The year is 1897, horseless carriages are denied permission to be on roads by Washington D.C. The year is 2026, people are trying to deny driverless carriages on the roads of Washington D.C.

“Faceless machines that can out think any man steadily move into new areas formerly reserved for the mind. They are electronic computers, capable of advising a sausage maker on the best mixture of meats or a doctor on the genetic code of life” (1962)

Issac Asimov: 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝, 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐚𝐦𝐚𝐳𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞...𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫, 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝, 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭-𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞...𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡. 𝐔𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐩𝐬 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐬, 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐲...𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞. 𝐀𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭. 𝐈𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬.”

The more powerful a new technology is, the more the powerful seek to control or suppress it. Powerful incumbents tend to emphasize risk to everyone as a pretext for reducing the risk it poses to them.

A not-so-amusing followup. I'm not feeling great today so instead of working on my startup (which requires real concentration) I decided to generate some realistic cost estimates for a comprehensive gene drive based mosquito control program. I would have then turned this into a post with some estimates on the feasibility of such a thing. Nothing I was discussing was sensitive or could have been used for anything like creating biological weapons. There wasn't even a discussion of the genetic mechanisms involved; it was all basically just population modeling, which is about as innocent as you can get. However, after cooperating for a while, ChatGPT shut down hard, as can be seen below. This is the sort of obvious and beneficial research question the AI safetyists have denied us being able to ask. Knowing whether realistic control and elimination of dangerous disease bearing insects is economically feasible is not harmful to anyone, it's a positive good, but I'm not allowed to ask because of safetyism pushed by the Doomer community. Suggestions on what open source model I should try working with instead are solicited. I'm increasingly uninterested in jumping through hoops to deal with the twisted idiocy of the "safety" community and just want to do work without being harassed or moralized at.

A Nobel winning economist warned that fear of automation causing mass unemployment could itself cause mass unemployment by tanking consumer sentiment. He notes this may be a significant long ignored contributing factor in Great Depression. History of pessimism largely unwritten!

Today is the anniversary of the Simon-Ehrlich Bet, one of the most famous wagers in economic history. The biologist Paul Ehrlich had long argued that population growth would push up against hard limits, leading to resource scarcity and population collapse. The economist Julian Simon claimed the opposite: that more minds would mean more innovation and, ultimately, more abundance. On Sept. 29, 1980, they made a bet, putting their competing views of humanity's relationship to scarcity to a 10-year test.

A good time to recall that 'the press' referred to in the first amendment does not refer to a priest class of scribblers; it refers to the literal press, the actual technology of communication. Power will always seek to control communications technology. The founders were wise enough to bar government from doing so.

Perhaps had he spent more time praying and reforming the church rather than whining about printing presses and engaging in intimate relations with his mistresses, the Reformation could have been less of a problem.

Great technological disruption brings with it great technological obstruction. Establishment powers resort to authoritarian means to preserve power In a moment of rapid technological disruption of all elite classes, we’re seeing a rise in dangerous authoritarianism in free world