I've Been Reading Q1 2025
Links
Erik Hoel on the semantic apocalypse. Scott replies in great form with The Colors Of Her Coat, blending Chesterton, medieval pigment supply chains, and getting meaning out of art in our time.
Chow, Halperin & Mazlish on transformative AI and interest rates, they argue that high long-term growth expectations would lead to high rates; we do not see high rates ergo the market does not expect TAI. Zvi provides commentary. And Nicholas Decker argues against.
Gwern on self-play scaling. "Every problem that an o1 solves is now a training data point for an o3."
Gwern on Dwarkesh! It's great!
Dwarkesh on what fully automated firms will look like.
AI firms will look from the outside like a unified intelligence that can instantly propagate ideas across the organization, preserving their full fidelity and context. Every bit of tacit knowledge from millions of copies gets perfectly preserved, shared, and given due consideration.
Jared Young on Youth, ambition, getting old, having kids. A gorgeous piece.
The years that pass eat up your margin for error until there is no margin left. The mistakes you make are no longer flaws of inexperience, they are flaws of character. To be young is to be constantly on the precipice of perfection – just a little further and you’ll get there – but you never get there, and suddenly you’re old, and find yourself in a permanent state of imperfection, which you must reckon with.
Richard Ngo with a triple review that combines preference falsification, common knowledge, military coups, and...Kierkegaard. Very good.
Unfortunately, the mere realization that social reality is composed of hyperstitions doesn’t give you social superpowers, any more than knowing Newtonian mechanics makes you a world-class baseball player.
A great thread by @crimkadid on the important of coinage in history, and especially its systemic effects on the Roman Empire. "Rome mined silver on an industrial scale; its achievement relative to Greece was to spread a lower density of coin over a vast space. But their time ran out too: in the Republic, there were 55 active mines in Iberia, at the Empire's height 173, and by the 3rd century only 21."
Another great thread, by Guillaume Blanc on why the demographic transition started in France 100 years before any other country.
Paper finds intelligence-income relationship plateaus at the high end in Sweden. Cremieux demolishes it.
Skittle Factory Dementia Monkey Titty Monetization:
Your mind isn't creating thoughts—your thoughts are creating your mind. Every time you revisit a particular thought loop, you're voting for it to become your default operating system. Your thought patterns aren't just habits— they're prophecies, and what looks like a harmless habit today is actually destiny under construction.
Genetic timeline of human brain and cognitive traits: "We systematically analysed the temporal emergence of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with modern-day human phenotypes over the last five million years. We show the genetic timeline of human-characteristic phenotypes to follow a distinct pattern with two bursts of genetic variation that co-emerge with milestones in the human lineage. Our findings suggest that SNPs associated with neocortical, neuropsychiatric, and ophthalmological traits appeared relatively recently in hominin evolution, with genes containing recently emerged SNPs linked to intelligence and neocortical area."
Fortunate Families? The Effects of Wealth on Marriage and Fertility
We estimate the effects of large, positive wealth shocks on marriage and fertility in a sample of Swedish lottery players. For male winners, wealth increases marriage formation and reduces divorce risk, suggesting wealth increases men’s attractiveness as prospective and current partners. Wealth also increases male fertility. The only discernible effect on female winners is that wealth increases their short-run (but not long-run) divorce risk.
"I Hired 5 People to Sit Behind Me and Make Me Productive for a Month"
Tragicomic piece on how the Taliban are adapting to city life. The rent is too high, there's too much traffic, and the office is boring! "I spend most of my time on Twitter. We're connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter." The restaurants are apparently good, though.
Hansonian news: Revisiting the Connection Between State Medicaid Expansions and Adult Mortality. "We find no evidence that Medicaid expansions affect any of the outcomes in any of the treated states or all of them combined."
What I've Been Reading
Civilization and its Discontents, by Sigmund Freud
On the tension between man's basic instincts and what is required from him by civilization; religion and the instinctive need for it; the parallels in the psychological development of individuals and civilizations. Guilt, sex, violence. Pessimistic and really with no solutions, I think Nietzsche identifies many similar issues but with a more positive spin on things, he sees a potential to transcend these limitations. Also, often very silly psychoanalytical stuff being treated as if it's physics. Overall: dense, short, and interesting.
