Podcasts about Hofstadter

https://verhandlungs-bootcamp.com/Viele Selbstständige und Unternehmer geben zu früh auf – sei es bei Preisverhandlungen, Angebotsprozessen oder in der Kundenakquise. Doch Geduld ist ein oft unterschätzter Erfolgsfaktor. In dieser Folge erfährst du, warum echte Durchbrüche oft spät kommen, wie du dich mental darauf vorbereitest und welche psychologischen Effekte du für deinen Verhandlungserfolg nutzen kannst.In dieser Folge erfährst du:Warum alles länger dauert als gedacht (Hofstadter's Law):Selbst mit Puffer planen wir zu optimistisch. Einfache Wahrheit: Es dauert immer länger – auch wenn man das weiß.Was du daraus lernst: Plane Zeitpuffer ein und kalkuliere mit Unvorhergesehenem.Wie der Ketchup-Effekt auch in deinem Business wirkt:Erst lange nichts, dann zu viel. Kunden, Aufträge, Deals – alles kann plötzlich kommen.Wichtig: Baue Strukturen, um dann nicht im Chaos zu landen.Warum gute Planung dich realistisch macht und schneller ans Ziel bringt:Studie zeigt: Wer nicht nur das Ziel, sondern auch den Weg plant, erreicht ihn schneller.Tipp: Definiere konkrete Schritte, Zeiten und Orte für die Umsetzung.Dadurch kannst du Frustration reduzieren und bleibst motivierter.Wie du mental durchhältst, wenn sich nichts bewegt:Verhandlungserfolg braucht Ausdauer. Auch wenn der andere nicht reagiert: Dranbleiben lohnt sich.Schaffe dir mentale Stabilisatoren: Erfolgstagebuch, Peergroup, Vision Board.Warum Geduld ein Wettbewerbsvorteil ist:Die meisten brechen zu früh ab. Wer länger durchhält, sticht heraus.Geduld ist ein strategischer Skill, kein passives Abwarten.Beispiel: Verhandlung über Lizenzrechte, bei der hartnäckige Verhandler am Ende deutlich bessere Konditionen erzielen.Willst du lernen, wie du in Verhandlungen mental stark bleibst, strategisch klug planst und auch bei langen Prozessen nicht den Mut verlierst? Dann sichere dir jetzt deinen Platz im kostenlosen Verhandlungs-Bootcamp:

Dans cet épisode, Lorianne reçoit Marie-Philippe Rodrigue pour explorer en profondeur les lois (souvent invisibles) qui influencent ta productivité. Un peu plus sur Marie-Philippe : Marie-Philippe est orthophoniste, entrepreneure, conférencière et autrice. Spécialisée auprès des jeunes de 10 ans et plus présentant des troubles d'apprentissage et des troubles orofaciaux myofonctionnels, elle développe des approches hybrides et concrètes pour mieux répondre aux besoins de sa clientèle. Passionnée par tout ce qui touche l'organisation, la structure du travail et l'équilibre entre rigueur et créativité, elle a publié le livre « Le paradoxe de la poule pas d'tête », un ouvrage où elle explore avec humour et lucidité les défis du quotidien professionnel et les pièges de la productivité. Fondatrice de Les Collègues, une communauté pour les professionnels en relation d'aide, animatrice du podcast *Une Orthophoniste en Coulisses* et présidente de l'Association québécoise des orthophonistes et audiologistes, elle œuvre à bâtir une pratique plus humaine, efficace et inspirante. Le site web de Marie-Philippe : www.mporthophoniste.ca Points principaux : Les lois invisibles qui sabotent ta productivité : Marie-Philippe partage plusieurs lois fondamentales (Pareto, Parkinson, Newton, Hofstadter…) qui influencent notre façon de gérer le temps, souvent sans qu'on s'en rende compte. Une fois qu'on les comprend, on peut enfin déjouer les pièges. Pourquoi les bons outils ne suffisent pas : Utiliser Notion, Trello ou le meilleur logiciel du monde ne changera rien si tu ne comprends pas pourquoi tu procrastines ou tu t'éparpilles. Marie-Philippe insiste sur l'importance de gratter sous la surface. La formule de la procrastination : Elle partage une équation simple mais puissante pour comprendre ce qui alimente ta tendance à repousser les tâches importantes — et comment jouer avec ces facteurs pour y remédier. Structurer tes projets pour réduire le stress : Avec des échéanciers réalistes, des « fausses » dates limites et des étapes bien définies (merci ChatGPT !), tu peux enfin arrêter de te sentir constamment en retard. Respecter ton énergie : Plutôt que d'enchaîner les projets sans fin, Marie-Philippe t'invite à tenir compte de ton niveau d'énergie, des périodes plus lourdes dans ton année, et à t'accorder de vraies zones tampon dans ton horaire. Viens retrouver Lorianne sur… Son site web Instagram : @lorianne.lacerte Facebook Son infolettre LinkedIn Liens pour en savoir plus sur Marie-Philippe : Son site web Son compte Instagram : @mp.orthophoniste Son profil Facebook Son livre « Le paradoxe de la poule pas d'tête » La communauté Les Collègues Le podcast *Une Orthophoniste en Coulisses*

Iman Mirzadeh from Apple, who recently published the GSM-Symbolic paper discusses the crucial distinction between intelligence and achievement in AI systems. He critiques current AI research methodologies, highlighting the limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs) in reasoning and knowledge representation. SPONSOR MESSAGES:***Tufa AI Labs is a brand new research lab in Zurich started by Benjamin Crouzier focussed on o-series style reasoning and AGI. They are hiring a Chief Engineer and ML engineers. Events in Zurich. Goto https://tufalabs.ai/***TRANSCRIPT + RESEARCH:https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mlcjl9cd5p1kem4l0vqd3/IMAN.pdf?rlkey=dqfqb74zr81a5gqr8r6c8isg3&dl=0TOC:1. Intelligence vs Achievement in AI Systems [00:00:00] 1.1 Intelligence vs Achievement Metrics in AI Systems [00:03:27] 1.2 AlphaZero and Abstract Understanding in Chess [00:10:10] 1.3 Language Models and Distribution Learning Limitations [00:14:47] 1.4 Research Methodology and Theoretical Frameworks2. Intelligence Measurement and Learning [00:24:24] 2.1 LLM Capabilities: Interpolation vs True Reasoning [00:29:00] 2.2 Intelligence Definition and Measurement Approaches [00:34:35] 2.3 Learning Capabilities and Agency in AI Systems [00:39:26] 2.4 Abstract Reasoning and Symbol Understanding3. LLM Performance and Evaluation [00:47:15] 3.1 Scaling Laws and Fundamental Limitations [00:54:33] 3.2 Connectionism vs Symbolism Debate in Neural Networks [00:58:09] 3.3 GSM-Symbolic: Testing Mathematical Reasoning in LLMs [01:08:38] 3.4 Benchmark Evaluation and Model Performance AssessmentREFS:[00:01:00] AlphaZero chess AI system, Silver et al.https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01815[00:07:10] Game Changer: AlphaZero's Groundbreaking Chess Strategies, Sadler & Reganhttps://www.amazon.com/Game-Changer-AlphaZeros-Groundbreaking-Strategies/dp/9056918184[00:11:35] Cross-entropy loss in language modeling, Voitahttp://lena-voita.github.io/nlp_course/language_modeling.html[00:17:20] GSM-Symbolic: Understanding the Limitations of Mathematical Reasoning in LLMs, Mirzadeh et al.https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.05229[00:21:25] Connectionism and Cognitive Architecture: A Critical Analysis, Fodor & Pylyshynhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/001002779090014B[00:28:55] Brain-to-body mass ratio scaling laws, Sutskeverhttps://www.theverge.com/2024/12/13/24320811/what-ilya-sutskever-sees-openai-model-data-training[00:29:40] On the Measure of Intelligence, Chollethttps://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01547[00:33:30] On definition of intelligence, Gignac et al.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289624000266[00:35:30] Defining intelligence, Wanghttps://cis.temple.edu/~wangp/papers.html[00:37:40] How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine... for Now, Dehaenehttps://www.amazon.com/How-We-Learn-Brains-Machine/dp/0525559884[00:39:35] Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking, Hofstadter and Sanderhttps://www.amazon.com/Surfaces-Essences-Analogy-Fuel-Thinking/dp/0465018475[00:43:15] Chain-of-thought prompting, Wei et al.https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.11903[00:47:20] Test-time scaling laws in machine learning, Brownhttps://podcasts.apple.com/mv/podcast/openais-noam-brown-ilge-akkaya-and-hunter-lightman-on/id1750736528?i=1000671532058[00:47:50] Scaling Laws for Neural Language Models, Kaplan et al.https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.08361[00:55:15] Tensor product variable binding, Smolenskyhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/000437029090007M[01:08:45] GSM-8K dataset, OpenAIhttps://huggingface.co/datasets/openai/gsm8k

Running 12 seasons from 2007 to 2019, the television sitcom garnered seven Emmy Awards and spawned a multimedia franchise. 

Arizona, la bella d'America.7° e penultimo stato ad essere solcato dalla Route 66, lo stato che si fa chiamare The Grand Canyon state, e che per il 75% è pubblic land, meraviglia naturale tutta da esplorare, dai deserti infuocati alle vette innevate.I suoi paesaggi sono stampati nell'immaginario collettivo attraverso film iconici del western americano.Ma che succederebbe se tutto questo diventasse un enorme parco giochi abitato da androidi al servizio dei piaceri dei potenti?Scopriamolo insieme attraverso i personaggi e luoghi della serie rivelazione del 2016: Westworld.Buon ascolto!Libri citati nella puntata:Seconda Natura di G.M. EdelmanL'io della mente di D.R. Hofstadter e D.C. Dennett Segui i miei viaggi negli USA e scopri curiosità di cultura e società americana anche sui miei social⁠https://www.instagram.com/eliist/⁠⁠https://www.threads.net/@eliist⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR6uMqFfHoPmbPahFIMgjvw⁠LICENZA SIAE NUMERO: 202400000165

Are you ready to make a BIG leap in 2025? Whether you're just getting started with a delicious idea, growing to $100K or scaling to the next level, today's podcast is for you. There is a certain amount of energy and investment required and it is ALWAYS more than you think - just talk with any founder! I share with you my own experiences in my business and working with 100s of food founders on how to accept the truth of Hofstadter's Law (things always take longer than you think, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law). To compensate for this, it is important to make investments that create a meaningful commitment and create real momentum to fast track your success.  If you have been sitting on the sidelines listening to this podcast for a while now, it's time to get in the game

Explore the deepest mysteries of consciousness in Layer 4 of the Consciousness Iceberg: Strange loops, quantum theories, CTMU, and more. Dive into the paradox of self and the mind's hidden dimensions. SPONSOR (THE ECONOMIST): As a listener of TOE you can get a special 20% off discount to The Economist and all it has to offer! Visit https://www.economist.com/toe New Substack! Follow my personal writings and EARLY ACCESS episodes here: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com TOE'S TOP LINKS: - Enjoy TOE on Spotify! https://tinyurl.com/SpotifyTOE - Become a YouTube Member Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w/join - Join TOE's Newsletter 'TOEmail' at https://www.curtjaimungal.org - Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) - Twitter: https://twitter.com/TOEwithCurt - Discord Invite: https://discord.com/invite/kBcnfNVwqs - iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/better-left-unsaid-with-curt-jaimungal/id1521758802 - Subreddit r/TheoriesOfEverything: https://reddit.com/r/theoriesofeverything #science #consciousness #mind #theory Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You may have missed the recent U.S. presidential election, since it was kinda inconsequential and nobody was paying any attention to it. Oh wait... In today's episode, Dad and I take up the topic of "our democracy" as it has been talked about in the U.S. during this grueling election year, why Christians have an investment in flourishing democratic government (especially considering the alternatives), how the distinctions between church and state, and God's two kingdoms, play out in a democratic nation, and what we can faithfully do in our callings as Christians and citizens. Plus, Sarah reminds you that you are not Bonhoeffer. Six years of top-quality theological podcasting... Show your support by becoming a Patron! Notes: 1. Related episodes: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr, Two Kingdoms 16th Century Edition, Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st Century Edition 2. Tocqueville, Democracy in America 3. Heise, The Gates of Hell (on the elimination of the Russian Lutheran Church during the Soviet period) 4. Bonhoeffer, Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison, plus DeJonge's Bonhoeffer on Resistance 5. Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"

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Adam Gopnik revisits two famous American essays from the 1960s and finds a remarkably contemporary vision - and one 'that seems to have an application to our own time and its evident crisis.' He couples Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics' with Daniel Boorstin's 1962 classic on 'image' and America's tenuous relationship with facts. 'It is the admixture of Hofstadter's political paranoia with Boorstin's cult of publicity,' writes Adam, 'that makes Trump so very different from previous political figures.'Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

Dans cet épisode de notre série estivale sur les lois de la productivité, je te présente la loi de Hofstadter. Si tu es en quête de solutions pour mieux organiser ton agenda et anticiper les imprévus, cet épisode est fait pour toi.

