some beliefs:
technological progress is the most important and perhaps sole driver of human flourishing
- apparent shifts in social norms, political systems, etc. are ultimately driven by technological change
the world is undergoing enormous change, driven by demographic, technological, and socio-cultural factors
- fundamental historical forces are driving the world toward a period of instability
- 20th century political formulas are running on fumes, nothing has yet emerged to conclusively replace them
- instability creates both risk and opportunity
- some of the main players are already on the board, others are yet to appear
- intra-elite competition sets the direction of change
civilization is not guaranteed
- our current era of economic surplus is predicated on facts which can change
- previous historical eras were horrific beyond imagining for most people who ever lived
- some social structures and cultures are more likely to preserve civilization and are better to live under than others
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- people confuse fiction and reality all the time; e.g. most people’s understanding of the second world war is from movies
- by presenting historical events in the same medium as popular fiction, the events become fictionalized in people’s minds
- it’s really easy to be delusional, thinking is hard
- people easily delude themselves into believing they’re rational
the ‘low hanging fruit’ hypothesis regarding scientific progress is obviously wrong
- in every era of scientific progress, the ‘low hanging fruit’ are the easy problems that are solved first
- kuhn’s model of puctuated equilibrium fits the historical facts
- science is mainly suffering from managerialization
more opportunity exists for more people than they are aware of
- absent illness or obligation, many people would be much happier doing something completely different than what they’re doing now
- reasonably intelligent people can learn how most things work
- the world is much wilder than you think
elite is better than non-elite is really capable of understanding
- a large fraction of elite performance is the ability to sustain obsessive focus for a very long time
- ‘everyone is winging it’ is cope, but most people will never experience elite performance so don’t believe it exists
human cognition is very weak relative to the complexity of the physical world
- mathematics is far from universal
- we have enormous gaps in our understanding of even basic, classical physical phenomena
somewhat inspired by nat friedman