Nobel Prize winner P.B. Medawar once wrote, in Advice to a Young Scientist, that 'any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems.' But what makes a problem "important"? And how do you know it when you see it? The answers don't come from reading them in a book, or even by explicitly being taught them. More often, they're conveyed by example, through the slow accretion of mumbled asides and grumbled curses, by smiles, frowns, and exclamations over yea…
A single Swedish family used to own 40% of the Swedish stock market, they remain majority shareholders in multiple companies across Europe: the Wallenberg family. Bonus: They plow back some of that money into science funding, having funded in 1937 early work on electrophoresis by Arne Tiselius.
Starship is still not understood: Those big cyliders of steel are more transformational than you think.
A taxonomy of serendipity
Bryan Johnson, of Braintree and Kernel fame, is tracking his biological age (assessed…
In an earlier links, I linked to a post critical with the "polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are bad for you" thesis. This other post is a reply to that one. (For what's worth I still think that saturated fat is bad and that olive oil is all the oil you need so why bother with seed oils :)
"Charge more", niche keyboards edition
Dominic Cummings on how to really take over a government (it's the deep state what you need)
A rare paper showing a reversal in atherosclerotic plaque (in mice)…
The return of the US Aerospace industry
Simulating a biological neuron requires an entire 5-8 layer neural network (1000 artificial neurons per neuron)
ARM China goes rogue and becomes its own company
Tesla's new AI chips
When Elizabeth Holmes tries to hire you
When we observe something that has changed in someone that is ill, we quickly assume that those changes are bad. This is in general a good heuristic. But sometimes those changes can be a protective response (as with moderate inflammation). Could this…
One day we will have cured all diseases, cut transcontinental travel times by more than half, and enjoy cheap, sustainable, plentiful energy. That day is not tomorrow. But why not? The act of posing that question may seem preposterous and impatient: hard feats demand hard work and long time horizons. But asking it is completely reasonable if it helps us find reasons for those long timelines and ways to shorten them.
Sometimes we know we want to solve a problem but the way to get there is unclear, as the mul…
By most available criteria, the United States is still the undisputed leader in the performance of basic and applied research (National Academy of Sciences, 2007)
Since 1969, US-based scientists have won more (Science) Nobel Prizes than the rest of countries put together. While this metric is one among and others, especially those measured more recently, don't show such an overwhelming dominance of American science, the general story is clear.
A book I just finished reading, Markets, Minds, and Money trie…