Once Dr. Ray Damadian had the idea to create a machine that used nuclear magnetic resonance to capture diagnostic data by scanning a human body, he still had to build it. And though he did, other scientists got credit for inventing the MRI.   Research: Bashir U, Rock P, Murphy A, et al. T2 relaxation. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org. https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-16494 Bellis, Mary. "A Guide to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-1992133 Bloch, Felix. “The Principle of Nuclear Induction.” Nobel Lecture. Dec. 11, 1952. https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/bloch-lecture-1.pdf Bloembergen, Nicolas. “Edward M. Purcell (1912-97).” Nature. April 17, 1997. https://www.nature.com/articles/386662a0.pdf Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Isidor Isaac Rabi". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isidor-Isaac-Rabi Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Paul Lauterbur". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 May. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Lauterbur Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "nuclear magnetic resonance". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/science/nuclear-magnetic-resonance Damadian, Raymond, and Jeff Kinley. “Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story.” Master Books. 2015. Damadian R. “Tumor detection by nuclear magnetic resonance.” Science. 1971 Mar 19;171(3976):1151-3. doi: 10.1126/science.171.3976.1151 Deutsch, Claudia H. “Patent Fights Aplenty for MRI Pioneer.” New York Times. July 12, 1997. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/12/business/patent-fights-aplenty-for-mri-pioneer.html “Dr. Edward Purcell, 84, Dies; Shared Nobel Prize in Physics.” New York Times. March 10, 1997. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/10/us/dr-edward-purcell-84-dies-shared-nobel-prize-in-physics.html Drew Z, Jones J, Murphy A, et al. Longitudinal and transverse magnetization. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org (Accessed on 03 Jun 2024) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-60738 "Edward Mills Purcell." National Academy of Sciences. 2000. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 78. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9977 :"Felix Bloch." National Academy of Sciences. 1994. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 64. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4547 LAUTERBUR, P. Image Formation by Induced Local Interactions: Examples Employing Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Nature242, 190–191 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/242190a0 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 1994. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 64. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/4547. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 78. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9977. Hofstadter, Robert. “Felix Bloch.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 1994. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 64. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/4547. Isidor Isaac Rabi – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 4 Jun 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1944/rabi/biographical/ Jones J, Howden W, Rock P, et al. T1 relaxation time. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org (Accessed on 03 Jun 2024) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-6315 Luiten, A.L. (1999). Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Historical Introduction. In: Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03800-0_1 MacWilliams, B. Russian claims first in magnetic imaging. Nature426, 375 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/426375a “Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).” National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and BioEngineering. https://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri “The Man Who Did Not Win.” Sydney Morning Herald. October 17, 2003. https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-man-who-did-not-win-20031017-gdhlpn.html Odeblad E, Lindström G. Some preliminary observations on the proton magnetic resonance in biologic samples. Acta Radiol Suppl (Stockholm). 2008 Aug;434:57-61. doi: 10.1080/02841850802133337 Paul C. Lauterbur – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 4 Jun 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2003/lauterbur/biographical/ Plewes, Donald B., PhD, and Walter Kucharczyk, PhD. “Physics of MRI: A Primer.” MR Physics for Clinicians. April 12, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmri.23642 Prasad, Amit. “The (Amorphous) Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).” Social Studies of Science, vol. 37, no. 4, 2007, pp. 533–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25474534 Purcell, E.M. et al. “Resonance Absorption by Nuclear Magnetic Moments in a Solid.” Physics Review. January 1, 1946. https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.69.37 “Raymond Damadian.” Lemelson-MIT. https://lemelson.mit.edu/award-winners/raymond-damadian Sandomir, Richard. “Raymond Damadian, Creator of the First M.R.I. Scanner, Dies at 86.” New York Times. Aug. 17, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/science/raymond-damadian-dead.html Serai, Suraj, PhD, and Tony Dandino. “Why are MRI scans so loud?” Cincinnati Children's Radiology Department Blog. October 13, 2016. https://radiologyblog.cincinnatichildrens.org/whats-with-all-the-noise/ Sullivan, Walter. “Five Named as Winners of Lasker Medical Research Awards.” New York Times. Nov. 15, 1984. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/15/us/five-named-as-winners-of-lasker-medical-research-awards.html National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 78. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9977. Wakefield, Julie. “The ‘Indomitable' MRI.” Smithsonian. June 2000. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-indomitable-mri-29126670/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who invented the MRI? Well, that's actually tricky to say, and it is a topic that still opens debate. In this first part, we'll talk about the various developments in physics that led to the idea of an MRI machine even existing. Research: Bashir U, Rock P, Murphy A, et al. T2 relaxation. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org. https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-16494 Bellis, Mary. "A Guide to Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)." ThoughtCo, Apr. 5, 2023, thoughtco.com/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri-1992133 Bloch, Felix. “The Principle of Nuclear Induction.” Nobel Lecture. Dec. 11, 1952. https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/bloch-lecture-1.pdf Bloembergen, Nicolas. “Edward M. Purcell (1912-97).” Nature. April 17, 1997. https://www.nature.com/articles/386662a0.pdf Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Isidor Isaac Rabi". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isidor-Isaac-Rabi Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Paul Lauterbur". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 May. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Lauterbur Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "nuclear magnetic resonance". Encyclopedia Britannica, 25 Apr. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/science/nuclear-magnetic-resonance Damadian, Raymond, and Jeff Kinley. “Gifted Mind: The Dr. Raymond Damadian Story.” Master Books. 2015. Damadian R. “Tumor detection by nuclear magnetic resonance.” Science. 1971 Mar 19;171(3976):1151-3. doi: 10.1126/science.171.3976.1151 Deutsch, Claudia H. “Patent Fights Aplenty for MRI Pioneer.” New York Times. July 12, 1997. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/12/business/patent-fights-aplenty-for-mri-pioneer.html “Dr. Edward Purcell, 84, Dies; Shared Nobel Prize in Physics.” New York Times. March 10, 1997. https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/10/us/dr-edward-purcell-84-dies-shared-nobel-prize-in-physics.html Drew Z, Jones J, Murphy A, et al. Longitudinal and transverse magnetization. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org (Accessed on 03 Jun 2024) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-60738 "Edward Mills Purcell." National Academy of Sciences. 2000. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 78. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9977 :"Felix Bloch." National Academy of Sciences. 1994. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 64. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/4547 LAUTERBUR, P. Image Formation by Induced Local Interactions: Examples Employing Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Nature242, 190–191 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1038/242190a0 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 1994. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 64. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/4547. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 78. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9977. Hofstadter, Robert. “Felix Bloch.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 1994. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 64. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/4547. Isidor Isaac Rabi – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 4 Jun 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1944/rabi/biographical/ Jones J, Howden W, Rock P, et al. T1 relaxation time. Reference article, Radiopaedia.org (Accessed on 03 Jun 2024) https://doi.org/10.53347/rID-6315 Luiten, A.L. (1999). Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Historical Introduction. In: Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03800-0_1 MacWilliams, B. Russian claims first in magnetic imaging. Nature426, 375 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/426375a “Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).” National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and BioEngineering. https://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri “The Man Who Did Not Win.” Sydney Morning Herald. October 17, 2003. https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-man-who-did-not-win-20031017-gdhlpn.html Odeblad E, Lindström G. Some preliminary observations on the proton magnetic resonance in biologic samples. Acta Radiol Suppl (Stockholm). 2008 Aug;434:57-61. doi: 10.1080/02841850802133337 Paul C. Lauterbur – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Tue. 4 Jun 2024. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2003/lauterbur/biographical/ Plewes, Donald B., PhD, and Walter Kucharczyk, PhD. “Physics of MRI: A Primer.” MR Physics for Clinicians. April 12, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1002/jmri.23642 Prasad, Amit. “The (Amorphous) Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).” Social Studies of Science, vol. 37, no. 4, 2007, pp. 533–60. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25474534 Purcell, E.M. et al. “Resonance Absorption by Nuclear Magnetic Moments in a Solid.” Physics Review. January 1, 1946. https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.69.37 “Raymond Damadian.” Lemelson-MIT. https://lemelson.mit.edu/award-winners/raymond-damadian Sandomir, Richard. “Raymond Damadian, Creator of the First M.R.I. Scanner, Dies at 86.” New York Times. Aug. 17, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/science/raymond-damadian-dead.html Serai, Suraj, PhD, and Tony Dandino. “Why are MRI scans so loud?” Cincinnati Children's Radiology Department Blog. October 13, 2016. https://radiologyblog.cincinnatichildrens.org/whats-with-all-the-noise/ Sullivan, Walter. “Five Named as Winners of Lasker Medical Research Awards.” New York Times. Nov. 15, 1984. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/15/us/five-named-as-winners-of-lasker-medical-research-awards.html National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2000. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 78. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9977. Wakefield, Julie. “The ‘Indomitable' MRI.” Smithsonian. June 2000. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-indomitable-mri-29126670/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's show, we discuss a few of the entries outlined on the website, the Laws of Software. Topics include Atwood's Law on JavaScript, Cunningham's Law on getting answers, Parkinson's Law on getting things done, Goodhart's Law on taking measurements, Hofstadter's Law on inevitable failure, and the Peter Principle.Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.Full show notes and transcript here.

How do humans form 'fuzzy categories'? How does this all relate to essentialism? Is essentialism false? Or is it partially true? And how does this all relate to Critical Rationalism? Picking up where we left off last week, Bruce gets deeper into Douglas Hofstadter's ideas on language and the mind and his assertion that “analogy-making lies at the heart of intelligence.” Bruce considers how Hofstadter's theories may be interwoven with ideas on language and cognition promoted by Steven Pinker in "How the Mind Works" along with, as usual, the epistemology of Karl Popper and David Deutsch. We again consider if this is an inductive theory? And how should critical rationalists view theories like this? Follow us on Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/bnielson01⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support

What should we keep in mind as we venture into this new AI era? Reid Hoffman delivers a speech, entitled Humanity's Hegelian Golden Braid, to address this question. The speech offers six guiding maxims related to AI, humanity, and technology—and weaves through Hegel and Hofstadter, cathedrals and griffins, T.S. Elliot and Hyman Minsky, and more. This speech was originally given by Reid Hoffman in English on May 24, 2024 after accepting an honorary doctorate from the University of Perugia. It's also been translated and delivered by REID AI (an AI version of Reid Hoffman) in nine different languages. For videos of those translated speeches delivered by REID AI, a transcript of the speech in English, and more, please visit: https://www.reidhoffman.org/perugia-speech.

