Tech bro elegy, d/acc update, EA, fnords!
Happy 2025!
There were a lot of great reflections over the break:
Max Novendstern's beautifully memoiristic technology brother elegy.
Vishal Maini's retrospective on learning AI.
Will Bryk: thoughts on the eve of AGI. I'm less bullish than Will on the generalizability of the o3 result (though probably still more bullish than 99.9% of the population).
Zhendong Wang's 2024 letter. Man, I should start writing an annual letter.
Vitalik on d/acc, one year in.
0xsmac's macro predictions for 2025: "Volatility is back on the menu."
I wrote up some thoughts on how my views re: personally donating money has changed over time.
Scott Alexander attempts to raise the political consciousness of EA.
damn I should really be checking the EA Forum more.
Profile of Steve Davis, GMU alum and Musk lieutenant now headed to DOGE. Alex Tabarrok to Davis, once upon a time:
“I told him, ‘Look, you’re getting a Ph.D., you can’t be having a job and running a business at the same time,” Tabarrok recalls. “Focus on getting your Ph.D.”
But Davis declined to give up any of his pursuits, at one time incorporating business trends at Mr. Yogato into an academic paper and bringing some yogurt into class for sampling. Tabarrok can’t recall Davis’ grades, but says he stood out anyway. He “had so much energy, and was so entrepreneurial,” Tabarrok says. “It’s been kind of exciting to see him become one of Elon’s most trusted right-hand men.”
Only ~1% of US adults know what Effective Altruism is. (Blue oceans!)
nytimes: "Scientists are using vans outfitted with hippie tapestries (a) to drive to the homes of participants in a trial of regular marijuana smokers."
Good background data on the LA fires.
Miles Brundage (at OpenAI until recently): Time's up for AI policy.
Speaking of AI policy... OpenAI publishes an economic blueprint. (Zvi's coverage.)
Sam Altman imagines a bucolic future for himself:
These years have been the most rewarding, fun, best, interesting, exhausting, stressful, and – particularly for the last two – unpleasant years of my life so far.
The overwhelming feeling is gratitude; I know that someday I’ll be retired at our ranch watching the plants grow, a little bored, and will think back at how cool it was that I got to do the work I dreamed of since I was a little kid. I try to remember that on any given Friday, when seven things go badly wrong by 1 pm.
See also Sam profiled in Bloomberg (a).
The far-seeing Allison Duettmann publishes a sequence on technologies for intelligent voluntary cooperation.
I found it surprisingly healing to listen to Steve Hsu wonder if he’s thought more deeply about technological stagnation than Tyler Cowen et al. (And some friends encouraged me to write a short thread about that.)
I had been sleeping on Suno but no longer: why is this song so self-aware when i’m not? (prompt courtesy of the most-stalwart Himbo Bodhisattva).