Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Pinker on Alignment and Intelligence as a "Magical Potion"

  Richard Hanania email exchange with Steven Pinker on Alignment and Intelligence as a "Magical Potion"

  Since neurons grow and interconnect in three dimensions, and each neuron may form 1,000 synapses, together with possibly executing computations in the branching structure of its dendritic arbor, a manufactured 2D silicon system that tried to emulate our 86 billion neurons with its 100 trillion synapses may be impractical to build, program, or run.

• The age of average

  Alex Murrell

  The interiors of our homes, coffee shops and restaurants all look the same. The buildings where we live and work all look the same. The cars we drive, their colours and their logos all look the same. The way we look and the way we dress all looks the same. Our movies, books and video games all look the same. And the brands we buy, their adverts, identities and taglines all look the same.

  But it doesn't end there. In the age of average, homogeneity can be found in an almost indefinite number of domains.
  The Instagram pictures we post, the tweets we read, the TV we watch, the app icons we click, the skylines we see, the websites we visit and the illustrations which adorn them all look the same.
  

• Open letter to Jeffrey Sachs on his position regarding Russian war on Ukraine

  Dear Dr. Sachs,
  We are a group of economists, including many Ukrainians, who were appalled by your statements on the Russian war against Ukraine and were compelled to write this open letter to address some of the historical misrepresentations and logical fallacies in your line of argument. Following your repeated appearances on the talk shows of one of the chief Russian propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov (apart from calling to wipe Ukrainian cities off the face of the earth, he called for nuclear strikes against NATO countries), we have reviewed the op-eds on your personal website and noticed several recurring patterns. In what follows, we wish to point out these misrepresentations to you, alongside our brief response.
  

• The world's most common forecasting mistake

  Typically, the mistake starts by using recent growth rates, then adapting them a little bit to reflect the opinion of the pundit about the future (if the pundit expects growth to slow down, the growth rate is adjusted downward, for example) and then extrapolating that growth rate many years into the future.
  ...
  Always remember, trees don't grow into the sky and all growth comes to an end. The trick to a good forecast is to know where the limit to growth is and how close we are to this limit not how fast growth is going to be in the next couple of years.

• What is the meaning of 'woke'?

  Once a term used by Black Americans, it's now a rallying cry for GOP

  "If you ask people what woke is, I think what they mean is they want to stand against people who are engaging in some type of advocacy for marginalized people," said Andra Gillespie, political scientist at Emory University.

  "It's kind of this lumping together of anybody whose views could be construed as being progressive on issues related to identity and civil rights."
  ...
  But Black Americans have used woke since at least the early-to-mid 20th century to mean being alert to racial and social injustice.

  Also see, Why the GOP is obsessed with "woke" - but can't define it

  MAGA can't explain what "woke" is, but that's the point - it's a "choose your own bigotry" term for Republicans.

• The Betrayal of Adam Smith

  How conservatives made him their icon and distorted his ideas

  Smith had a deep and abiding dislike for nobility, aristocracy, and the leisured rich. In his view, these groups influenced state policy in ways that betrayed the larger interest. As historian Robert Heilbroner has proposed, material productivity was important to Smith because it could occasion "that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people." For Smith, the "butcher, the brewer" and "the baker" were the people who mattered.
  ...
  As this might suggest, Smith's impulses were egalitarian. The difference between "a philosopher and a common street porter" arose from "habit, custom and education" more than nature. In the first years of life, children were roughly all the same, and "neither their parents nor playfellows" could see much difference. He was also profoundly skeptical of elite actors, especially those who claimed to be doing things for the public good. Employers, he warned, were always in a "tacit, but uniform and constant, combination" to lower the price of labor; masters and merchants frequently sought to defraud the public to make a quick profit for themselves.

• The politics of depression

  Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs

  Trends in adolescent internalizing symptoms diverged by political beliefs, sex, and parental education over time, with female liberal adolescents experiencing the largest increases in depressive symptoms, especially in the context of demographic risk factors including parental education. These findings indicate a growing mental health disparity between adolescents who identify with certain political beliefs. It is therefore possible that the ideological lenses through which adolescents view the political climate differentially affect their mental wellbeing.

• On Taste

  How do we know whether art is any good? by Thomas Kaminski

  After all these quibbles, hesitations, and uncertainties, what finally can we say about taste? It is simply the means by which we appreciate art, especially great art. Its importance rests on two assumptions. First, that art provides valuable experiences for human beings. And second, that some of those experiences are richer and more meaningful than others.