We celebrate the breaking of rules, but… laws? Not so much. This week, David returns to this episodic series to cover six more laws that will level up your game and make you smarter, happier, and richer. (5:08) Newton's First Law of Motion (11:16) Arthur C. Clarke's Second Law (16:07) Sutton's Law (24:47) Amara's Law (32:15) Cunningham's Law (37:17) Hofstadter's Law

This is the first of our two part series (that may or may not be released back-to-back) where Bruce delves into the work Douglas Hofstadter, specifically the book Surfaces and Essences. We consider what is the relationship—if there is any—between critical rationalism and Hofstadter's idea that analogy is a core mechanism of human cognition. Is it fair to criticize Hofstadter's ideas as being inductivism in disguise? Could something like what Hofstadter suggests (i.e. analogy) be central to human consciousness and creation of AGI? Follow us on Twitter: ⁠https://twitter.com/bnielson01⁠ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/four-strands/support

Technology for Mindfulness. How to best utilize technology to youradvantage. The new year is always a good idea to revisit best practices.02:50 Re-introducing Robert Plotkin07:04 Why Technology for Mindfulness11:27 Tech Designed for Addiction15:58 Techniques and Habits for Mindfulness19:11 Time Blocking28:37 Breaking Up Big Tasks for Reward34:22 Hofstadter's Law44:08 Meditation Practice51:52 Tuning out Distractions54:02 Social MediaLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robertplotkin,https://technologyformindfulness.com/Website: blueshiftip.comWant to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple? Reach out tous at almartintalksdata@gmail.com and tell us why you should be next.The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VPTechnical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, businessinnovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun.

Technology for Mindfulness. How to best utilize technology to youradvantage. The new year is always a good idea to revisit best practices.02:50 Re-introducing Robert Plotkin07:04 Why Technology for Mindfulness11:27 Tech Designed for Addiction15:58 Techniques and Habits for Mindfulness19:11 Time Blocking28:37 Breaking Up Big Tasks for Reward34:22 Hofstadter's Law44:08 Meditation Practice51:52 Tuning out Distractions54:02 Social MediaLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robertplotkin,https://technologyformindfulness.com/Website: blueshiftip.comWant to be featured as a guest on Making Data Simple? Reach out tous at almartintalksdata@gmail.com and tell us why you should be next.The Making Data Simple Podcast is hosted by Al Martin, WW VPTechnical Sales, IBM, where we explore trending technologies, businessinnovation, and leadership ... while keeping it simple & fun.

In 1963, the historian Richard Hofstadter gave a famous lecture at Oxford (later an essay in Harper's) arguing that a “paranoid style” was a recurrent strain in American politics. Hofstadter cited examples ranging from the Anti-Masons of the 1830s to MCarthyism. Today, pundits often turn to the concept of a “paranoid style” when trying to explain Trumpism. Why has Hofstadter's idea been so influential? And does it really explain anything at all? Adam discusses these questions with Nick Witham, the author of Popularizing the Past, a brilliant new study of Cold War-era historians who shaped an understanding of American history far beyond the groves of academia. The Last Best Hope? is the podcast of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. Presenter: Adam Smith. Producer: Emily Williams. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob and Ryan watched and break down Season 2, Episode 20 of the Big Bang Theory: The Hofstadter Isotope!**GIVE US A 5 STAR REVIEW ON APPLE PODCASTS AND BE ENTERED IN TO WIN A $100 GIFT CARD TO AMAZON! BETTER LISTEN TO THE EPISODE FOR DETAILS! Click the link below!https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theoretical-nonsense-the-big-bang-theory-watch-a/id1623079414Don't forget to check out Rebecca's brisket video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmZcfiSINyk00:12:11 - The Drake Equation00:29:46 - The differences between the Spider-Mans00:54:01 - Hellblazer Comic00:58:29 - Star Trek Crossover: Deep Space 9 + OG01:04:52 - The Zork buggy version01:09:49 - Sexiest underwear for men01:19:20 - "Couldn't be more wrong" Find us everywhere at: https://linktr.ee/theoreticalnonsense~~*CLICK THE LINK TO SEE OUR IQ POINT HISTORY TOO! *~~-------------------------------------------------Welcome to Theoretical Nonsense! If you're looking for a Big Bang Theory rewatch podcast blended with How Stuff Works, this is the podcast for you!  Hang out with Rob and Ryan where they watch each episode of The Big Bang Theory and break it down scene by scene, and fact by fact, and no spoilers! Ever wonder if the random information Sheldon says is true? We do the research and find out! Is curry a natural laxative, what's the story behind going postal, are fish night lights real? Watch the show with us every other week and join in on the discussion! Email us at theoreticalnonsensepod@gmail.com and we'll read your letter to us on the show! Even if it's bad! :) Music by Alex Grohl. Find official podcast on Apple, Stitcher, and Spotify https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theoretical-nonsense-the-big-bang-theory-watch-a/id1623079414

Episode: 2825 In which our lack of fluency with numbers (innumeracy) threatens our national well-being.  Today, innumeracy.

I discuss my experiences translating "The Revolution of Promises" by Nelson Rodriguez Chartrand. (Send feeback to erik@mathmutation.com)

This Selects episode was originally published on March 28, 2023.  --- Original Show Notes: ---In this episode Punya and Sean discuss some of the highlights captured in a recent interview with Senior Research Fellow from Harvard's Graduate School of Education Dr. Chris Dede and talk about AI and education.Guest Information: Dr. Chris DedeChris Dede is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Education (GSE) who has worked with AI since the 1970s. A former Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard GSE, Dede is a Co-Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute in Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE).More information on Dr. Chris Dede - visit his Wikipedia page.National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education - https://aialoe.orgLinkedInTwitter @chrs_dedeSilver Lining for Learning - https://silverliningforlearning.orgDr. Melissa WarrMelissa Warr, a graduate of ASU's Learning, Literacies, and Technologies PhD program, is an Assistant Professor of Learning Technology and Education Design at New Mexico State University. Links from the conversation: Learning Futures Collaborative: Future of AI in Education & Diversity, Equity, and InclusionChiang, Ted. (2023, February). ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web. The New Yorker.Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Basic Books. [openlibrary.org link]Weizenbaum, Joseph. (1966). ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Communications of the ACM, 9(1), 36-45. [pdf link]Dreyfus, Hubert (1972). What Computers Can't Do. New York: MIT Press. [archive.org link]Chinese room argument: Searle, John (1980). Minds, Brains, and Programs. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy link]Quandary GameCicero, Facebook's A.I. “Diplomacy” gameDALL-E 2, AI art platformDieterle, E., Dede, C. & Walker, M. The cyclical ethical effects of using artificial intelligence in education. AI & Soc (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01497-wAshok Goel's AI “Jill Watson”, Georgia Tech University [TEDx Talk link]Mursion, workforce immersive learningEthan Mollick's substack, professor at the Wharton School of the University of PennsylvaniaThe Learning Futures Podcast is jointly produced by Enterprise Technology and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.

El grafito es uno de los materiales más simples del mundo mineral, pero cuando entra en contacto con otros materiales puede adquirir características que lo podrían convertir en un candidato serio para reemplazar a los circuitos electrónicos de silicio. Gracias por sus comentarios, interacciones, apoyo económico y suscripción. Escuche y descargue gratuitamente en MP3 2023/08/01 Grafito y Mariposas de Hofstadter. Gracias por su apoyo a El Explicador en: Patreon, https://www.patreon.com/elexplicador_enriqueganem PayPal, elexplicadorpatrocinio@gmail.com SoundCloud, https://soundcloud.com/el-explicador Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/show/01PwWfs1wV9JrXWGQ2MrbY iTunes, https://podcasts.apple.com/mx/podcast/el-explicador-sitio-oficial/id1562019070 Amazon Music, https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f2656899-46c8-4d0b-85ef-390aaf20f366/el-explicador-sitio-oficial YouTube, https://youtube.com/c/ElExplicadorSitioOficial Twitter @enrique_ganem Lo invitamos a suscribirse a estas redes para recibir avisos de nuestras publicaciones y visitar nuestra página http://www.elexplicador.net. En el título de nuestros trabajos aparece la fecha año/mes/día de grabación, lo que facilita su consulta cronológica, ya sabe usted que el conocimiento cambia a lo largo del tiempo. Siempre leemos sus comentarios, no tenemos tiempo para reponder a cada uno personalmente pero todos son leídos y tomados en cuenta. Este es un espacio de divulgación científica en el que nos interesa informar de forma clara y amena, que le invite a Ud. a investigar sobre los temas tratados y a que Ud. forme su propia opinión. Serán borrados todos los comentarios que promuevan la desinformación, charlatanería, odio, bullying, violencia verbal o incluyan enlaces a páginas que no sean de revistas científicas arbitradas, que sean ofensivos hacia cualquier persona o promuevan alguna tendencia política o religiosa ya sea en el comentario o en la fotografía de perfil. Aclaramos que no somos apolíticos, nos reservamos el derecho de no expresar nuestra opinión política, ya que éste es un canal cuya finalidad es la divulgación científica. ¡Gracias por su preferencia!

This week's episode is inspired by our own story of Hofstadter's Law which is the idea that everything takes longer than you think it's going to take, even when you know it's going to take longer than you expect it to take. The episode is filled with kick-in-butt motivation, so if you've been thinking about starting a project or stepping towards a dream, THIS episode is for you!This is what we spoke about during the episode Once you realise everything takes longer than you think it does, sometimes it stops you from even starting. Embrace the fact that time will pass anyway. Jump in and do it (even if the project takes a while)!Hofstadter's Law gives you a bit of breathing space.If we went according to our original plan for our MerryBody Teacher Training, we would have been finished. But then, we realised we needed more time. And, then more ideas came! So although it's taking longer, it's a better product.Easy does not mean better. Sometimes the hard moments are actually the really beautiful moments.Estée Lauder's business story is an example of a later-in-life success story. Her success came when she was already 40 plus. So, why are we expecting things to happen so fast?It's important to check in with who you are following and getting inspiration from.We can't control everything. But we can control the choices that we make and how we spend our time.Let go of the reins a little, detach from expectations, so you can enjoy the journey. As long as we're taking the steps toward what it is that we would like to create, we are getting closer. It's okay that the journey from A to B is longer than we think.If anyone can do it, you can do it. If you loved this episode, we would love to hear from you, send us an email to carla@themerrymakersisters.com or emma@themerrymakersisters.com or message us on our Facebook and Instagram accounts @themerrymakersisters.Download our FREE Self Care Checklist and you'll find 50 brand new ideas to practice self-care.Always merrymaking,Emma + CarlaP.s if you ever need further help or guidance please contact Lifeline or Beyond Blue. Asking for help is pure courage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Affinity Streaming team is going to tackle a re-watch of EVERY Episode of the Big Bang Theory.  This weeks episode is Season 1, Episode 9.  The Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization!  Hosted by Riley Williams (She's seen every episode) and Contrell Morris (First time watching)

