Best of Twitter week of October 7-13, 2024

basically one thing that's happening globally right now is that american ideological strains escaped from america. they're incredibly potent and while americans have been selected for resistance the rest of the world is naive. basically brain smallpox but for the old world

— eigenrobot (@eigenrobot)
3:51 AM • Oct 1, 2024

Damn what a line

— Ethan (in sydney) (@Ethan_smith_20)
9:36 AM • Oct 12, 2024

This is close to right but not quite. Rationalists think most problems are like chess—"deep" and not too fact-intensive—such that you can make progress just by thinking harder. Empiricists think most problems are shallow—the hard part is usually getting the right knowledge.

— Timothy B. Lee (@binarybits)
11:43 AM • Oct 2, 2024

Each day you only get about 4-8 hours of good work, usually one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

These zones match your circadian rhythm (from SuperMemo wiki), and are visible from my Tetris history

— Andy Kong (@oldestasian)
6:29 PM • Oct 1, 2024

Just sensational stuff from the greatest to ever do it

— Hiten Samtani (@hitsamty)
4:21 PM • Oct 2, 2024

Everybody wants poor countries to grow, but we also want to base policy on credible research. My article in @asteriskmgzn synthesizes five facts from the careful empirical lit on firms in developing countries – which IMO overturns the aid world's focus on small businesses.

🧵/

— Karthik Tadepalli (@karthiktadepall)
4:12 PM • Oct 7, 2024

I suppose I have not actually fleshed out my true argument for why we drop our Von Neumanns. I'll put it here. I think there are stronger examples outside of math bc the IMO is actually very predictive / gamelike, but it's what I know best.

Central Claim: math has gone the the… x.com/i/web/status/1…

— Ryan Yang-Liu (@ryanyang0)
4:18 PM • Oct 7, 2024

i think about this often

— God's strongest soldier (@OrphicCapital)
11:53 AM • Sep 24, 2024

Doing good science is 90% finding a science buddy to constantly talk to about the project.

— Itai Yanai (@ItaiYanai)
4:44 AM • Oct 6, 2024

hmm srconstantin.wordpress.com/2016/12/12/san…

— shill 🔍 (@acidshill)
8:55 AM • Oct 12, 2024

The shocking (but also totally not shocking) point raised at last night’s OpenAI Education Forum were the majority of their global 250 million weekly users are students. Their CFO noted a 90% up tick in ChatGPT usage in the Philippines once the school year began.

— Marc Watkins (marcwatkins.bsky.social) (@Marc__Watkins)
1:34 PM • Oct 11, 2024

Terence Tao on writing:
terrytao.wordpress.com/advice-on-writ…

— Alex Bilzerian (@alexbilz)
12:15 AM • Oct 11, 2024

Seems like Waymo actually did it?

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig)
12:40 PM • Oct 11, 2024

By every measure, Nobel laureates born in the United States come from less elite backgrounds than laureates born elsewhere.
17/N

— Paul Novosad (@paulnovosad)
4:01 PM • Oct 9, 2024

Irish immigrants to the U.S. used to disproportionately be drunks who ended up with lots of minor, public disorder offenses. Their descendants have assimilated, suggesting this was cultural.

For major offenses (violence, homicide, etc.), there's less evidence groups converge.

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil)
10:15 PM • Oct 8, 2024