An alluring mix of science, history, love, love letters, poetry, art in general...The book constantly jumps around from one thread to another, and it occasionally gets exhausting and feels a bit like Popova was desperate to show off her erudition, but overall it works. The start and end are weak, but when it's going it goes really well, especially the sections that really pull you into the 19th century atmosphere.
Correspondence, by Paul Celan and Ingrid Bachmann
The mix of intellectual/literary/philosophical exploration, combined with raw emotion and processing it all through art and metaphor...and the intensity of it all. Using poetry to express things that are too difficult to say otherwise. On the other hand when they talk about their work it feels shallow, and where is the passion where is the desire? Constantly, they find it impossible to express themselves well, they misunderstand each other horribly, Celan is ridiculously over-sensitive. It's a strange relationship to understand, and in the end the relationship drowns in the ashes of the war and Celan kills himself. A lot of business talk about publishing here or there. Probably wouldn't recommend unless you're a Celan fanatic.
Letters to Vera, by Vladimir Nabokov
The early letters are delightful, Nabokov is very playful in general, has a lightness to him, a childishness even. Likes to play silly language games. One time he puts a parenthesis in every sentence, another he writes "fastbreak" instead of breakfast. Just a million silly little games. "Letterlet"! Crosswords, codes. But the letters get less playful and more bureaucratic as time passes, just dull records of dinners, clothing, weather, activities. There's very little in terms of what Nabokov is reading, what he's thinking, how he is writing, etc. Sometimes he will launch into a gorgeous description that reminds you that you're reading one of the Greats, though. In the letters from the 70s the style changes completely as he's obviously writing to an audience (to posterity), but all the earlier ones are raw. Overall: some flashes of brilliance but kind of dull on average.
Love Letters: Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
Now we're really getting somewhere. These two have a peculiar relationship: Vita loves Virginia's brain; Virginia loves Vita's legs. The letters are fantastic, often caustically teasing, often insecure, often very loving. The collection also includes diary entries and letters from Vita to her husband (there's a hilarious one where she reassures him that despite having slept with Woolf twice, there's really nothing going on). They're both pushing up against the limits of social restrictions at the time and you can really feel it through their correspondence. Very interesting to see the lead-up to what is perhaps the greatest love letter of all time, Orlando. Short and sweet, recommended.
A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953
Ah, this is the real stuff right here. Across decades, across continents, across marriages and affairs and children, they always keep going. They really pour their hearts out to each other, talk about their writing, literature, relationships, psychology, everything. They give each other so much. They are both fantastic writers and write great letters. Miller can be overwhelming when he's really spilling everything out. My favorite in the love letter series so far.
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
Inspired by the letters, I picked up Tropic of Cancer...there's not much to say about a book with such a reputation, is there? I would totally understand if someone hates this book, but I loved it. It's a primal scream, Miller is just desperate to get all this life and ideas and word out of him, and in what spectacular fashion he does it!
The Deleted World, by Tomas Transtromer
These poems are just so Swedish. The dark forests, the ice, the cold, I felt like a moose might jump out of the book at any moment. They're good, evoke strong images and feelings and I enjoyed the translations by Robin Robertson who apparently does not speak any Swedish at all.
Selected Poems, by Osip Mandelstam
Dark, dark, dark, and heavy. A presentiment of both death and artistic greatness. Soviet-Jewish in multiple dimensions. Communism and poetry do not mix. The whole thing is tragic, really.
Poems and Songs, by Leonard Cohen
Melancholy, erotic, raw, bitter, full of love, overflowing with emotion. Often religiously inspired, some Cavafy, some Lorca in there. I think he works much better on the page than in audio but ymmv. Too many good ones to excerpt. Fantastic stuff.
The Blind Earthworm in the Labyrinth, by Veeraporn Nitiprapha
Comically melodramatic Thai novel about the interconnected lives of young lovers stuck in a love-rectangle (or is it a pentagon?). Parts of it are great, parts of it evoke cheap Mexican soap operas from the 90s. Jumps around in time in a way that's actually really interesting and effective, creating expectations and surprises. Not bad.