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: AI #19: Hofstadter, Sutskever, Leike, published by Zvi on July 6, 2023 on LessWrong. The big news of the week is OpenAI introducing the Superalignment Taskforce. OpenAI is pledging 20% of compute secured to date towards a four year effort to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment. They plan to share the results broadly. Co-founder and OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever will lead the effort alongside Head of Alignment Jan Leike, and they are hiring to fill out the team. That is serious firepower. The devil, as always, is in the details. Will this be an alignment effort that can work, an alignment effort that cannot possibly work, an initial doomed effort capable of pivoting, or a capabilities push in alignment clothing? It is hard to know. I will be covering these questions in a post soon, and want to take the time to process and get it right. In the meantime, the weekly post covers the many other things that happened in the past seven days. Table of Contents Introduction. Table of Contents. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Commercial LLMs keep the edge. Language Models Don't Offer Mundane Utility. Can you? Fun With Image Generation. Valve says: Keep all that fun away from Steam. They Took Our Jobs. Then they came for America's finest news source. Introducing. If only it were as easy to forget. Reinforcement Learning By Humans From Feedback. United we grok. Costs are not Benefits. Easy mistake to make. Many such cases. Quiet Speculations. Questions that are not so infrequently asked. The Quest for Sane Regulation. Some small good signs. Another Open Letter. EU CEOs call on EU to not act like the EU. The Week in Audio. Odd Lots offers AI fun. No One Would Ever Be So Stupid As To. Is that what you think? Safely Aligning a Smarter than Human AI is Difficult. Formal verification? Rhetorical Innovation. The latest crop of explanations and resources. People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone. Including Douglas Hofstadter. The Lighter Side. Actual progress. Language Models Offer Mundane Utility Open source models often do well on open source benchmarks. So do foreign efforts like Falcon or Ernie. When it comes to actual mundane utility, or tests that were not anticipated in advance, the answer seems to come back somewhat differently. Lmsys.org: Quick note - we've transitioned from the deprecated vicuna benchmark to a more advanced MT-bench, including more challenging tasks and addressing biases/limitations in gpt4 eval. We find OpenChat's performance on MT-bench is similar to wizardlm-13b. That's said, there remains a significant gap between open models and GPT-3.5, which is exactly what we aim to emphasize with MT-bench - to highlight this discrepancy. Though not flawless, it's one step towards a better chatbot evaluation. Please check out our paper/blog for more technical details and leaderboard for complete rankings. Jim Fan: For most of the “in the wild” trials, GPT-3.5 just feels much better than open-source models that claim good performance metrics. Such “vibe gap” is typically caused by inadequate benchmarking. Don't get excited by numbers too quickly. Beware of over-claims. Links: Blog, Leaderboard, Paper. Falcon-40B is down at 5.17. Note that reasoning is the place where GPT-4 has the largest edge. Will they offer all that mundane utility for free? David Chapman thinks that without a moat no one will make any money off of LLMs. Other than Nvidia, of course. Will Manidis: the core innovation of Foundation Model providers is not technical it's allowing VCs to deploy $500m into a deal with basically zero underwriting that's $20m in fees, $100m in carry at a 2x for like . 10 days of memo writing and no customers to reference. David Chapman: Regardless of how useful GPTs turn out to be, I'm skeptical anyone makes much money off of...

Perhaps you've heard of Hofstadter's Law: “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.” In today's episode, SPCT, Gez Smith, offers some tips on how to make peace with the law by adjusting expectations during PI planning, adding your IP iteration to your ART planning board, and implementing a “not going to happen column.”

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Douglas Hofstadter changes his mind on Deep Learning & AI risk (June 2023)?, published by gwern on July 3, 2023 on LessWrong. A podcast interview (posted 2023-06-29) with noted AI researcher Douglas Hofstadter discusses his career and current views on AI. Hofstadter has previously energetically criticized GPT-2/3 models (and deep learning and compute-heavy GOFAI). These criticisms were widely circulated & cited, and apparently many people found Hofstadter a convincing & trustworthy authority when he was negative on deep learning capabilities & prospects, and so I found his comments in this most recent discussion of considerable interest (via Edward Kmett). Below I excerpt from the second half where he discusses DL progress & AI risk: Q: ...Which ideas from GEB are most relevant today? Hofstadter: ...In my book, I Am a Strange Loop, I tried to set forth what it is that really makes a self or a soul. I like to use the word "soul", not in the religious sense, but as a synonym for "I", a human "I", capital letter "I." So, what is it that makes a human being able to validly say "I"? What justifies the use of that word? When can a computer say "I" and we feel that there is a genuine "I" behind the scenes? I don't mean like when you call up the drugstore and the chatbot, or whatever you want to call it, on the phone says, "Tell me what you want. I know you want to talk to a human being, but first, in a few words, tell me what you want. I can understand full sentences." And then you say something and it says, "Do you want to refill a prescription?" And then when I say yes, it says, "Gotcha", meaning "I got you." So it acts as if there is an "I" there, but I don't have any sense whatsoever that there is an "I" there. It doesn't feel like an "I" to me, it feels like a very mechanical process. But in the case of more advanced things like ChatGPT-3 or GPT-4, it feels like there is something more there that merits the word "I." The question is, when will we feel that those things actually deserve to be thought of as being full-fledged, or at least partly fledged, "I"s? I personally worry that this is happening right now. But it's not only happening right now. It's not just that certain things that are coming about are similar to human consciousness or human selves. They are also very different, and in one way, it is extremely frightening to me. They are extraordinarily much more knowledgeable and they are extraordinarily much faster. So that if I were to take an hour in doing something, the ChatGPT-4 might take one second, maybe not even a second, to do exactly the same thing. And that suggests that these entities, whatever you want to think of them, are going to be very soon, right now they still make so many mistakes that we can't call them more intelligent than us, but very soon they're going to be, they may very well be more intelligent than us and far more intelligent than us. And at that point, we will be receding into the background in some sense. We will have handed the baton over to our successors, for better or for worse. And I can understand that if this were to happen over a long period of time, like hundreds of years, that might be okay. But it's happening over a period of a few years. It's like a tidal wave that is washing over us at unprecedented and unimagined speeds. And to me, it's quite terrifying because it suggests that everything that I used to believe was the case is being overturned. Q: What are some things specifically that terrify you? What are some issues that you're really... D. Hofstadter: When I started out studying cognitive science and thinking about the mind and computation, you know, this was many years ago, around 1960, and I knew how computers worked and I knew how extraordinarily rigid they were. You made the slightest typing error and it comp...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Douglas Hoftstadter concerned about AI xrisk, published by Eli Rose on July 3, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Douglas Hofstadter is best known for authoring Godel, Escher, Bach, a book on artificial intelligence (among other things) which is sort of a cult classic. In a recent interview, he says he's terrified of recent AI progress and expresses beliefs similar to many people who focus on AI xrisk. Hoftstadter: The accelerating progress has been so unexpected that it has caught me off guard... not only myself, but many many people. There's a sense of terror akin to an oncoming tsunami that could catch all of humanity off guard. It's not clear whether this could mean the end of humanity in the sense of the systems we've created destroying us, it's not clear if that's the case but it's certainly conceivable. If not, it's also that it just renders humanity a small, almost insignificant phenomenon, compared to something that is far more intelligent and will become as incomprehensible to us as we are to cockroaches. Interviewer: That's an interesting thought. Hoftstadter: Well I don't think it's interesting. I think it's terrifying. I hate it. I think this is the first time he's publicly expressed this, and his views seem to have changed recently. Previously he published this which listed a bunch of silly questions GPT-3 gets wrong and concluded that There are no concepts behind the GPT-3 scenes; rather, there's just an unimaginably huge amount of absorbed text upon which it draws to produce answers though it ended with a gesture to the fast pace of change and inability to predict the future. I randomly tried some of his stumpers on GPT-4 and it gets them right (and I remember being convinced when this came out that GPT-3 could get them right too with a bit of prompt engineering, though I don't remember specifics). I find this a bit emotional because of how much I loved Godel, Escher, Bach in early college. It was my introduction to "real" math and STEM, which I'd previously disliked and been bad at; because of this book, I majored in computer science. It presented a lot of philosophical puzzles for and problems with AI, and gave beautiful, eye-opening answers to them. I think Hofstadter expected us to understand AI much better before we got to this level of capabilities; expected more of the type of understanding his parables and thought experiments could sometimes create. Now I work professionally on situations along the lines of what he describes in the interview (and feel a similar way about them) — it's a weird way to meet Hofstadter again. See also Gwern's post on LessWrong. Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org

Douglas Hofstadter is a professor of Cognitive Science and Comparative Literature at Indiana University in Bloomington. His research into cognitive science includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics. His 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid won both the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction. His AI interests explore the subtlest and most slippery aspects of human intelligence, as embodied in deceptively deep analogy problems like ABC is to ABD as XYZ is to what?

Jim talks with Peter Wang about his idea that meaning comes from making consequential choices. They discuss the immediacy of consequences, the modeling of causal loops, the subjective aspect of causality, two hundred varieties of shampoo, the intersubjective realm, middle-class consumer culture, the desire to be a live player, examples from Succession and Mad Men, the manufacture & commodification of desire, alternative systems of meaning, levels of patterns, false consequence, atomized individualism & the roots of the meaning crisis, the Ruttian meaning of life, negative vs positive freedom, Krishnamurti's choiceless awareness, the new ability to create networked tribes, the liminal, clockwork oranges, facing the Hofstadter terror, taking our place in the mandala of the universe, and much more. "Meaning of Life" - Peter Wang on the Lex Fridman Podcast JRS EP16 - Anaconda CTO Peter Wang on The Distributed Internet JRS EP143 - John Vervaeke Part 1: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis "Freedom 2.0 / Towards a New Physics of Human Systems," by Peter Wang Mental Models w/ Peter Wang - The Stoa series The Gervais Principle, by Venkatesh G. Rao Krishnamurti's Core Teachings A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess Peter Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Anaconda and one of the most impactful leaders and developers in the Python community. He is also a physicist and philosopher.

In this episode Punya and Sean discuss some of the highlights captured in a recent interview with Senior Research Fellow from Harvard's Graduate School of Education Dr. Chris Dede and talk about AI and education.Guest Information: Dr. Chris DedeChris Dede is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard's Graduate School of Education (GSE) who has worked with AI since the 1970s. A former Timothy E. Wirth Professor of Learning Technologies at Harvard GSE, Dede is a Co-Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute in Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE).More information on Dr. Chris Dede - visit his Wikipedia page.National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education - https://aialoe.orgLinkedInTwitter @chrs_dedeSilver Lining for Learning - https://silverliningforlearning.orgDr. Melissa WarrMelissa Warr, a graduate of ASU's Learning, Literacies, and Technologies PhD program, is an Assistant Professor of Learning Technology and Education Design at New Mexico State University. Links from the conversation: Learning Futures Collaborative: Future of AI in Education & Diversity, Equity, and InclusionChiang, Ted. (2023, February). ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web. The New Yorker. Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1979). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Basic Books. [openlibrary.org link]Weizenbaum, Joseph. (1966). ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Communications of the ACM, 9(1), 36-45. [pdf link]Dreyfus, Hubert (1972). What Computers Can't Do. New York: MIT Press. [archive.org link]Chinese room argument: Searle, John (1980). Minds, Brains, and Programs. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy link]Quandary GameCicero, Facebook's A.I. “Diplomacy” gameDALL-E 2, AI art platformDieterle, E., Dede, C. & Walker, M. The cyclical ethical effects of using artificial intelligence in education. AI & Soc (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01497-wAshok Goel's AI “Jill Watson”, Georgia Tech University [TEDx Talk link]Mursion, workforce immersive learningEthan Mollick's substack, professor at the Wharton School of the University of PennsylvaniaThe Learning Futures Podcast is jointly produced by Enterprise Technology and the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.

