Trump and Iran, by popular request
I posted this on my Facebook, but several friends asked me to share more widely, so here goes: I voted against Trump three times, and donated thousands to his opponents. I’d still vote against him today, seeing him as a once-in-a-lifetime threat to American democracy and even to the Enlightenment itself. But last night I […]
Guess I’m A Rationalist Now
A week ago I attended LessOnline, a rationalist blogging conference featuring many people I’ve known for years—Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Zvi Mowshowitz, Sarah Constantin, Carl Feynman—as well as people I’ve known only online and was delighted to meet in person, like Joe Carlsmith and Jacob Falkovich and Daniel Reeves. The conference was at Lighthaven, a […]
“If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies”
Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares are publishing a mass-market book, the rather self-explanatorily-titled If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. (Yes, the “it” means “sufficiently powerful AI.”) The book is now available for preorder from Amazon: (If you plan to buy the book at all, Eliezer and Nate ask that you do preorder it, as this […]
Cracking the Top Fifty!
I’ve now been blogging for nearly twenty years—through five presidential administrations, my own moves from Waterloo to MIT to UT Austin, my work on algebrization and BosonSampling and BQP vs. PH and quantum money and shadow tomography, the publication of Quantum Computing Since Democritus, my courtship and marriage and the birth of my two kids, […]
Opposing SB37
Yesterday, the Texas State Legislature heard public comments about SB37, a bill that would give a state board direct oversight over course content and faculty hiring at public universities, perhaps inspired by Trump’s national crackdown on higher education. (See here or here for coverage.) So, encouraged by a friend in the history department, I submitted […]