My Kind of Conservatism:

Meanwhile the old-guard Democrats are holding solemn press conferences, still wearing suits and pantsuits, standing behind podiums to speak to the rolling cameras of television networks. They are ghosts addressing ghosts. “Sure, it’s not 1985 now,” Homer Simpson once said, when Marge tried to throw out his old calendars, “but you never know what the future might bring.” This is the message we are currently getting from Chuck Schumer and the others.

“Ghosts addressing ghosts” applies to more than just politicians speaking on mainstream media.

Deep Research continues to impress: here is a 4000-word essay on how the word “Pumpaj” — Serbian for “Pump!” — became the slogan of the 2024/25 protests. Even the prompt was LLM-engineered, as described in this Reddit post. So it goes…

The headline: “Cheap blood test detects pancreatic cancer before it spreads”.

The reality:

The nanosensor correctly identified healthy individuals 98% of the time, and identified people with pancreatic cancer with 73% accuracy. It always distinguished between individuals with cancer and those with other pancreatic diseases.

The 98% number means that two out of 100 healthy people who take the test would have a false positive result. It also misses more than 20 out of 100 people with cancer, giving them a false sense of security. If used in a mostly healthy population — a reasonable assumption to make for a screening test — a positive result would more likely than not be a false positive, and yet you would still miss plenty of actual cancers.

These are abysmal assay characteristics and the test should never see clinic, but you would never know it from the headline. (↬Tyler Cowen)

It isn’t only grad students who should be worried about Deep Research:

Students cannot be expected to continue paying for information transfer that AGI provides freely. Instead, they will pay to learn from faculty whose expertise surpasses AI, offering mentorship, inspiration, and meaningful access to AGI-era careers and networks. Universities that cannot deliver this specific value will not survive. This isn’t a mere transformation but a brutal winnowing—most institutions will fail, and those that remain will be unrecognizable by today’s standards.

Yikes! This is from Hollis Robbins, much more in-depth and thought out than my rapid review, though I take issue with her sticking the G in between the A and the I, because we are no there yet. (ᔥTyler Cown)

One query in, I am convinced of the value of Deep Research and think it is well worth the $200 per month. The sources are real, the narrative less fluffy, the points it makes cogent. The narrative review is not dead yet, but it is on its way out. Here I am thinking about those reviews that are made to pad junior researchers CVs while they are introducing themselves to a field, neutral in tone and seemingly comprehensive in scope. There will always be a place for an opinionated perspective from a leader in the field.

In a year, the AI algorithms went from an overeager undergrad to a competent graduate student in every field of science, natural or social. Would o3 make this into a post-doc able and willing to go down every and any rabbit hole? Even now two hundred dollars per month is a bargain — if the price stays the same with next generation models it will be a steal.

The one snag is that it is all centralized, and yes the not so open OpenAI sees all your questions and knows what you want. For now. Local processing is a few years behind, so what is preventing nVidia or Apple or whomever from putting all its efforts into catching up? How much would you pay for your own server that would give its in-depth reports more slowly — say 30 minutes instead of 5 — but be completely private? And without needing benefits, travel and lodging to conferences or any of the messy HR stuff.

The brave new world is galloping ahead.

(↬Tyler Cowen)

📚 Finished reading: Perhaps the Stars by Ada Palmer, though “skimmed” may be the more appropriate word: it was so thick with references spanning several millennia that my regular reading pace and depth felt inadequate. Even so, the sense of completion was there, all loose ends tied up, all characters meeting their well-deserved faiths, to the point of it feeling unusually neat — so used am I with the post-modern storytelling that an actual epic story seemed off. That said, it is time to dust off my copy of The Illiad.

The best analysis of what’s going on in Serbia right now came out today. A sample:

Under Vučić, the Serbian state has become a vast patronage system in which jobs, ministries and construction contracts are awarded to those with political connections. The ruling party functions as an employment programme for the servile and incompetent. While the protesters are not explicitly calling for regime change, their demands for accountability, if met, would see Vučić sent to jail. An end to impunity implies an end to his reign. The students have been careful to avoid association with Serbia’s official opposition, which is itself tainted by venality and easily smeared by pro-government media. Their aim is not simply to swap one patronage network for another. It is to transform the entire political culture. As one protest sign put it: ‘This is not a revolution but an exorcism.’

Good slogan.

I have a rarely-updated list of articles I look at once a week, and randomly pick one to re-read. This week it was time for the first one on the list, which is Paul Graham’s Life is Short. I have obviously been ignoring it, likely because of its position, because I haven’t been following the sage advice:

The usual way to avoid being taken by surprise by something is to be consciously aware of it. Back when life was more precarious, people used to be aware of death to a degree that would now seem a bit morbid. I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t seem the right answer to be constantly reminding oneself of the grim reaper hovering at everyone’s shoulder. Perhaps a better solution is to look at the problem from the other end. Cultivate a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Don’t wait before climbing that mountain or writing that book or visiting your mother. You don’t need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn’t wait. Just don’t wait.

In 2023 there was an exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci’s sketches in D.C., three blocks away from me. But I didn’t see it, because one thing or other kept getting in the way until the very last day, which was so packed with meetings that the work ended after the last admission time.

Lesson learned, right? Well, no, because just recently there was another big show close by (I won’t tell how close lest I allow your, reader, to triangulate my home address). This time we did go, only to balk at the overly long lines and go see something else at the National Art Gallery (incidentally, a work of Leonardo’s). Which was good! But then picking the time when we wouldn’t need to wait was impossible, and we never got to see that exhibit either.

So yes don’t wait, and also when you read and re-read an essay try to at least remember the highlights. This is a memo to self not advice, but could serve as one.