La ley de HofstadterProductividad.Todo lleva más tiempo del planificado incluso aunque lo planifiques.Time blocking con tiempo de descanso pero también margen.Trabaja 6 horas en papel y así trabajarás 7h. Pero si lo haces sabiéndolo trabajarás más.Asúmelo.Únete a la comunidad de Emprendedores desde https://borjagiron.com/comunidadRecuerda suscribirte al podcast para no perderte el resto de noticias, novedades, trucos y herramientas para mejorar tu productividad. Si te ha gustado comparte el episodio, dale a me gusta, deja 5 estrellas o comenta el episodio. Me ayudarás a seguir creando episodios completamente gratis.También puedes acceder completamente gratis a todos mis cursos de marketing digital de desde https://triunfacontublog.com Y si quieres puedes unirte a mi newsletter privada y gratuita de https://borjagiron.comSoy Borja Girón, has escuchado el podcast Productividad Máxima, nos escuchamos en el próximo episodio.

In the one hundred and thirteenth episode we explore the Planning Fallacy, starting with Trump underestimating how long it takes to build a wall and count votes.In Mark's British Politics Corner we look at the planning (or lack thereof) for Brexit.In the Fallacy in the Wild section, we check out examples from Only Fools and Horses, Glory, The Great British Bake Off, and Hofstadter's Law.Jim and Mark go head to head in Fake News, the game in which Mark has to guess which one of three Trump quotes Jim made upThen we talk about red wave which turned out to be a small ketchup stain.And finally, we round up some of the other crazy Trump stories from the past week.The full show notes for this episode can be found at https://fallacioustrump.com/ft113 You can contact the guys at pod@fallacioustrump.com, on Twitter @FallaciousTrump, or facebook at facebook.com/groups/fallacioustrumpSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/fallacious-trump/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on language in the military has prompted thoughts about the "implausible deniability" of "Let's Go Brandon"--a phrase that "mocks the idea we have to mince words." The three of them unpack the "regimentation" of the phrase, the way it rubs off on associated signs, and discusses what drill sergeants on Parris Island really do say. They speculates on the creepy, Dark Mirror-esque similarity between the deciphering of "Q-drops" and academic critique. Turning back to her work on basic training, Janet unpacks the power of "semiotic callousing." Mentioned in this episode: "Code Words and Crumbs," Brandeis Magazine "Crybabies and Snowflakes," Download from Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, edited by Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Cambridge University Press, 2020. Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth. Hofstadter, Richard The paranoid style in American politics." 1964. Lepselter, Susan, The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny. University of Michigan, 2016 Trollope, Anthony. Marion Fay: a Novel. Vol. 29. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1883. Silverstein, Michael. "Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology." In Semiotic mediation, pp. 219-259. Academic Press, 1985. Listen to the episode here Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on language in the military has prompted thoughts about the "implausible deniability" of "Let's Go Brandon"--a phrase that "mocks the idea we have to mince words." The three of them unpack the "regimentation" of the phrase, the way it rubs off on associated signs, and discusses what drill sergeants on Parris Island really do say. They speculates on the creepy, Dark Mirror-esque similarity between the deciphering of "Q-drops" and academic critique. Turning back to her work on basic training, Janet unpacks the power of "semiotic callousing." Mentioned in this episode: "Code Words and Crumbs," Brandeis Magazine "Crybabies and Snowflakes," Download from Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, edited by Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Cambridge University Press, 2020. Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth. Hofstadter, Richard The paranoid style in American politics." 1964. Lepselter, Susan, The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny. University of Michigan, 2016 Trollope, Anthony. Marion Fay: a Novel. Vol. 29. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1883. Silverstein, Michael. "Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology." In Semiotic mediation, pp. 219-259. Academic Press, 1985. Listen to the episode here Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on language in the military has prompted thoughts about the "implausible deniability" of "Let's Go Brandon"--a phrase that "mocks the idea we have to mince words." The three of them unpack the "regimentation" of the phrase, the way it rubs off on associated signs, and discusses what drill sergeants on Parris Island really do say. They speculates on the creepy, Dark Mirror-esque similarity between the deciphering of "Q-drops" and academic critique. Turning back to her work on basic training, Janet unpacks the power of "semiotic callousing." Mentioned in this episode: "Code Words and Crumbs," Brandeis Magazine "Crybabies and Snowflakes," Download from Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, edited by Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Cambridge University Press, 2020. Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth. Hofstadter, Richard The paranoid style in American politics." 1964. Lepselter, Susan, The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny. University of Michigan, 2016 Trollope, Anthony. Marion Fay: a Novel. Vol. 29. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1883. Silverstein, Michael. "Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology." In Semiotic mediation, pp. 219-259. Academic Press, 1985. Listen to the episode here Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on language in the military has prompted thoughts about the "implausible deniability" of "Let's Go Brandon"--a phrase that "mocks the idea we have to mince words." The three of them unpack the "regimentation" of the phrase, the way it rubs off on associated signs, and discusses what drill sergeants on Parris Island really do say. They speculates on the creepy, Dark Mirror-esque similarity between the deciphering of "Q-drops" and academic critique. Turning back to her work on basic training, Janet unpacks the power of "semiotic callousing." Mentioned in this episode: "Code Words and Crumbs," Brandeis Magazine "Crybabies and Snowflakes," Download from Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, edited by Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Cambridge University Press, 2020. Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth. Hofstadter, Richard The paranoid style in American politics." 1964. Lepselter, Susan, The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny. University of Michigan, 2016 Trollope, Anthony. Marion Fay: a Novel. Vol. 29. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1883. Silverstein, Michael. "Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology." In Semiotic mediation, pp. 219-259. Academic Press, 1985. Listen to the episode here Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Elizabeth and John talk with Brandeis linguistic anthropologist Janet McIntosh about the language of US alt-right movements. Janet's current book project on language in the military has prompted thoughts about the "implausible deniability" of "Let's Go Brandon"--a phrase that "mocks the idea we have to mince words." The three of them unpack the "regimentation" of the phrase, the way it rubs off on associated signs, and discusses what drill sergeants on Parris Island really do say. They speculates on the creepy, Dark Mirror-esque similarity between the deciphering of "Q-drops" and academic critique. Turning back to her work on basic training, Janet unpacks the power of "semiotic callousing." Mentioned in this episode: "Code Words and Crumbs," Brandeis Magazine "Crybabies and Snowflakes," Download from Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, edited by Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Cambridge University Press, 2020. Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth. Hofstadter, Richard The paranoid style in American politics." 1964. Lepselter, Susan, The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny. University of Michigan, 2016 Trollope, Anthony. Marion Fay: a Novel. Vol. 29. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, 1883. Silverstein, Michael. "Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology." In Semiotic mediation, pp. 219-259. Academic Press, 1985. Listen to the episode here Read the transcript here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Brian Potter is the author of the excellent Construction Physics blog, where he discusses why the construction industry has been slow to industrialize and innovate.He explains why:* Construction isn't getting cheaper and faster,* We should have mile-high buildings and multi-layer non-intersecting roads,* “Ugly” modern buildings are simply the result of better architecture,* China is so great at building things,* Saudi Arabia's Line is a waste of resources,* Environmental review makes new construction expensive and delayed,* and much much more!Watch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here.Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.More really cool guests coming up; subscribe to find out about future episodes!You may also enjoy my interviews with Tyler Cowen (about talent, collapse, & pessimism of sex). Charles Mann (about the Americas before Columbus & scientific wizardry), and Austin Vernon about (Energy Superabundance, Starship Missiles, & Finding Alpha).If you end up enjoying this episode, I would be super grateful if you share it, post it on Twitter, send it to your friends & group chats, and throw it up wherever else people might find it. Can't exaggerate how much it helps a small podcast like mine.A huge thanks to Graham Bessellieu for editing this podcast and Mia Aiyana for producing its transcript.Timestamps(0:00) - Why Saudi Arabia's Line is Insane, Unrealistic, and Never going to Exist (06:54) - Designer Clothes & eBay Arbitrage Adventures (10:10) - Unique Woes of The Construction Industry  (19:28) - The Problems of Prefabrication (26:27) - If Building Regulations didn't exist… (32:20) - China's Real Estate Bubble, Unbound Technocrats, & Japan(44:45) - Automation and Revolutionary Future Technologies (1:00:51) - 3D Printer Pessimism & The Rising Cost of Labour(1:08:02) - AI's Impact on Construction Productivity(1:17:53) - Brian Dreams of Building a Mile High Skyscraper(1:23:43) - Deep Dive into Environmentalism and NEPA(1:42:04) - Software is Stealing Talent from Physical Engineering(1:47:13) - Gaps in the Blog Marketplace of Ideas(1:50:56) - Why is Modern Architecture So Ugly?(2:19:58) - Advice for Aspiring Architects and Young Construction PhysicistsTranscriptWhy Saudi Arabia's Line is Insane, Unrealistic, and Never going to Exist Dwarkesh Patel Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Brian Potter, who is an engineer and the author of the excellent Construction Physics blog, where he writes about how the construction industry works and why it has been slow to industrialize and innovate. It's one of my favorite blogs on the internet, and I highly, highly recommend that people check it out. Brian, my first question is about The Line project in Saudi Arabia. What are your opinions? Brian Potter It's interesting how Saudi Arabia and countries in the Middle East, in general, are willing to do these big, crazy, ambitious building projects and pour huge amounts of money into constructing this infrastructure in a way that you don't see a huge amount in the modern world. China obviously does this too in huge amounts, some other minor places do as well, but in general, you don't see a whole lot of countries building these big, massive, incredibly ambitious projects. So on that level, it's interesting, and it's like, “Yes, I'm glad to see that you're doing this,” but the actual project is clearly insane and makes no sense. Look at the physical arrangement layout–– there's a reason cities grow in two dimensions. A one-dimensional city is the worst possible arrangement for transportation. It's the maximum amount of distance between any two points. So just from that perspective, it's clearly crazy, and there's no real benefit to it other than perhaps some weird hypothetical transportation situation where you had really fast point-to-point transportation. It would probably be some weird bullet train setup; maybe that would make sense. But in general, there's no reason to build a city like that. Even if you wanted to build an entirely enclosed thing (which again doesn't make a huge amount of sense), you would save so much material and effort if you just made it a cube. I would be more interested in the cube than the line. [laughs] But yeah, those are my initial thoughts on it. I will be surprised if it ever gets built. Dwarkesh Patel Are you talking about the cube from the meme about how you can put all the humans in the world in a cube the size of Manhattan? Brian Potter Something like that. If you're just going to build this big, giant megastructure, at least take advantage of what that gets you, which is minimum surface area to volume ratio.Dwarkesh Patel Why is that important? Would it be important for temperature or perhaps other features? Brian Potter This is actually interesting because I'm actually not sure how sure it would work with a giant single city. In general, a lot of economies of scale come from geometric effects. When something gets bigger, your volume increases a lot faster than your surface area does. So for something enclosed, like a tank or a pipe, the cost goes down per thing of unit you're transporting because you can carry a larger amount or a smaller amount of material. It applies to some extent with buildings and construction because the exterior wall assembly is a really burdensome, complicated, and expensive assembly. A building with a really big floor plate, for instance, can get more area per unit, per amount of exterior wall. I'm not sure how that actually works with a single giant enclosed structure because, theoretically, on a small level, it would apply the same way. Your climate control is a function of your exterior surface, at some level, and you get more efficient climate control if you have a larger volume and less area that it can escape from. But for a giant city, I actually don't know if that works, and it may be worse because you're generating so much heat that it's now harder to pump out. For examples like the urban heat island effect, where these cities generate massive amounts of waste heat, I don't know if that would work if it didn't apply the same way. I'm trying to reach back to my physics classes in college, so I'm not sure about the actual mechanics of that. Generally though, that's why you'd want to perhaps build something of this size and shape. Dwarkesh Patel What was the thought process behind designing this thing? Because Scott Alexander had a good blog post about The Line where he said, presumably, that The Line is designed to take up less space and to use less fuel because you can just use the same transportation across. But the only thing that Saudi Arabia has is space and fuel. So what is the thought process behind this construction project? Brian PotterI get the sense that a lot of committees have some amount of success in building big, impressive, physical construction projects that are an attraction just by virtue of their size and impressiveness. A huge amount of stuff in Dubai is something in this category, and they have that giant clock tower in Jeddah, the biggest giant clock building and one of the biggest buildings in the world, or something like that. I think, on some level, they're expecting that you would just