Augmenting vs. Automating Away
Another quick one while I continue my recuperatory week of doing as little as possible. I recently got to see a fascinating sequence of...
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Rapid Fire
Basically a blog where I try to do philosophy outside.
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Nov 8
Better On Average™
I went to an incredible talk this week by a renowned optimizer in AI spaces. He’s worked on everything from power grids to e-commerce...
Oct 25
Consistently Biased
Hey, sorry for the late post, had to give a talk this morning! I’ve written a bit about QALYs here before, or Quality-Adjusted Life...
Oct 11
Value Complacency
This week, I sat in on a graduate-level computer science class. The instructor asked under what conditions humans and AI would be...
Sep 13
Something I HATE about Averages
If you had to summarize a statistical distribution with one number…well, I guess you could do worse than taking an average. Even so,...
Aug 16
How Coffees Get Scored
Do you know how coffees get scored? Here’s a sample espresso cupping form: Let’s talk survey methodology . This form is part of a...
Jul 26
Philosophy Books or Articles?
Hey! I’ve started reading more and more philosophy of science in the lead-up to my new postdoc in September. Today I wanna discuss a...
Jan 12
Talent and Fit
At a really (really) high level, performance is a function of what you bring to the table (we’ll call that talent), and and how you can...
Jan 5
You will be Misread
When you go to the hospital, we rarely have the resources to treat everyone as promptly and thoroughly as we’d like. So we have to make...
Dec 29, 2023
Why is Racism bad?
I recently spoke to a trained economist who argued that racism was bad, but only because it was bad for the economy. What can we say...
Oct 13, 2023
Someone could get it Wrong
I had a really interesting conversation about art criticism this week. So here we go: What does it mean to be great at jazz? Look, I know...
Oct 6, 2023
Quantitative and Qualitative Values
I’ve been working hard to get clear on the differences between quantitative and qualitative values lately. Here’s an example: If I want...
Sep 29, 2023
MVP mini-manifesto
I’m always fascinated by Most Valuable Player awards because I think they’re a great encapsulation of how we think about value in sports...
Sep 8, 2023
Game Values vs. Real-Life Values
My friend Kjell and I noticed there just aren’t enough podcasts, so we decided to help. Our first episode takes an early look at some of...
Aug 18, 2023
I got Published
Neat! You can check out a free version of my paper “Mutual Aid as Effective Altruism” here. (The final, professionally edited and typeset...
Aug 11, 2023
I got my guy!
So here’s the mind-blowing keynote for Who’s Responsible for ChatGPT? Apparently I have a very expressive face. Anyway, I’ll give you a...
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