Progress links and tweets, 2023-07-20: “A goddess enthroned on a car”

[jasoncrawford]

Link post

Opportunities

• The Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive endorsed by @sapinker, @vpostrel, @johanknorberg, @CharlesCMann, @antonhowes, @s8mb, @kevin2kelly, @Marian_L_Tupy, @atrembath, @jposhaughnessy, @eric_is_weird, @CJHandmer, @srajagopalan, @s_r_constantin, @danielgolliher, @krishnanrohit, and @krisgulati

• Progress studies meetup in Miami on Saturday, July 22

• Progress studies reading group (via @jayendra_ram)

• Hollywood for Intellectuals: Writing Big Ideas for the Big (and Small) Screen

• University of Austin’s summer high school program (via @mbateman, who will be teaching there)

• Sid Sijbrandij wants a postdoc to help him learn about incentive structures

• Loyal (longevity startup) starting to look for a board member

Announcements

• Elon Musk announces x.ai (via @pitdesi)

• Claude 2 improves performance in coding, math and reasoning (via @AnthropicAI)

• Major new AI alignment effort from OpenAI (via @janleike)

• Fundraiser for an asylum-seeker who left Russia rather than fight Ukraine (organized by @Marian_L_Tupy)

Audio & video

• Very good Kevin Esvelt talk on securing DNA synthesis against misuse

• Panel discussion on fundamental research featuring me and others (via @PrimeMoversLab, recorded last October but just published)

• Nick Touran (@whatisnuclear) has been scanning old film of nuclear reactors: here’s one about a reactor that powered a military radar station and one about a prototype nuclear cargo ship

Other links

• A “protein printer” could “change biology as much as printers changed the news.” Related, “DNA printers are on the cusp of a big upgrade”

• “The power to maintain is the power to improve.” Stewart Brand on auto maintenance

• The prospects of molecular manufacturing (via @annasofialesiv)

• Cleaning wool in classical times (via @NadyaWilliams81)

• Brian Potter tells the story of titanium

• Moralizing about consumption vs. economic reality (via @atrembath)

• The Engineering and Technology History Wiki (via @Ben_Reinhardt)

Queries

• Who have been the best research and development leaders in industry history?

• What is the best writing about positive AI futures?

• Which companies have incredibly thorough, detailed books written about them?

• Foundational texts for a course on economic growth? (And some actual examples)

• What happened to public trust in government in 1964?

Quotes

• “A goddess enthroned on a car”: automobiles represented empowerment for women

• A Ford factory as “a daring expression of the human spirit”

• We used to terraform

• The importance of statistics in the spread of sanitation and hygiene practices

• Deirdre McCloskey on the British Empire

• Wisdom from James Watt Jr.

• Bones evolved via biochemical recycling

• The bill creating Social Security was only 37 pages long

Other tweets

• Many people upset about this weed zapper, but the alternative is spraying poison

• Gardens in late-19th c. Paris produced crops using manure from city horses

• Rather than “work” vs. “post-work”, the reality is a continuous, gradual change

• A new technology that could reduce costs of whole-brain connectomics by 1000x

• Portable MRIs are a thing now

• Academics once saw their work as in service to engineers/​industry

• Project idea: a series of studies of how different technologies got cheaper

• “You cannot separate the ability to make a decision from the ability to make a wrong decision”

• Safety is only one reason to want self-driving cars, and not necessarily the top one

• Glenn Seaborg, who discovered plutonium and several other elements. See also my essay on nuclides

• Richard Ngo is “optimistic about almost all aspects of AI”

• Alex Tabarrok’s message to Americans: “double down on America”

• We need a capitalism appreciation day (or a course)

• “The Age of Invention,” a proto-steampunk card game

• Treadwheel cranes were a real thing

Charts

• The world has made enormous progress against diarrheal diseases

• Different types of prefab building systems according to Brian Potter

Beauty

• Quantum computer aesthetics

[DirectedEvolution]

Weed zapper link has the wrong URL

[jasoncrawford]

Oops, sorry. Fixed. Correct link is https://​​twitter.com/​​jasoncrawford/​​status/​​1677357368999387146

[Templarrr]

Fundraiser for a Ukrainian asylum-seeker

It’s a good thing to help anyone facing oppression, but we can also do that without misinformation. Link clearly states he’s Russian. St Petersburg is second biggest city and old capital of Russia. I suggest to fix the link text, there will be less confusion that way.

[jasoncrawford]

You’re right, that was my mistake, I wasn’t reading it carefully enough and I summarized it incorrectly. Fixed now, thanks.