It has been argued that the rate of scientific or technical progress is slowing down. When there is not enough of something, the two common solutions is to use more resources for that end, or to use them better. I'm of the view, though this would take another post to explain, that the problems that science suffers have more to do with how science is done (funded, organized, produced) rather than how much money is gets, in general. I spend a lot of time online [citation needed] and more recently I've seen mo…
Inspired by Alexey Guzey's list
As a general rule, I usually do some research before buying stuff, The Wirecutter is the one place I recurrently visit for advice, but I spend some time reading reviews before buying anything, with more time for more expensive stuff.
Physical world stuff - Tech
Laptop: I use a Dell XPS 15 (16 GB RAM, 512Gb HD, glossy screen). I work in Ubuntu almost exclusively. Even after being forced to use MacOS at work, that hasn't made me prefer Ubuntu less. Maybe I'm too used to the hot…
Lighthouse provision in Edo period Japan. Like the post-Coase literature, it reveals an interesting interplay of public and private.
Quantifying how much worse sleep deprivation makes you at writing code
The next big thing in battery technology?
A brief history of financial regulation in the US, its aims and its consequences.
Medical nihilism: dentistry edition.
Consider the maxim that everyone should visit the dentist twice a year for cleanings. We hear it so often, and from such a young age, that we’ve i…
Collection of papers and articles that I’ve spotted since my previous links post that seem interesting.
What came first, God or complex societies? It has been argued in the past that religion, in the form of 'Big Gods' had served the function of a social glue that through rituals and shared beliefs promoted cooperation, enabling large scale societies. A recent study questions this narrative, arguing that complex society gives rise to 'Big Gods', and not the other way around. However, the paper doesn't test …
You might have heard people saying "I only trust the political views of people with children, because they actually have a reason to care about the long-term future, unlike non-parents" or that "I don't trust anyone's political opinion if they don't have children. I have a stake in the future that they don't." or similar.
There are two ways one could interpret this claim:
That having kids causes you to care more about the future (The most likely implied meaning)
Or, people who have kids…
World War II supposed a substantial increase in US federal R&D spending, and it may be regarded as an imperfect[1] natural experiment of what happens when you transition a country from a relatively "laissez faire" (with many caveats) model of scientific support to one where there is heavy government involvement. In addition to that, WWII may have implied a societywide forced learn by doing program. It has been argued that WWII caused GDP growth to be higher than it would otherwise have been. H…