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Shingles Vaccine and Dementia
Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is a viral disease that causes a painful rash as well as pain and general malaise. There is a…
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Mathematica
Mathematician David Bessis has written a book about what we do when we do mathematics. It’s one of the best books I’ve read recently. One…
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Another Utopia
It’s easy to think of the ways in which things may go badly, but a less familiar exercise is to imagine ways in which they…
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Feynman vs. The Abacus
This is an anecdote from Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman! It nicely shows what genius actually consists of: Not raw processing power (that’s what the…
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LLMs Are Not High IQ
Practicing for intelligence tests doesn’t improve performance much. IQ tests really seem to measure some innate ability that is relatively unresponsive to training. Processing speed…
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Many and Few
Leo Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Jim Harrison wrote that our wounds…
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NY, NY
The first time I came to New York, I came for the New Year. My friend’s friend had gone back to Mexico for the holidays…
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Aspirations for 2026
I wish to you the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where…
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You Can’t Access Most Books
150 millions books have been published, according to the estimate I asked ChatGPT for. Around 70 million have been digitized, but 70% of those are…
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Aimless Reading
Reading fiction is fun, but interpreting fiction isn’t. Neither am I convinced that trying to interpret novels or poems in a structured way is to…
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Doing it Yourself
A few years back, before my wife and I had kids and when we still lived in a condo in San Francisco, we asked a…
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Santa
This time of the year makes me reflective and sentimental, so here’s my thought for today: My kids met Santa in front of the supermarket…
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Bad Faith Communication
Engaging in direct debate with those who communicate in bad faith is a waste of time and emotional energy. Similarly, following debates between bad faith…
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The Higher Cause Delusion
In the most recent episode of Old School, Shilo Brooks and Richard Dawkins talk about humorist P. G. Wodehouse. Towards the end, Brooks contrasts the…
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Silent Night, Silently
“Why would a chorus need a sign language interpreter?” I thought as the performance began. On the stage in front of me stood a hundred…
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AI Jaggedness
On One Weird Thing, Ethan Mollick argues that getting AI to be more powerful (both in the sense of more useful and more dangerous) is…
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The Best Books I Read in 2025
This year, I read 24 books. That averages two per month, which is a coincidence as I didn’t set myself a target. Most of them…
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Big in 2025
Here is a list of scientific and engineering news of 2025, ranked by potential impact. I like the idea of considering both the probability that a…
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Motivation
It seems obvious that to build effective organizations, incentives have to be aligned with the desired outcomes. For example, we should give big bonuses to…
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Pretty, Please
The gay community has resisted cultural blandness more and better than any other. Ryan Khurana on Palladium: By the early 20th century, dedication to aesthetic…
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The Importance of Stupidity in Scientific Research
This article was recommended to me by the PhD advisor of my PhD advisor’s PhD advisor, or, as I like to think of him, my…
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Aristocracy and Ability
We’re not smart. We don’t work hard. We’re just posh. President of a Viennese private bank catering to the aristocracy I dislike of the concept…
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Photo of an Exoplanet
Initially, it was only possible to infer the presence from exoplanets indirectly from the way they made their star wobble, or when they transited in…
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Can Pharma Scale?
Pharma and tech are different industries. For example, tech benefits from network effects (if everyone uses LinkedIn it makes more sense to join), pharma doesn’t.…
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Overfitting Towards Blandness
Our culture has become bland, as evidenced by fashion, building, cars, book covers, and household objects all looking the same. Even people seem to be…
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Alcatraz
Here is one idea for Alcatraz and here‘s another one. Here are some older designs for the island. Any of them would elevate San Francisco…
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Lifelike Portraits from the Roman Empire
We don’t have lifelike portraits of anyone until at least the Renaissance. Even the best sculptures and paintings from ancient Rome, Greece or China are…
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Insider Attacks
In Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry describes a massacre of French colonial soldiers in North Africa, carried out by a local chieftain by…
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Wind, Sand and Stars
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French pilot in the early years of aviation. He flew military and civilian aircraft in the 1920s and 1940s before…
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Performative Xenophobia
Denmark has more restrictive immigration policies than other Western countries. This is a good article without the hyperventilation that usually comes with the topic.