see a return from building something that's really impressive or “the biggest thing on some particular axis”. So to some extent, I think they're just optimizing for big and impressive and maybe not diving into it more than that. There's this theory that I think about every so often. It's called the garbage can theory of organizational decision-making, which basically talks about how the choices that organizations make are not the result of any particular recent process. They are the result of how, whenever a problem comes up, people reach into the garbage can of potential solutions. Then whatever they pull out of the garbage can, that's the decision that they end up going with, regardless of how much sense it makes. It was a theory that was invented by academics to describe decision-making in academia. I think about that a lot, especially with reference to big bureaucracies and governments. You can just imagine the draining process of how these decisions evolve. Any random decision can be made, especially when there's such a disconnect between the decision-makers and technical knowledge.Designer Clothes & eBay Arbitrage Adventures Dwarkesh PatelTell me about your eBay arbitrage with designer clothes. Brian Potter Oh man, you really did dive deep. Yeah, so this was a small business that I ran seven or eight years ago at this point. A hobby of mine was high-end men's fashion for a while, which is a very strange hobby for an engineer to have, but there you go. That hobby centers around finding cheap designer stuff, because buying new can be overwhelmingly expensive. However, a lot of times, you can get clothes for a very cheap price if you're even a little bit motivated. Either it shows up on eBay, or it shows up in thrift stores if you know what to look for. A lot of these clothes can last because they're well-made. They last a super, super, super long time–– even if somebody wore it for 10 years or something, it could be fine. So a lot of this hobby centered around finding ways to get really nice clothes cheaply. Majority of it was based around eBay, but it was really tedious to find really nice stuff on eBay. You had to manually search for a bunch of different brands, filter out the obviously bad ones, search for typos in brands, put in titles, and stuff like that. I was in the process of doing this, and I thought, “Oh, this is really annoying. I should figure out a way to automate this process.” So I made a very simple web app where when you searched for shoes or something, it would automatically search the very nice brands of shoes and all the typos of the brand name. Then it would just filter out all the junk and let you search through the good stuff. I set up an affiliate system, basically. So anybody else that used it, I would get a kick of the sales. While I was interested in that hobby, I ran this website for a few years, and it was reasonably successful. It was one of the first things I did that got any real traction on the internet, but it was never successful in proportion to how much effort it took to maintain and update it. So as I moved away from the hobby, I eventually stopped putting time and effort into maintaining the website. I'm curious as to how you even dug that up. Dwarkesh Patel I have a friend who was with you at the Oxford Refugees Conference, Connor Tabarrok. I don't know if you remember him. Brian Potter Nice. Dwarkesh Patel Yeah. Finding other information about you on the internet was quite difficult actually. You've somehow managed to maintain your anonymity. If you're willing to reveal, what was the P&L of this project? Brian Potter Oh, it made maybe a few hundred dollars a month for a few years, but I only ever ran it as a side hobby business, basically. So in terms of time per my effort or whatever, I'm sure it was very low. Pennies to an hour or something like that. Unique Woes of The Construction Industry   Dwarkesh Patel A broad theme that I've gotten from your post is that the construction industry is plagued with these lossy feedback loops, a lack of strong economies of scale, regulation, and mistakes being very costly. Do you think that this is a general characteristic of many industries in our world today, or is there something unique about construction? Brian Potter Interesting question. One thing you think of is that there are a lot of individual factors that are not unique at all. Construction is highly regulated, but it's not necessarily more regulated than medical devices or jet travel, or even probably cars, to some extent, which have a whole vat of performance criteria they need to hit. With a couple of things like land use, for example, people say, “Oh, the land requirements, could you build it on-site,” explaining how those kinds of things make it difficult. But there is a lot that falls into this category that doesn't really share the same structure of how the construction industry works.I think it's the interaction of all those effects. One thing that I think is perhaps underappreciated is that the systems of a building are really highly coupled in a way that a lot of other things are. If you're manufacturing a computer, the hard drive is somewhat independent from the display and somewhat independent from the power supply. These things are coupled, but they can be built by independent people who don't necessarily even talk to each other before being assembled into one structured thing. A building is not really like that at all. Every single part affects every single other part. In some ways, it's like biology. So it's very hard to change something that doesn't end up disrupting something else. Part of that is because a job's building is to create a controlled interior environment, meaning, every single system has to run through and around the surfaces that are creating that controlled interior. Everything is touching each other. Again, that's not unique. Anything really highly engineered, like a plane or an iPhone, share those characteristics to some extent. In terms of the size of it and the relatively small amount you're paying in terms of unit size or unit mass, however, it's quite low. Dwarkesh Patel Is transportation cost the fundamental reason you can't have as much specialization and modularity?Brian Potter Yeah, I think it's really more about just the way a building is. An example of this would be how for the electrical system of your house, you can't have a separate box where if you needed to replace the electrical system, you could take the whole box out and put the new box in. The electrical system runs through the entire house. Same with plumbing. Same with the insulation. Same with the interior finishes and stuff like that. There's not a lot of modularity in a physical sense. Dwarkesh Patel Gotcha. Ben Kuhn  had this interesting comment on your article where he pointed out that many of the reasons you give for why it's hard to innovate in construction, like sequential dependencies and the highly variable delivery timelines are also common in software where Ben Koon works. So why do you think that the same sort of stagnation has not hit other industries that have superficially similar characteristics, like software? Brian Potter How I think about that is that you kind of see a similar structure in anything that's project-based or anything where there's an element of figuring out what you're doing while you're doing it. Compared to a large-scale manufacturing option where you spend a lot of time figuring out what exactly it is that you're building. You spend a lot of time designing it to be built and do your first number of runs through it, then you tweak your process to make it more efficient. There's always an element of tweaking it to make it better, but to some extent, the process of figuring out what you're doing is largely separate from the actual doing of it yourself. For a project-based industry, it's not quite like that. You have to build your process on the fly. Of course, there are best practices that shape it, right? For somebody writing a new software project or anything project-based, like making a movie, they have a rough idea for how it's going to go together. But there's going to be a lot of unforeseen things that kind of come up like that. The biggest difference is that either those things can often scale in a way that you can't with a building. Once you're done with the software project, you can deploy it to 1,000 or 100,000, or 1 million people, right? Once you finish making a movie, 100 million people can watch it or whatever. It doesn't quite look the same with a building. You don't really have the ability to spend a lot of time upfront figuring out how this thing needs to go. You kind of need to figure out a way to get this thing together without spending a huge amount of time that would be justified by the sheer size of it. I was able to dig up a few references for software projects and how often they just have these big, long tails. Sometimes they just go massively, massively over budget. A lot of times, they just don't get completed at all, which is shocking, but because of how many people it can then be deployed to after it's done, the economics of it are slightly different. Dwarkesh Patel I see, yeah. There's a famous law in software that says that a project will take longer than you expect even after you recount for the fact that it will take longer than you expect. Brian Potter Yeah. Hofstadter's law or something like that is what I think it is. Dwarkesh Patel Yeah. I'm curious about what the lack of skill in construction implies for startups. Famously, in software, the fact that there's zero marginal cost to scaling to the next customer is a huge boon to a startup, right? The entire point of which is scaling exponentially. Does that fundamentally constrain the size and quantity of startups you can have in construction if the same scaling is not available?Brian Potter Yeah, that's a really good question. The obvious first part of the answer is that for software, obviously, if you have a construction software company, you can scale it just like any other software business. For physical things, it is a lot more difficult. This lack of zero marginal cost has tended to fight a lot of startups, not just construction ones. But yeah, it's definitely a thing. Construction is particularly brutal because the margins are so low. The empirical fact is that trying what would be a more efficient method of building doesn't actually allow you to do it cheaper and get better margins. The startup that I used to work at, Katerra, their whole business model was basically predicated on that. “Oh, we'll just build all our buildings in these big factories, get huge economies of scale, reduce our costs, and then recoup the billions of dollars that we're pumping into this industry or business.” The math just does not work out. You can't build. In general, you can't build cheap enough to kind of recoup those giant upfront costs. A lot of businesses have been burned that way. The most success you see in prefabrication type of stuff is on the higher end of things where you can get higher margins. A lot of these prefab companies and stuff like that tend to target the higher end of the market, and you see a few different premiums for that. Obviously, if you're targeting the higher end, you're more likely to have higher margins. If you're building to a higher level of quality, that's easier to do in a factory environment. So the delta is a lot different, less enormous than it would be. Building a high level of quality is easier to do in a factory than it is in the field, so a lot of buildings or houses that are built to a really high level of energy performance, for instance, need a really, really high level of air sealing to minimize how much energy this house uses. You tend to see a lot more houses like that built out of prefab construction and other factory-built methods because it's just physically more difficult to achieve that on-site. The Problems of Prefabrication Dwarkesh Patel Can you say more about why you can't use prefabrication in a factory to get economies of scale? Is it just that the transportation costs will eat away any gains you get? What is going on? Brian PotterThere's a combination of effects. I haven't worked through all this, we'll have to save this for the next time. I'll figure it out more by then. At a high level, it's that basically the savings that you get from like using less labor or whatever is not quite enough to offset your increased transportation costs. One thing about construction, especially single-family home construction, is that a huge percentage of your costs are just the materials that you're using, right? A single-family home is roughly 50% labor and 50% materials for the construction costs. Then you have development costs, land costs, and things like that. So a big chunk of that, you just can't move to the factory at all, right?  You can't really build a foundation in a factory. You could prefab the foundation, but it doesn't gain you anything. Your excavation still has to be done on-site, obviously. So a big chunk can't move to the factory at all. For ones that can, you still basically have to pay the same amount for materials. Theoretically, if you're building truly huge volume, you could get material volume discounts, but even then, it's probably not looking at things like asset savings. So you can cut out a big chunk of your labor costs, and you do see that in factory-built construction, right? These prefab companies are like mobile home companies. They have a small fraction of labor as their costs, which is typical of a factory in general, but then they take out all that labor cost while they still have their high material costs, and then they have overhead costs of whatever the factory has cost them. Then you have your additional overhead cost of just transporting it to site, which is pretty limited. The math does not really work out in favor of prefab, in terms of being able to make the cost of building dramatically cheaper. You can obviously build a building in a prefab using prefab-free methods and build a successful construction business, right? Many people do. But in terms of dramatically lowering your costs, you don't really see that. Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, yeah. Austin Vernon has an interesting blog post about why there's not more prefabricated homes. The two things he points out were transportation costs, and the other one was that people prefer to have homes that have unique designs or unique features. When I was reading it, it actually occurred to me that maybe they're actually both the result of the same phenomenon. