Somebody get this guy access to an MRNA tumor vaccine that could save his life! It's inexcusable that terminally ill people don’t have the right to try experimental treatments. Who are the horrible, evil people responsible for such rules? https://jakeseliger.com/2023/07/22/i-am-dying-of-squamous-cell-carcinoma-and-the-treatments-that-might-save-me-are-just-out-of-reach/
New method brings breakthrough in the precise introduction of mutations in human genomes https://www.mpg.de/20644398/0720-evan-dna-editing-new-method-150495-x
“BCI technologies will be a tremendous end-game technology and essentially spur humanity onto its final level of development and ultimate merging with the AI systems we create.” https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/d74pb97TAqNKwJkc5/bcis-and-the-ecosystem-of-modular-minds
NVIDIA Did It: Ray Tracing 10,000 Times Faster! https://youtu.be/AjkiBRNVeV8
Robots That Ask For Help: Uncertainty Alignment for Large Language Model Planners https://arxiv.org/abs//2307.01928
“New research shows even stronger support for this result: it seems likely that hormonal contraceptives cause depression.” https://twitter.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1679963917886398464
The Drowning of Doggerland: This is the story of Europe's true Atlantis, of a Prehistoric world, lost to the sea. https://twitter.com/Hieraaetus/status/1679839394142846977
Some Milestones in the Study of Confinement - Edward Witten — “The string theory we want is probably quite unlike any that we actually know, as of now. We don’t know how to make a string theory with the short distance behavior [that we see]” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvIz-6YOdKs
Women gave other women disingenuous beauty advice about their hair, sabotaging their attractiveness. https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/358909223/M_Williams_Thesis_Female_Intrasexual_Competition_Upload_July_2023.pdf
German deindustrialization crisis of the day: “New orders at the country’s engineering companies, long a bellwether for the health of Germany Inc., have been dropping like a stone, falling 10 percent in May alone, the eighth consecutive decline...Only four of the 100 most-cited scientific papers on AI in 2022 were German. [Note that this puts Germany in 4th place worldwide.] That compares with 68 for the U.S. and 27 for China.” https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/07/german-deindustrialization-crisis-of-the-day.html
“Colugos are an absolute grab bag of an animal. They look like squirrels, fly like bats, have teeth like whales and carry their babies in a pouch like marsupials, but they're none of these things! Their closest relatives are primates!” https://twitter.com/BivouacChillin/status/1682494763327471616
Ukraine links
“Ukraine's military gave us access to one of the Russian cruise missiles they shot down so we could see the American microchips inside its guidance system.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTFf-g48moM
"Ukraine has developed its own medium-range air defense system which is similar to the HAWK system. The system itself is now being tested and missiles are already being developed," Yehor Cherniev, People's Deputy of Ukraine reports. https://pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/07/22/7412512/
"Ukrainian progress is slow. But again, last summer it took 3+ months before serious pressure was started on a much smaller area than now. Progress can occur when the enemy's firepower has become sufficiently weak." 🧵 https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1682770624903512064
The world is not overpopulated because there is still abundant land available. But even if land becomes scarce, we have the ability to create more by building vertically, underground, or through land reclamation from the sea. And we don't even need advanced technology to do it:
1. Mumbai was actually built by reclaiming land from seven islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Islands_of_Bombay
2. As of 2017, about 17% of the total land area of the Netherlands was reclaimed from either the sea or lakes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation_in_the_Netherlands
P.S. There are plans to build a larger Manhattan: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/opinion/eric-adams-manhattan-expand.html [https://archive.fo/KldYY]
P.P.S This may sound crazy, but without violating the known laws of physics or inventing anything fundamentally new, you can pretty easily fit 10 quadrillion (10¹⁶) people on Earth, all living pretty luxuriously: https://transhumanaxiology.substack.com/p/is-earth-running-out-of-resources
This problem is more pervasive than you might think.
For example, when archaeologists consider studying a fragile historical artifact, they must consider that future technological advances will reduce the risk of damaging it.
More generally, you can argue that it is not worth trying to solve certain problems now, because it will be much easier and cheaper in the future when we know more and have better tools.
But you have to start sometime. This is the exploration-exploitation paradox of rapid progress.
Enjoyed the beauty advice one