~marginalrevolution | Bookmarks (14)

Here is the audio, video, and transcript, along with almost thirty minutes of audience questions, filmed in Miami.  Here is the episode summary: Tyler and Peter Thiel dive deep into the complexities of political theology, including why it’s a concept we still need today, why Peter’s against Calvinism (and rationalism), whether the Old Testament should […] The post My excellent Conversation with Peter Thiel...

Here is a very good article by Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine.  Excerpt: The contours of the new progress movement stretch from the Human Progress project at the libertarian Cato Institute to the “eco-modernist” initiatives at the Breakthrough Institute and the Pritzker Innovation Fund. Four relatively new groups at the forefront of the pro-progress forces […] The post The progress in Progress Studies appeared...

That is the title of the new Judith Butler book, focusing mostly on trans issues.  To be clear, on most practical issues concerning trans, I side with the social conservatives.  For instance, I don’t think trans women have a right to compete in women’s weightlifting contests.  And I have not been happy with how many […] The post *Who’s Afraid of Gender?* appeared first...

Nnow though it was generally assumed in intellectual circles that the best was yet to be, Bvalltu and his friends were convinced that the crest of the wave had already occurred many centuries ago.  To most men, if course, the decade before the war had seemed better and more civilized than any earlier age.  In […] The post *Star Maker*, by Olaf Stapledon appeared...

As many MR readers will know, I don’t think the concept of AGI is especially well-defined.  Can the thing dribble a basketball “with smarts”?  Probably not.  Then its intelligence isn’t general.  You might think that kind of intelligence “doesn’t matter,” and maybe I agree, but that is begging the question.  It is easier and cleaner […] The post Claude 3 Opus and AGI appeared...

This study investigates the efficacy of an AI-based ethical advisor using the GPT-4 model. Drawing from a pool of ethical dilemmas published in the New York Times column “The Ethicist”, we compared the ethical advice given by the human expert and author of the column, Dr. Kwame Anthony Appiah, with AI-generated advice. The comparison is […] The post GPT as ethical advisor appeared first...

It’s interesting to think of Mill’s argument as it relates to Hayek. So Mill is arguing you can see more than just the local information. So keep in mind, when Mill wrote, every society that he knew of, at least treated women very poorly, oppressed women. Women, because they were physically weaker, were at a […] The post John Stuart Mill on women, as...

It is very long, very detailed, and very good.  Interesting throughout!  Excerpt: Dealing with the third conversation is harder. There is place where I feel Tyler is misinterpreting a few statements, in ways I find extremely frustrating and that I do not see him do in other contexts, and I pause to set the record […] The post Zvi Mowshowitz covers my podcast with...

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  Here is from Wikipedia: Marilynne Summers Robinson (born November 26, 1943) is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson […] The post What should I ask Marilynne Robinson?...

Let us say you favor policy X, and take steps to see that policy X comes about. Under many conditions, people who favor non-X will take additional countervailing steps to oppose X.  And in that case your actions in favor of X, on average, will lead to nothing.  In the meantime, you and also your […] The post Social improvements that don’t create countervailing...

Adrian Wooldridge has an excellent Bloomberg column on this topic, promoting the relevance of Thomas Mann, and here is one excerpt: In the book [Magic Mountain], Castorp falls in with two intellectuals who live in the village of Davos below his sanitorium: an Italian humanist called Lodovico Settembrini and a Jewish-born cosmopolitan called Leo Naphta […] The post Settembrini and the continuing relevance of...

New episode with @tylercowen. We talk about Tyler's implicit theology, literature in translation, Jonathan Swift, Peter Thiel, The Sopranos, NGDP targeting and a whole lot more. Links below — pic.twitter.com/mRQyyAesa4 — dan (@dnschlz) January 15, 2024 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-hx8Z8clI4 Spotify: spoti.fi/47yJdK9 Apple: https://apple.co/3S1hxI1 Dan Schulz is a very good interviewer. The post Tyler Cowen on Undertone podcast appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.         CommentsI would ask Tyler when...

Maybe so: We administer a Turing Test to AI Chatbots. We examine how Chatbots behave in a suite of classic behavioral games that are designed to elicit characteristics such as trust, fairness, risk-aversion, cooperation, \textit{etc.}, as well as how they respond to a traditional Big-5 psychological survey that measures personality traits. ChatGPT-4 exhibits behavioral and […] The post Are chatbots better than we are?...

That is the new book by Blake Butler, a memoir.  It is no spoiler to tell you that his wife Molly takes her own life at a young age.  I don’t know of any better argument for social conservatism than this book.  And perhaps suicide should be regarded as a sin, not something to get […] The post *Molly* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION....