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michaelnielsen.bsky.social
Searching for the numinous Australian Canadian, currently living in the US https://michaelnotebook.com
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A few thoughtfully-chosen excerpts from my "How to be a wise optimist..." essay:

Lovely thread:

Working notes on Joe Carlsmith's notion of "deep atheism": michaelnotebook.com/deepatheism/...

Who is going to less.online?

A thoughtful post on AI Alignment:

This is a really interesting speculative thread:

I find it oddly irritating when people think they're working but are actually hanging out. Like... just own that you're socializing, and do it well, rather than working totally ineptly...

The use of the term "real world" to mean participation in primate social hierarchies is simultaneously tremendously misleading, and also a real testament to just how right Darwin was...

I always find Socrates a little annoying. He's putting up a show of being interested in truth, but he never seems entirely honest himself

Curious: what is the next world reserve currency going to be? And why and when?

Fascinating:

This graph (via @albrgr.bsky.social ) is one I think about regularly: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

I made an announcements mailing list, to which you may subscribe: michaelnielsenupdates.substack.com/subscribe I've had a creaky old announcements list on Mailchimp for years. But I never use it, because Mailchimp charges hundreds of dollars per email. This solves that problem!

Some working notes on Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" monologue. It's one of my favourite texts, but has some issues I wanted to dig into: michaelnotebook.com/pbdredux/ind... A few years ago, I wrote a companion piece exploring what I admire about the text: michaelnotebook.com/cosmos/index...

I love seeing people reading or writing papers in esoteric areas. Fashion always has a constituency and a strong machine behind it; progress depends more on what is less legible to our culture (My fortune cookie posting is strong the last couple of days! I'll switch to more substantive things...)