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but have you heard of the Alchian-Allen theorem in economics? Brian Potter Maybe, but I don't think so. Dwarkesh Patel Basically, it's the idea that if you increase the cost of some category of goods in a fixed way––let's say you tax oranges and added a $1 tax to all oranges, or transportation for oranges gets $1 more expensive for all oranges––people will shift consumption towards the higher grade variety because now, the ratio of the cost between the higher, the more expensive orange and the less expensive orange has decreased because of the increase in fixed costs. It seems like you could use that argument to also explain why people have strong preferences for uniqueness and all kinds of design in manufactured houses. Since transportation costs are so high, that's basically a fixed cost, and that fixed cost has the effect of making people shift consumption towards higher-grade options. I definitely think that's true. Brian PotterI would maybe phrase this as, “The construction industry makes it relatively comparatively cheap to deliver a highly customized option compared to a really repetitive option.” So yeah, the ratio between a highly customized one and just a commodity one is relatively small. So you see a kind of industry built around delivering somewhat more customized options. I do think that this is a pretty broad intuition that people just desire too much customization from their homes. That really prevents you from having a mass-produced offering. I do think that is true to some extent. One example is the Levittown houses, which were originally built in huge numbers–– exactly the same model over and over again. Eventually, they had to change their business model to be able to deliver more customized options because the market shipped it. I do think that the effect of that is basically pretty overstated. Empirically, you see that in practice, home builders and developers will deliver fairly repetitive housing. They don't seem to have a really hard time doing that. As an example, I'm living in a new housing development that is just like three or four different houses copy-pasted over and over again in a group of 50. The developer is building a whole bunch of other developments that are very similar in this area. My in-laws live in a very similar development in a whole different state. If you just look like multi-family or apartment housing, it's identical apartments, you know, copy-pasted over and over again in the same building or a bunch of different buildings in the same development. You're not seeing huge amounts of uniqueness in these things. People are clearly willing to just live in these basically copy-pasted apartments. It's also quite possible to get a pretty high amount of product variety using a relatively small number of factors that you vary, right? I mean, the car industry is like this, where there are enough customization options. I was reading this book a while ago that was basically pushing back against the idea that the car industry pre-fifties and sixties we just offering a very uniform product. They basically did the math, and the number of customization options on their car was more than the atoms in the universe. Basically just, there are so many different options. All the permutations, you know, leather seats and this type of stereo and this type of engine, if you add it all up, there's just a huge, massive number of different combinations. Yeah, you can obviously customize the house a huge amount, just by the appliances that you have and the finishes that are in there and the paint colors that you choose and the fixtures and stuff like that. It would not really theoretically change the underlying way the building comes together. So regarding the idea that the fundamental demand for variety is a major obstruction, I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence for that in the construction industry. If Construction Regulation Vanished… Dwarkesh Patel I asked Twitter about what I should ask you, and usually, I don't get interesting responses but the quality of the people and the audience that knows who you are was so high that actually, all the questions I got were fascinating. So I'm going to ask you some questions from Twitter. Brian Potter Okay. Dwarkesh Patel 0:26:45Connor Tabarrok asks, “What is the most unique thing that would or should get built in the absence of construction regulation?”Brian Potter Unique is an interesting qualifier. There are a lot of things that just like should get built, right? Massive amounts of additional housing and creating more lands in these really dense urban environments where we need it, in places like San Francisco–– just fill in a big chunk of that bay. It's basically just mud flat and we should put more housing on it. “Unique thing” is more tricky. One idea that I really like (I read this in the book, The Book Where's My Flying Car),  is that it's basically crazy that our cities are designed with roads that all intersect with each other. That's an insane way to structure a material flow problem. Any sane city would be built with multiple layers of like transportation where each one went in a different direction so your flows would just be massively, massively improved. That just seems like a very obvious one.If you're building your cities from scratch and had your druthers, you would clearly want to build them and know how big they were gonna get, right? So you could plan very long-term in a way that so these transportation systems didn't intersect with each other, which, again, almost no cities did. You'd have the space to scale them or run as much throughput through them as you need without bringing the whole system to a halt. There's a lot of evidence saying that cities tend to scale based on how much you can move from point A to point B through them. I do wonder whether if you changed the way they went together, you could unlock massively different cities. Even if you didn't unlock massive ones, you could perhaps change the agglomeration effects that you see in cities if people could move from point A to point B much quicker than they currently can. Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, I did an episode about the book, where's my flying car with Rohit Krishnan. I don't know if we discussed this, but an interesting part of the book is where he talks about transistor design. If you design transistors this way, can you imagine how slow they would be? [laughs] Okay, so Simon Grimm asks, “What countries are the best at building things?”Brian Potter This is a good question. I'm going to sort of cheat a little bit and do it in terms of space and time, because I think most countries that are doing a good job at building massive amounts of stuff are not ones that are basically doing it currently.The current answer is like China, where they just keep building–– more concrete was used in the last 20 years or so than the entire world used in the time before that, right? They've accomplished massive amounts of urbanization, and built a lot of really interesting buildings and construction. In terms of like raw output, I would also put Japan in the late 20th century on there. At the peak of the concern and wonder of “Is Japan gonna take over the world?”, they were really interested in building stuff quite quickly. They spent a lot of time and effort trying to use their robotics expertise to try to figure out how to build buildings a lot more quickly. They had these like really interesting factories that were designed to basically extrude an entire skyscraper just going up vertically.All these big giant companies and many different factories were trying to develop and trying to do this with robotics. It was a really interesting system that did not end up ever making economic sense, but it is very cool. I think big industrial policy organs of the government basically encouraged a lot of these industrial companies to basically develop prefabricated housing systems. So you see a lot of really interesting systems developed from these sort of industrial companies in a way that you don't see in a lot of other places. From 1850 to maybe 1970 (like a hundred years or something), the US was building huge massive amounts of stuff in a way that lifted up huge parts of the economy, right? I don't know how many thousands of miles of railroad track the US built between like 1850 and 1900, but it was many, many, many thousands of miles of it. Ofcourse, needing to lay all this track and build all these locomotives really sort of forced the development of the machine tool industry, which then led to the development of like better manufacturing methods and interchangeable parts, which of course then led to the development of the automotive industry. Then ofcourse, that explosion just led to even more big giant construction projects. So you really see that this ability to build just big massive amounts of stuff in this virtuous cycle with the US really advanced a lot of technology to raise the standard of development for a super long period of time. So those are my three answers. China's Real Estate Bubble, Unbound Technocrats, and JapanDwarkesh Patel Those three bring up three additional questions, one for each of them! That's really interesting. Have you read The Power Broker, the book about Robert Moses? Brian Potter I think I got a 10th of the way through it. Dwarkesh Patel That's basically a whole book in itself, a 10th of the way. [laughs] I'm a half of the way through, and so far it's basically about the story of how this one guy built a startup within the New York state government that was just so much more effective at building things, didn't have the same corruption and clientelism incompetence. Maybe it turns into tragedy in the second half, but so far it's it seems like we need this guy. Where do we get a second Robert Moses? Do you think that if you had more people like that in government or in construction industries, public works would be more effectively built or is the stagnation there just a result of like other bigger factors? Brian Potter That's an interesting question. I remember reading this article a while ago that was complaining about how horrible Penn Station is in New York. They're basically saying, “Yeah, it would be nice to return to the era of like the sort of unbound technocrat” when these technical experts in high positions of power in government could essentially do whatever they wanted to some extent. If they thought something should be built somewhere, they basically had the power to do it. It's a facet of this problem of how it's really, really hard to get stuff built in the US currently. I'm sure that a part of it is that you don't see these really talented technocrats occupy high positions of government where they can get stuff done. But it's not super obvious to me whether that's the limiting factor. I kind of get the sense that they would end up being bottlenecked by some other part of the process. The whole sort of interlocking set of institutions has just become so risk averse that they would end up just being blocked in a way that they wouldn't when they were operating in the 1950s or 1960s.Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. All right, so speaking of Japan, I just recently learned about the construction there and how they just keep tearing stuff down every 30 to 40 years and rebuilding it. So you have an interesting series of posts on how you would go about building a house or a building that lasts for a thousand years. But I'm curious, how would you build a house or a building that only lasts for 30 or 40 years? If you're building in Japan and you know they're gonna tear it down soon, what changes about the construction process? Brian Potter Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I'm not an expert on Japanese construction, but I think like a lot of their interior walls are basically just paper and stuff like that. I actually think it's kind of surprising that last time I looked, for a lot of their homes, they use a surprising post and beam construction method, which is actually somewhat labor-intensive to do. The US in the early 1800s used a pretty similar method. Then once we started mass producing conventional lumber, we stopped doing that because it was much cheaper to build out of two-by-fours than it was to build big heavy posts. I think the boring answer to that question is that we'd build like how we build mobile homes–– essentially just using pretty thin walls, pretty low-end materials that are put together in a minimal way. This ends up not being that different from the actual construction method that single-family homes use. It just even further economizes and tightens the use of materials–– where a single-family home might use a half inch plywood, they might try to use three-sixteenths or even an eighth inch plywood or something like that. So we'd probably build a pretty similar way to the way most single-family homes and multi-family homes are built currently, but just with even tighter use of materials which perhaps is something that's not super nice about the way that you guys build your homes. But... [laughs]Dwarkesh Patel Okay, so China is the third one here. There's been a lot of talk about a potential real estate bubble in China because they're building housing in places where people don't really need it. Of course, maybe the demographics aren't there to support the demand. What do you think of all this talk? I don't know if you're familiar with it, but is there a real estate bubble that's created by all this competence in building? Brian PotterOh, gosh, yeah, I have no idea. Like you, I've definitely heard talk of it and I've seen the little YouTube clips of them knocking down all these towers that it turns out they didn't need or the developer couldn't, finish or whatever. I don't know a huge amount about that. In general, I wish I knew a lot more about how things are built in China, but the information is in general, so opaque. I generally kind of assume that any particular piece of data that comes out of China has giant error bars on it as to whether it's true or not or what the context surrounding it is. So in general, I do not have a hard opinion about that. Dwarkesh Patel This is the second part of Simon's question, does greater competence and being able to build stuff translate into other good outcomes for these countries like higher GDP or lower rents or other kinds of foreign outcomes? Brian Potter That's a good question. Japan is an interesting place where basically people point to it as an example of, “Here's a country that builds huge amounts of housing and they don't have housing cost increases.” In general, we should expect that dynamic to be true. Right? There's no reason to not think that housing costs are essentially a supply-demand problem where if you built as much as people wanted, the cost would drop. I have no reason to not think that's true. There is a little bit of evidence that sort of suggests that it's impossible to build housing enough to overcome this sort of mechanical obstacle where the cost of it tends to match and rise to whatever people's income level are. The peak and the sort of flattening of housing costs in Japan also parallel when people basically stopped getting raises and income stopped rising in Japan. So I don't have a good sense of, if it ends up being just more driven by some sort of other factors. Generally though I expect the very basic answer of “If you build a lot more houses, the housing will become cheaper.”Dwarkesh PatelRight. Speaking of how the land keeps gaining value as people's income go up, what is your opinion on Georgism? Does that kind of try and make you think that housing is a special asset that needs to be more heavily taxed because you're not inherently doing something productive just by owning land the way you would be if you like built a company or something similar?Brian Potter I don't have any special deep knowledge of Georgism. It's on my list of topics to read more deeply about. I do think in general, taxing encourages you to produce less of something for something that you can't produce less of. It's a good avenue for something to tax more heavily. And yeah, obviously if you had a really high land value tax in these places that have a lot of single-family homes in dense urban areas, like Seattle or San Francisco, that would probably encourage people to use the land a lot more efficiently. So it makes sense to me, but I don't have a ton of special knowledge about it. Dwarkesh Patel All right, Ben Kuhn asked on Twitter, “What construction-related advice would you give to somebody building a new charter city?”Brian Potter That is interesting. I mean, just off the top of my head, I would be interested in whether you could really figure out a way to build using a method that had really high upfront costs. I think it could otherwise be justified, but if you're gonna build 10,000 buildings or whatever all at once, you could really take advantage of that. One kind of thing that you see in the sort of post-World War II era is that we're building huge massive amounts of housing, and a lot of times we're building them all in one place, right? A lot of town builders were building thousands and thousands of houses in one big development all at once. In California, it's the same thing, you just built like 6 or 10 or 15,000 houses in one big massive development. You end up seeing something like that where they basically build this like little factory on their construction