If you haven’t come across it before, effective altruism is an interesting movement that coined the term “longtermism”.
It says of the human race – “We’ve been around for approximately 300,000 years. There are now about 8 billion of us, roughly 15 percent of all humans who have ever lived.“
“You may think that’s a lot, but it’s just peanuts to the future. If we survive for another million years—the longevity of a typical mammalian species—at even a tenth of our current population, there will be 8 trillion more of us. We’ll be outnumbered by future people on the scale of a thousand to one.“
One of the movements champions – William MacAskill – has recently written a book that has received much attention (to be expected for such a well funded movement).
“What We Owe The Future” is worth knowing about – and this is a very good review of it.
Flaring natural gas is a hot topic right now, and not just because Russia is using it as a political weapon.
Interestingly Chevron has decided to link some incentive pay to a target to reduce flaring by 25-30% vs. 2016 levels.
Flaring is really bad – not only because it creates CO2 but because it often doesn’t do a good job leading to methane escape (a greenhosue gas that is 80x worse than CO2). Though this appears to be getting better.
In some ways gas is flared because it is a “trapped asset” and this latest piece from Byrne talks a lot about innovative solution for non-tradeable assets. In the case of gas building data centres next to them.
“His reasoning regarding the oversold entry level is basically buying some 20% below the 200 day moving average: currently at 3374. This has worked over the past century (except 1931/37/74 and 2008). He adds: “…monster undershoot requires monster credit event & recession”.”
They say in investing it is all about having strong opinions weakly held.
Another way to say this is – bewilderment to combat excessive certainty, inflexibility, over confidence.
“You no longer need to exhaust yourself pretending to understand what you don’t or making pronouncements about questions that are above your pay grade. You can trade false simplicity for complicated truth. And the resulting worldview is more useful and more beautiful because it genuinely reflects reality. That’s why a synonym for bewilderment is wonder, which, at least for me, is not terrifying but exhilarating.”
In the US in 2021 the NY Fire Department attended 10,639 incidents that were deemed “structural fires” out of a total of 1,213,715 incidents.
The vast majority of the rest are actually medical incidents.
Fires are just must less common (more alarms, less smoking, better safety).
Fire departments in the US perform the role of ambulances – in 1980 they attended 5 million medical calls but in 2020 this was 24 million (Covid notwithstanding, a huge rise).
Contrarian article arguing why fire departments have perhaps put themselves out of business.
One answer is funding – “The reason we don’t have fusion already is because we, as a civilization, never decided that it was a priority. Fusion funding is literally peanuts: In 2016, the US spent twice as much on peanut subsidies as on fusion research.“
Interesting and wide ranging interview with the creator of Etherum.
“Vitalik Buterin is one of the most well-known and best-loved figures in the crypto/blockchain world — well-known because Ethereum, the blockchain platform he co-created (with Gavin Wood) has become the platform for the entire web3 world, and best-loved because he’s very clearly just a smart, friendly guy who just wants to build cool stuff and not rip anybody off.“
A useful tool for any investor interviewing management.
“I learned this one from the psychoanalysts. Nobody likes an awkward silence. If a patient tells you something, and you are awkwardly silent, then the patient will rush to fill the awkward silence with whatever they can think of, which will probably be whatever they were holding back the first time they started talking. You won’t believe how well this one works until you try it. Just stay silent long enough, and the other person will tell you everything. It’s better than waterboarding.“
Did you know that one team of funders supported all but one of the 18 scientists who received the Nobel Prize in genetic molecular biology research, funding this revolution.
This was the Natural Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation which operated during the 1930s – 1950s, under the leadership of Warren Weaver.
A must read history full of lessons for today’s science funders.
“Weaver saw himself, instead, as a “manager of science.” He led his small team of program officers in a highly opinionated grantmaking process that focused on the organizational and social environments of research institutions over the specifics of any individual project. And once his team selected a field to focus on, it funded people over specific ideas.“
