Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

  Navigating social systems efficiently is critical to our species. Humans appear endowed with a cognitive system that has formed to meet the unique challenges that emerge for highly social species. Bullshitting, communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for truth, is ubiquitous within human societies. Across two studies (N = 1,017), we assess participants' ability to produce satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit as an honest signal of their intelligence. We find that bullshit ability is associated with an individual's intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more intelligent. We interpret these results as adding evidence for intelligence being geared towards the navigation of social systems. The ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in negotiating their social world, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of intelligence.

• Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility

  N. Taleb: A technology should be judged in how it solves recognized problems, not by its technical appeal.

  In its current version, in spite of the hype, bitcoin failed to satisfy the notion of "currency without government" (it proved to not even be a currency at all), can be neither a short nor long term store of value (its expected value is no higher than 0), cannot operate as a reliable inflation hedge, and, worst of all, does not constitute, not even remotely, a safe haven for one's investments, a shield against government tyranny, or a tail protection vehicle for catastrophic episodes.

• Interspecies Conversations

  Interspecies Internet is a multidisciplinary global think-tank to encourage the acceleration of Interspecies Communication with 3800+ members, including leading sector professionals. A primary premise of the project is that the Interspecies Internet can be used both to link non-human species that are not collocated and can use its computational capacity to introduce AI/ML methods to transduce signals from one species into coherent signals for another.

• What Makes a Champion?

  Early Multidisciplinary Practice, Not Early Specialization, Predicts World-Class Performance

• Bizarre Brooklyn

  Bizarre Brooklyn is a semi-theatrical, partially-factual, ambulatory experience that actually happens in real life but also, parts of it do not. $30.

• Keeping People Out of Jail Keeps People Out of Jail

  To reduce incarceration, some counties and cities have stopped automatically prosecuting minor nonviolent crimes - and crime overall has gone down. A wave of policy and policing reform has followed.

  Why would declining to prosecute people for low-level crimes also reduce other types of crimes? The study, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that the key is keeping folks out of the criminal justice system. Doing so reduced the odds by 58 percent that these folks would engage with that system in the future. So, to be clear, this doesn't suddenly empty out the prisons - it's not retroactive - but it dramatically slows the flow of folks being incarcerated, which, in turn, reduces the chances that those people will commit future crimes. As the presently incarcerated end their sentences and leave, there won't be the same flow of new prisoners coming in to replace them. It seems to me this is incredibly good news - both sides of the political divide should be happy.

• 1776 Unites
  • 1776 Unites is a movement to shape the American future by drawing on the best of its past. Radically pragmatic and unapologetically patriotic, we hope to speak for Americans of all races, creeds, and political convictions who oppose the efforts to demoralize and demonize our country and its foundations from within, and to turn its people against one another with false history and grievance politics.
  • 1776 Unites represents a nonpartisan and intellectually diverse alliance of hundreds of thousands of writers, thinkers, and activists focused on solutions to our country's greatest challenges in education, culture, and upward mobility.
  • We acknowledge that racial discrimination exists - and work towards diminishing it. But we dissent from contemporary groupthink and rhetoric about race, class, and American history that defames our national heritage, divides our people, and instills helplessness among those who already hold within themselves the grit and resilience to better their lot in life.
  • 1776 Unites maintains a special focus on voices in the black community who celebrate black excellence, reject victimhood culture, and showcase the millions of black Americans who have prospered by embracing the founding ideals of America.

• Why Didn't Microsoft Die?

  I don't have definitive answers, and size and power don't guarantee that a company can weather many mistakes and stay relevant. But a lot of the drama and fighting about technology in 2021 hinge on those questions. Maybe Google search, Amazon shopping and Facebook's ads are incredibly great. Or maybe we simply can't imagine better alternatives because powerful companies don't need to be great to keep winning.

• DuckDuckGo launches new Email Protection service to remove trackers

  The company's new Email Protection feature gives users a free "@duck.com" email address, which will forward emails to your regular inbox after analyzing their contents for trackers and stripping any away. DuckDuckGo is also extending this feature with unique, disposable forwarding addresses, which can be generated easily in DuckDuckGo's mobile browser or through desktop browser extensions.

• Inside Neeva, the ad-free, privacy-first search engine from ex-Googlers

  Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan helped turn Google into an ad giant. Now they're starting over with a service whose only customers are its users.

  But Neeva is indeed a new search engine, officially launching today, that carries a subscription fee. Though it's extremely similar to Google in many respects-with a few twists of its own-it dumps the web giant's venerable ad-based business model in the interest of avoiding distractions, privacy quandaries, and other compromises. It's free for three months-long enough for users to grow accustomed to it without obligation-and $4.95 a month thereafter. Apps for iPhones and iPads, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Brave, are part of the deal.