New Science just published an excellent report on the NIH, both a good primer for those curious about how the world's premier science funding institution works as well as an essay packed with insights that go beyond the obvious. A recent theme of my latest few essays is the key i … | Continue reading
As scientists we must accept that the world has limited resources. In all fields we must be alert to cost-effectiveness and maximization of efficiency. The major disadvantage in the present system is that it diverts scientists from investigation to feats of grantsmanship. Leo Szi … | Continue reading
Not that many links this months, but there's an special on AI safety at the end Top forecasters vs domain experts An introduction to high-speed (i.e. hypersonic and supersonic) flight Givewell (Labs, which later became OpenPhilantrophy) has an old report on meta-research (as in s … | Continue reading
In mathematics and physics there's this notion of invariance, or relatedly, conserved quantities. One can take a system, measure the quantity, then come back later, observe the system, and no matter what it looks like, the quantity should still be the same. If we know this we can … | Continue reading
In 2020-21 I wrote a series of blogposts on science funding, examining the meta-science/science of science literature, which deals with questions like how well peer review works, the effects of age on the productivity of scientists, or whether a minority produces most of scientif … | Continue reading
On how Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who stole 120K of Bitcoin, got arrested Scott Alexander retrospective on his ACX grants program, with related debate on meta-rationality on Twitter. Some of it is similar to the observation at the end of my review of Talent, finding pr … | Continue reading
Talent (Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross, St. Martin's Press, 2022) is a book about discovering (and hiring) talent. Most highly sold books about hiring are rather about being hired, whereas Talent is primarily about the opposite problem. Talent comes in all shapes and sizes, so this b … | Continue reading
Cool study, but no lifespan effects bro — Everyone, including myself until recently The aging field has historically focused on the twin aims of longer and healthier lives. As a trend, interventions that extend lifespan also tend to improve health whereas the opposite is not true … | Continue reading
Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of hithertho unknown etiology has been somehwat elucidated: Infection with the Epstein-Barr virus is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for it. Moderna is working on a vaccine for EBV at the moment. More here. Cambrian Bio's secret master pla … | Continue reading
Last year in my end of year review I wrote that What is the plan for 2021? The year will start with some posts in the Fund People, not Projects series that I just started. Having an answer to "What's the best way to structure science" would be nice. Maybe by the end of year we'll … | Continue reading
Survey of the origins of some foundational techniuqes in biology Markus Strasser's post-mortem of his work on knowledge extraction from academic publications. A must read for everyone interested in the broad tools for thought category. Antiaging diets: separating fact from fictio … | Continue reading
Nobel Prize winner P.B. Medawar once wrote, in Advice to a Young Scientist, that 'any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems.' But what makes a problem "important"? And how do you know it when you see it? The answers don't come … | Continue reading
A single Swedish family used to own 40% of the Swedish stock market, they remain majority shareholders in multiple companies across Europe: the Wallenberg family. Bonus: They plow back some of that money into science funding, having funded in 1937 early work on electrophoresis by … | Continue reading
In an earlier links, I linked to a post critical with the "polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are bad for you" thesis. This other post is a reply to that one. (For what's worth I still think that saturated fat is bad and that olive oil is all the oil you need so why bother with … | Continue reading
The return of the US Aerospace industry Simulating a biological neuron requires an entire 5-8 layer neural network (1000 artificial neurons per neuron) ARM China goes rogue and becomes its own company Tesla's new AI chips When Elizabeth Holmes tries to hire you When we observe so … | Continue reading
One day we will have cured all diseases, cut transcontinental travel times by more than half, and enjoy cheap, sustainable, plentiful energy. That day is not tomorrow. But why not? The act of posing that question may seem preposterous and impatient: hard feats demand hard work an … | Continue reading
By most available criteria, the United States is still the undisputed leader in the performance of basic and applied research (National Academy of Sciences, 2007) Since 1969, US-based scientists have won more (Science) Nobel Prizes than the rest of countries put together. While t … | Continue reading
Lenghty (ongoing) series of posts on the US obesity epidemic. According to the author(s), it's not the calories, it's not the sugar, it's not the exercise. Tunnels are our transportation future How are doses from mice studies supposed to be translated to humans? It's complicated … | Continue reading
Google Scholar is one of the marvels of the modern science ecosystem. Reportedly run by only a dozen of people and started a decade ago by Alex Verstak and Anurag Acharya, it's the most comprehensive and easier to use search engine there is to find scientific works including non- … | Continue reading
In the previous post I introduced some key aspects of the wildfire situation in California. This followup offers some suggestions for what to do about it. We can think of firefighting as a multi-stage process that starts with a source of ignition that then progresses all the way … | Continue reading
The Science of Science, a book Dominic Cummings on the Sisyphean struggle of getting things done quickly within a government bureaucracy Stripe and Scale Ise Jingu After the new structures are built (and the fidelity of the copy has been confirmed), the previous buildings are the … | Continue reading
EDIT: I DO NOT SAY THAT ROBERT GORDON IS WRONG. Please read this post for reasons why you can have growth in individual technologies and productivity slowdown in general. Some people many economist… | Continue reading
7. Mormonism, and other relatively strict religions, can have big anti-poverty effects. I wouldn’t say I ever believed the contrary, but for a long time I simply didn’t give the question much atte… | Continue reading