Links for 2022-05-19
Climate change: Many think it's the world's top problem because it threatens humanity's survival. Is this right? https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/climate-change/
“Everyone should take a half hour break and read this. It’s just pure “oh wow, I didn’t realise it all worked like that!”, and the diagrams/animations are the stuff of dreams” — @patrickCDEmath https://ciechanow.ski/mechanical-watch/
“human genomics, in particular the use of polygenic scores, should become fully embedded into social sciences research, including economics, sociology and psychology” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-022-00124-z
AutoX builds operation hubs for 1,000+ RoboTaxis in China https://autonews.gasgoo.com/icv/70020320.html
Moon soil used to grow plants for first time in breakthrough test https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-61434295
From space-based solar power to traveling the world by rocket, there's more to the emerging space economy that just billionaire tourism. https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/-america-is-starting-a-new-space
Can we make a black hole? And if we could, what could we do with it? http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/05/can-we-make-black-hole-and-if-we-could.html
Tiny battery-free devices float in the wind like dandelion seeds https://www.washington.edu/news/2022/03/16/battery-free-devices-float-in-wind-like-dandelion-seeds/
San Francisco Police Are Using Driverless Cars as Mobile Surveillance Cameras https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7dw8x/san-francisco-police-are-using-driverless-cars-as-mobile-surveillance-cameras
"A commercial quadcopter isn’t going to be in a dog fight with a Russian Sukhoi Su-35, but neither is that Su-35 well equipped to stop the quadcopter from carrying out an aerial attack." https://mwi.usma.edu/seven-initial-drone-warfare-lessons-from-ukraine/
How Nazi is Ukraine really? https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-putin-and-the-pea?s=r
I could say a lot more about the following but I’m really getting tired of wasting time on culture war bullshit.
An example of what might have given Musk this impression is the 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation. To get an idea of how right-leaning people perceived the reactions to that incident, check the following sample of tweets:
Those reactions are definitely not an outlier. Remember James Damore? Remember how J. K. Rowling was treated?
The go-to example that left-leaning people use to portray the Republican Party as a threat is the 2021 United States Capitol attack and the election fraud claims. But that just doesn’t fly. Right-leaning people remember how hundreds of cities were damaged in the 2020 riots and how those riots were largely incited by the liberal mainstream media. The important difference is that the attack on the United States Capitol isn’t easily perceived by people as a direct threat to their well-being and the well-being of their families while widespread rioting by huge mobs created a visceral reaction of helplessness: “What if the mob comes for our home?”
A lot of arguments can be brought forward but they won’t change the deeply embedded perception that the Democratic party is the party of division and chaos. When people like Sam Altman write that they feel more comfortable discussing controversial ideas in Beijing than in San Francisco then there is a problem that cannot be easily brushed aside by a fact-check.