We’ve spent decades raising teacher quantity when we should have been raising quality.

Ramez Naam gives a skeptic’s take on Recursive Self-Improvement.

A repost from 2024.

Our favorite moral philosophy is about to come under increasing strain.

AI risk; AI and growth; AI and Saas; Rich people; Christians vs. Nazis; Japanese culture; State capacity; City size

Bo French’s rightist movement is a dead end for our nation. Fortunately, it’s beatable.

We need to make skeptics properly scared. And we need to make CHINA properly scared.

We need to make a principled stand instead of a tactical retreat.

Happy Labor Day!! Your labor is still valuable.

A review of “Where is My Flying Car?”, by J. Storrs Hall, and some other thoughts on the future of technology.

The Hugging Face attack; TV and loneliness; Leftist antisemitism; Another Acemoglu paper; The Electric Revolution

People are creating some very interesting and original stuff!

How San Francisco turned its most iconic street into a giant empty scar.

A new social challenge for a new century.

Don’t be so quick to dismiss the threat of an aging, declining population.

Part 1 of my personal recommendations.

The MAGA decline; The labor share decline; OPTs and American jobs; AI and Indian outsourcing; Drug users; AI and productivity; Botswana; Interracial Marriage; AI writing

Some of my colleagues have been led into an intellectual cul-de-sac.

A guest post by Tim Fist and Saif Khan.

And if not, what do we do?

AI will soon be better at math than any human. What does that mean?

The AI boom creates a lot of uncertainty.

Trump and science; U.S. national debt; Europe and software; America and trains; China and metal refining; Indian women; Murder

And who is the worst monster of the 21st?

Learning from Britain's missteps doesn't mean looking down on them.

A timely repost.

I'd like to know exactly what the actions are.

They're not my personal cup of tea, but there are good reasons people like them.

Unlike some American elites, I actually understand this fact.

Making Americans poorer won't make our society better.

But there are still things we can learn from how they manage their macroeconomy.

The culture war is making it impossible for us to deal with declining population.

Maybe both.

A timely repost, with some updates.

A guest post by Hiroko Yoda.

Punditry in the age of populism, AI, and monetization.

A question surprisingly few people are asking.

Why Europe must grow.

A repost from the Noahpinion archive.

Piketty gets wacky; Tokenmaxxing fails; Trump, drones, and Ukraine; Tariffs on China, again; India's growth; Borjas again

There are benefits far beyond protectionism.

The struggle against excessive corporate power needs better standard-bearers.

The practice of "crating" is torture, plain and simple. Voters want to end it, but Congress might not let them.

The most successful ideology of the 20th century is still right for the 21st.

Every few weeks there's a new disaster that would have sunk any other president.

Crime; ICE raids; AI hate; Oligarchy; AI math; Small businesses; Neoliberal Claude; Slacker AGI; The Technium