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From Ole Worm to Christian Vibe
Slime Mold Time Mold, on their blog, mentions Ole Worm, a Danish Renaissance naturalist. In 1638, he was one of the first to recognize that…
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Little Tigers
“What you’re doing is as extravagant as keeping a pet tiger,” said my brother. “Having three kids is unheard of here.” My wife, our kids…
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The Malleability of Intuition
Something within me takes control of my right hand and writes down the solution to the problem I have been thinking about. I don’t understand…
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Isotopes, Fast or Strong
Dynomight has a list of things to be thankful for. My favorite: That radioactive atoms either release a ton of energy but also quickly stop…
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Pyromaniac
Trying to light a camp fire when it’s raining and everything is wet is a humbling experience, and not one that practicing in dry conditions…
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Economic Policy Won’t Fix It
How much of variance in economic performance is due to a country’s economic policy? This is an important question because our political discourse assumes that…
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The Hundred-Light-Year Diary
Thinking about forecasting and AI, I sometimes remember this story by Greg Egan. It was published as part of his collection Axiomatic. Here is my…
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Arctic Facts
Here are the facts I found surprising enough to highlight in my copy of Arctic Dreams: Most animals live lives in biological keeping with the…
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Arctic Dreams
Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez still shows the Soviet Union on its maps of the Arctic. There is no mention of global warming, unthinkable for…
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Literary Voyeurism
This essay by Scott McClanahan is a hole through which I can peek inside a world that is closed to me but that I have…
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Genome Counter
The Human Genome project took 13 years and cost $3 billion. It was completed in 2003, although some gaps took until 2022 to be filled.…
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My Second Day At Work
Like so many minds of my generation, best or otherwise, I came to California for work. The biotech company that hired me paid for my…
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Revenge
The worst job I’ve ever had was also my first. This helped me later in life, with every job I’ve had since having been an…
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Causation Does Not Imply Variation
As everyone knows in the abstract but sometimes forgets in the heat of the moment, correlation does not imply causation. John Cochrane reminds us that…
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Data Archival
You don’t have a lot of options if you want to preserve sure your data (your photos for example) for many years without any maintenance.…
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Pharma Ads
My wive and I had dinner at a noisy hot pot restaurant on Geary Boulevard. The restaurant was packed. When my wive went to get…
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Kári Stefánsson
None of the encounters I’ve had with Kári Stefánsson have been pleasant. I remember taking a walk with him in Heidelberg many years ago, when…
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Wrangel Island Mammoths
For hundreds of years after the pyramids of Giza had been completed, mammoths still roamed Wrangel Island off the northern coast of Siberia. Around the…
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Disappearing Polymorphs
Some chemical substances assemble in different crystal structures without changing their composition. Those alternative structures are called polymorphs. Polymorphs can act as seed crystals, causing…
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New Mexico
Santa Fe was less interesting than I had thought. The place has a lot of history but it doesn’t feel alive. Too many art galleries…
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Politics Won’t Fix It
For a long time now, Americans have felt that the country is moving in the wrong direction without anyone clearly articulating what the right direction…
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Lack of Desperation
I recently discovered Sam Kriss’ Substack, Numb at the Lodge. I wish I could write like that. At the same time, I don’t envy Kriss.…
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Child of Freedom, Parent of Prosperity
How much should the government spend on science? One view is that it should spend a lot, since every dollar pays back many times over.…
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Corporate Email
Here are two emails from my workplace, normally notable for its lack of quirkiness. Good morning Hope you are all well. Just in case you…
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Viscerality
First: The modern world is in fact very pleasant. We have a thousand labor-saving devices. We are thoroughly accustomed to instant heat, cold, transportation, water,…
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One Argument is Better than Two
People have to eat, and some of what they eat is meat. As with everything, there’s a tradeoff, in this case between animal welfare and…
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Ambivert
I’ve never felt solidarity except while making love, or with a tree or animal or while utterly alone on a river or in a swamp…
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Temptation Avoided, Character Unproven
