This post, and some that will follow are my attempt to reconcile the repeated failures of Alzheimer's drugs in the clinic with the evidence that the general consensus in the field that the amyloid cascade hypothesis (ACH) is true. Ultimately, what is really causing Alzheimer's, and how might it be stopped? This post will not critically discuss evidence for or against the ACH, rather it will explain what the current accepted definition is, and how it came to be. I know everyone wants to read an analysis of c…
The story of the "Corporate Memphis" (aka superflat) art style
Recent interview with Laura Deming
Yann LeCun on the future of AI
The rise and fall of Cryptokitties (not surprised)
Software engineering at Google, the book
Interview with Flexport's Ryan Petersen
Ezra Klein-Patrick Collison interview (Alex Berger comments on a thread, I comment below)
Interview with David Holz, founder of Midjourney
"This document is my attempt to keep a thematic list of all the problems that affect academic res…
The "what is aging" question is a recurrent one in geroscience (I have my own take here), but everyone would agree that if we take something that we deem old, do something to it, and then we have no way of telling that apart from a younger version of itself, then it's fair to say we have solved aging for that thing.
If you are a single cell on a dish, cellular reprogramming is great news: Take a cell, reprogram it to a pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) and then back to the original cell type, recapitul…
Common tech jobs described as cabals of mesoamerican wizards
Is the cell really a machine?
AI scaling might hit a plateau soon as we run out of data. Large language model skepticism, from the same author.
Organ problems? No problem! An Israeli company wants to grow embryous made out of stem cells, to eventually produce organ replacements.
How much quantum computing skepticism should one harbor?
Scott Alexander reviews What We Owe The Future
Plasma dilution as an anti-aging treatment continues to work in hum…
You have arrived in the Bay Area after a multi-hour long flight from somewhere afar. You conclude California is the best place on Earth and you feel you belong here. Then you realize it's hard to stay.
I am a Spanish citizen and I live in the US. For a long time I had wanted to come to the country and was discouraged by how hard it seemed to be, but eventually I realized there were options that were not obvious at first and now here we are!
Here are some things I have learned by going through the US immigra…
Summary
Existential risk due to artificial intelligence (hereafter AI risk) is worth taking seriously
A common reason why it is not taken seriously is that arguments or scenarios that illustrate the risks from AI contain many "sci-fi" elements that many consider highly implausible, like developing advanced nanotechnology overnight.
All critiques that completely reject, or seem to reject, AI risk are flawed.
There is value in writing compelling concrete cases for AI risk
Near the end of this e…