site, and then use that to like fabricate all these things. Then you have something that's almost like a reverse assembly line where a crew will go to one house and install the walls or whatever, and then go to the next house and do the same thing. Following right behind them would be the guys doing the electrical system, plumbing, and stuff like that. So this reverse assembly line system would allow you to sort of get these things up really, really fast, in 30 days or something like that. Then you could have a whole house or just thousands and thousands of houses at once. You would want to be able to do something similar where you could just not do the instruction the way that the normal construction is done, but that's hard, right? Centrally planned cities or top-down planned cities never seem to do particularly well, right? For example, the city of Brasilia, the one that was supposed to be a planned city— the age it goes back to the unfettered technocrat who can sort of build whatever he wants. A lot of times, what you want is something that will respond at a low level and organically sort out the factories as they develop. You don't want something that's totally planned from the top-down, that's disconnected from all the sorts of cases on the ground. A lot of the opposition to Robert Moses ended up being that in a certain form, right? He's bulldozing through these cities that are these buildings and neighborhoods that he's not paying attention to at all. So I think, just to go back to the question, trying to plan your city from the top down doesn't have a super, super great track record. In general, you want your city to develop a little bit more organically. I guess I would think to have a good sort of land-use rules that are really thought through well and encourage the things that you want to encourage and not discourage the things that you don't want to discourage. Don't have equity in zoning and allow a lot of mixed-use construction and stuff like that. I guess that's a somewhat boring answer, but I'd probably do something along those lines. Dwarkesh Patel Interesting, interesting. I guess that implies that there would be high upfront costs to building a city because if you need to build 10,000 homes at once to achieve these economies of scale, then you would need to raise like tens of billions of dollars before you could build a charter city. Brian Potter Yeah, if you were trying to lower your costs of construction, but again, if you have the setup to do that, you wouldn't necessarily need to raise it. These other big developments were built by developers that essentially saw an opportunity. They didn't require public funding to do it. They did in the form of loan guarantees for veterans and things like that, but they didn't have the government go and buy the land. Automation and Revolutionary Future Technologies Dwarkesh Patel Right, okay, so the next question is from Austin Vernon. To be honest, I don't understand the question, you two are too smart for me, but hopefully, you'll be able to explain the question and then also answer it. What are your power rankings for technologies that can tighten construction tolerances? Then he gives examples like ARVR, CNC cutting, and synthetic wood products. Brian Potter Yeah, so this is a very interesting question. Basically, because buildings are built manually on site by hand, there's just a lot of variation in what ends up being built, right? There's only so accurately that a person can put something in place if they don't have any sort of age or stuff like that. Just the placement itself of materials tends to have a lot of variation in it and the materials themselves also have a lot of variation in them. The obvious example is wood, right? Where one two by four is not gonna be exactly the same as another two by four. It may be warped, it may have knots in it, it may be split or something like that. Then also because these materials are sitting just outside in the elements, they sort of end up getting a lot of distortion, they either absorb moisture and sort of expand and contract, or they grow and shrink because of the heat. So there's just a lot of variation that goes into putting a building up.To some extent, it probably constrains what you are able to build and how effectively you're able to build it. I kind of gave an example before of really energy efficient buildings and they're really hard to build on-site using conventional methods because the air ceiling is quite difficult to do. You have to build it in a much more precise way than what is typically done and is really easily achieved on-site. So I guess in terms of examples of things that would make that easier, he gives some good ones like engineered lumber, which is where you take lumber and then grind it up into strands or chips or whatever and basically glue them back together–– which does a couple of things. It spreads all the knots and the defects out so they are concentrated and everything tends to be a lot more uniform when it's made like that. So that's a very obvious one that's already in widespread use. I don't really see that making a substantial change.I guess the one exception to that would be this engineered lumber product called mass timber elements, CLT, which is like a super plywood. Plywood is made from tiny little sheet thin strips of wood, right? But CLT is made from two-by-four-dimensional lumber glued across laminated layers. So instead of a 4 by 9 sheet of plywood, you have a 12 by 40 sheet of dimensional lumber glued together. You end up with a lot of the properties of engineered material where it's really dimensionally stable. It can be produced very, very accurately. It's actually funny that a lot of times, the CLT is the most accurate part of the building. So if you're building a building with it, you tend to run into problems where the rest of the building is not accurate enough for it. So even with something like steel, if you're building a steel building, the steel is not gonna be like dead-on accurate, it's gonna be an inch or so off in terms of where any given component is. The CLT, which is built much more accurately, actually tends to show all these errors that have to be corrected. So in some sense, accuracy or precision is a little bit of like a tricky thing because you can't just make one part of the process more precise. In some ways that actually makes things more difficult because if one part is really precise, then a lot of the time, it means that you can't make adjustments to it easily. So if you have this one really precise thing, it usually means you have to go and compensate for something else that is not built quite as precisely. It actually makes advancing precision quite a bit more complicated. AR VR, is something I'm very bullish on. A big caveat of that is assuming that they can just get the basic technology working. The basic intuition there is that right now the way that pieces are, when a building is put together on site, somebody is looking at a set of paper plans, or an iPad or something that tells them where everything needs to go. So they figure that out and then they take a tape measure or use some other method and go figure out where that's marked on the ground. There's all this set-up time that is really quite time consuming and error prone. Again, there's only so much accuracy that a guy dragging a tape 40 feet across site being held by another guy can attain, there's a limit to how accurate that process can be. It's very easy for me to imagine that AR would just project exactly where the components of your building need to go. That would A, allow you a much higher level of accuracy that you can easily get using manual methods. And then B, just reduce all that time it takes to manually measure things. I can imagine it being much, much, much faster as well, so I'm quite bullish on that. At a high level and a slightly lower level, it's not obvious to me if they will be able to get to the level where it just projects it with perfect accuracy right in front of you. It may be the case that a person moving their head around and constantly changing their point of view wont ever be able to project these things with millimeter precision––it's always gonna be a little bit jumpy or you're gonna end up with some sort of hard limit in terms of like how precisely you can project it. My sense is that locator technology will get good enough, but I don't have any principle reason believing that. The other thing is that being able to take advantage of that technology would require you to have a really, really accurate model of your building that locates where every single element is precisely and exactly what its tolerances are. Right now, buildings aren't designed like that, they are built using a comparatively sparse set of drawings that leaves a lot to sort of be interpreted by the people on site doing the work and efforts that have tried to make these models really, really, really precise, have not really paid off a lot of times. You can get returns on it if you're building something really, really complex where there's a much higher premium to being able to make sure you don't make any error, but for like a simple building like a house, the returns just aren't there. So you see really comparatively sparse drawings. Whether it's gonna be able to work worth this upfront cost of developing this really complex, very precise model of where exactly every component is still has to be determined. There's some interesting companies that are trying to move in this direction where they're making it a lot easier to draw these things really, really precisely and whave every single component exactly where it is. So I'm optimistic about that as well, but it's a little bit TBD. Dwarkesh Patel This raises a question that I actually wanted to ask you, which is in your post about why there aren't automatic brick layers. It was a really interesting post. Somebody left in an interesting comment saying that bricks were designed to be handled and assembled by humans. Then you left a response to that, which I thought was really interesting. You said, “The example I always reach for is with steam power and electricity, where replacing a steam engine with an electric motor in your factory didn't do much for productivity. Improving factory output required totally redesigning the factory around the capabilities of electric motors.” So I was kind of curious about if you apply that analogy to construction, then what does that look like for construction? What is a house building process or building building process that takes automation and these other kinds of tools into account? How would that change how buildings are built and how they end up looking in the end? Brian Potter I think that's a good question. One big component of the lack of construction productivity is everything was designed and has evolved over 100 years or 200 years to be easy for a guy or person on the site to manipulate by hand. Bricks are roughly the size and shape and weight that a person can move it easily around. Dimensional lumber is the same. It's the size and shape and weight that a person can move around easily. And all construction materials are like this and the way that they attach together and stuff is the same. It's all designed so that a person on site can sort of put it all together with as comparatively little effort as possible. But what is easy for a person to do is usually not what is easy for a machine or a robot to do, right? You typically need to redesign and think about what your end goal is and then redesign the mechanism for accomplishing that in terms of what is easy to get to make a machine to do. The obvious example here is how it's way easier to build a wagon or a cart that pulls than it is to build a mechanical set of legs that mimics a human's movement. That's just way, way, way easier. I do think that a big part of advancing construction productivity is to basically figure out how to redesign these building elements in a way that is really easy for a machine to produce and a machine to put together. One reason that we haven't seen it is that a lot of the mechanization you see is people trying to mechanize exactly what a person does. You'd need a really expensive industrial robot that can move exactly the way that a human moves more or less. What that might look like is basically something that can be really easily extruded by a machine in a continuous process that wouldn't require a lot of finicky mechanical movements. A good example of this technology is technology that's called insulated metal panels, which is perhaps one of the cheapest and easiest ways to build an exterior wall. What it is, is it's just like a thin layer of steel. Then on top of that is a layer of insulation. Then on top of that is another layer of steel. Then at the end, the steel is extruded in such a way that it can like these inner panels can like lock together as they go. It's basically the simplest possible method of constructing a wall that you can imagine. But that has the structural system and the water barrier, air barrier, and insulation all in this one really simple assembly. Then when you put it together on site, it just locks together. Of course there are a lot of limitations to this. Like if you want to do anything on top of like add windows, all of a sudden it starts to look quite a bit less good. I think things that are really easy for a machine to do can be put together without a lot of persistent measurement or stuff like that in-field. They can just kind of snap together and actually want to fit together. I think that's kind of what it looks like. 3D Printer Pessimism & The Rising Cost of LabourDwarkesh Patel What would the houses or the buildings that are built using this physically look like? Maybe in 50 to 100 years, we'll look back on the houses we have today and say, “Oh, look at that artisanal creation made by humans.” What is a machine that is like designed for robots first or for automation first? In more interesting ways, would it differ from today's buildings? Brian Potter That's a good question. I'm not especially bullish on 3D building printing in general, but this is another example of a building using an extrusion process that is relatively easy to mechanize. What's interesting there is that when you start doing that, a lot of these other bottlenecks become unlocked a little bit. It's very difficult to build a building using a lot of curved exterior surfaces using conventional methods. You can do it, it's quite expensive to do, but there's a relatively straightforward way for a 3D-printed building to do that. They can build that as easily as if it was a straight wall. So you see a lot of interesting curved architecture on these creations and in a few other areas. There's a company that can build this cool undulating facade that people kind of like. So yeah, it unlocks a lot of options. Machines are more constrained in some things that they can do, but they don't have a lot of the other constraints that you would otherwise see. So I think you'll kind of see a larger variety of aesthetic things like that. That said, at the end of the day, I think a lot of the ways a house goes together is pretty well shaped to just the way that a person living inside it would like to use. I think Stewart Brand makes this point in––Dwarkesh Patel Oh, How Buildings Learn. Brian Potter There we go. He basically makes the point that a lot of people try to use dome-shaped houses or octagon-shaped houses, which are good because, again, going back to surface area volume, they include lots of space using the least amount of material possible. So in some theoretical sense, they're quite efficient, but it's actually quite inconvenient to live inside of a building with a really curved wall, right? Furniture doesn't fit up against it nicely, and pictures are hard to hang on a really curved wall. So I think you would see less variation than maybe you might expect. Dwarkesh Patel Interesting. So why are you pessimistic about 3D printers? For construction, I mean. Brian Potter Yeah, for construction. