In mathematics and physics there's this notion of invariance, or relatedly, conserved quantities. One can take a system, measure the quantity, then come back later, observe the system, and no matter what it looks like, the quantity should still be the same. If we know this we can immediately know other quantities in the system. Conservation of energy is one example: If we observe a marble atop a 1 m block, sitting still, we can say that relative to the ground it has a potential energy of \(E_p=mgh\) (Where …

In 2020-21 I wrote a series of blogposts on science funding, examining the meta-science/science of science literature, which deals with questions like how well peer review works, the effects of age on the productivity of scientists, or whether a minority produces most of scientific progress. Unsurprisingly, these questions are hard to even start to answer, because translating "good science" into numbers that one can then plug into various models invariably requires leaving out some of what we migh…

On how Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who stole 120K of Bitcoin, got arrested Scott Alexander retrospective on his ACX grants program, with related debate on meta-rationality on Twitter. Some of it is similar to the observation at the end of my review of Talent, finding pragmatic "good enough" solutions to problems seemingly requiring lots of time. Similar reasoning here with Holden Karnofky's non-review of David Graeber's last book. Regrowing frog limbs, note that this is enhancing a proce…

Talent (Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross, St. Martin's Press, 2022) is a book about discovering (and hiring) talent. Most highly sold books about hiring are rather about being hired, whereas Talent is primarily about the opposite problem. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes, so this book is attempting something harder than a book that tries to prepare for a particular kind of interview (like a software engineering interview), Talent aims to be relatively general in the observations it makes. (I) Working towa…

Cool study, but no lifespan effects bro — Everyone, including myself until recently The aging field has historically focused on the twin aims of longer and healthier lives. As a trend, interventions that extend lifespan also tend to improve health whereas the opposite is not true. I suspect that some would even consider lifespan extension in some model organism as one of the necessary conditions to call something a promising aging drug. This heuristic has limits. When I wrote the Longevity FAQ I reviewed …

Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of hithertho unknown etiology has been somehwat elucidated: Infection with the Epstein-Barr virus is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for it. Moderna is working on a vaccine for EBV at the moment. More here. Cambrian Bio's secret master plan to build aging drugs. Some people have trouble recognizing faces. Others remember them all Progress in storing data in DNA The Charisma of Leaders (ht/ Molly Mielke) Quanta's The Year in Biology Apprenticeship Online Are warp dri…