Freedom has been defined as the opportunity for self-discipline Dwight Eisenhower Temptation is democratic, and it’s elitist. It’s democratic in that everyone experiences it: We…
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A Tame Society
Drinking, drugs, crime and cult membership are all down compared to a generation ago. Adam Mastroianni on Experimental History argues that this decline in deviance…
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Modern Cave Art
I’m wondering why we have stopped making cave art and I’m not the only one thinking along those lines. This is a painting by the…
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No Book? Big Whoop
Asterisk Magazine’s current issue is about books. Here’s what the magazine editors have to say about those fiber and ink bundles: Books are sources of…
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Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
I had seen posters advertising the movie Jane Austen Wrecked My Life earlier this year while traveling in Europe. The name was funny enough that…
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The Evolution of Everything
The Evolution of Everything isn’t Matt Ridley’s best book, but it has sections that are among the most thought-provoking writing I’ve come across. The theme…
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Death by AI
The most likely cause of death today is AI. It’s a reasonable statement. The most common cause of death right now is ischemic heart disease,…
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The Funny Side of Cancer
He – literally – dove into danger to study life’s mysteries, from the depths of the sea to the edge of the stars. His mind…
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The Rational Optimist
Reading and thinking about Birds, Sex & Beauty by Matt Ridely reminded me of his other books I’ve read over the years. He’s a wonderful…
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Life Without Clocks or Mirrors
I’ve always been immoderatly clock-oriented. But that was part of what seemed wrong with my infrequent periods of actual labor: the deadly predictability of jobs…
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Getting Started With AI
If you haven’t yet used AI, or if you’re thinking about paying for a premium AI, this is a good guide. I find paying for…
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Wood Swirl
A piece of wood that reminded me of van Gogh’s Starry Night. Nature imitating art, once again.
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1933 and 2025
To the degree it is possible for any one born in the 1980s, I have a sense for what occurred in Germany in the run-up…
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Democracy, the Fortunate
It’s fortunate that liberal democracy, the only acceptable sort of governance (because it’s the only one that respects the dignity and rights of the individual)…
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Greatness Can’t Be Planned
No plan survives first contact with the enemy Helmuth von Moltke The plans are nothing, but the planning is everything Dwight Eisenhower I haven’t seen…
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Rome Was Different
In SPQR, Mary Beard provides an overview of the history of ancient Rome from its founding to the first century AD. She knows her stuff and…
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Things Don’t Happen for a Reason
We want to know why. My career is built around finding the causes for rare diseases. Human genetics, the field I trained and work in,…
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Playing With the Sun As With a Little Brook
Girl lithe and tawny, the sun forms the fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweeds filled your body with joy, and your luminous eyes…
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Tom McGuane’s Cameo
Some trivia: I’m 80% sure that writer Thomas McGuane makes a cameo appearance in the music video for Jimmy Buffett’s 1974 song Come Monday. 70…
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Ordinary Beauty
You may not think [Victorian design] is beautiful, but I don’t think it was supposed to be beautiful. It was just supposed to be pretty.…
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Birds, Sex & Beauty
We’ve been on earth all these years and we still don’t know for certain why birds sing […] If the lyric is simply “mine mine…
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Mammals are Prose; Birds are Poetry
It dawned on me that my species probably does not really know the half of it about beauty. Not like the birds do and other…
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The Algernon Argument
If there were an intervention that would result in enhanced intelligence, why have we not already evolved that way? The answer is the Algernon argument.…
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In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin’s most well-known work is In Patagonia. It’s a mix of travel writing, history and a fiction. It was first published in 1977. Below…
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Great Argus
Charles Darwin included an illustration of the feathers of the great argus pheasant in The Descent of Man. The pattern on great argus feathers seem…
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Selective Breeding for Longevity
In his Science Fiction novel Methuselah’s Children, Robert Heinlein described a clan whose members become unusually old without showing signs of frailty. They arrived there…
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Free Energy
The 1990s were the golden age of free energy: Technologies that, through new or underappreciated physics, generated abundant and clean electricity. It wasn’t about boring…
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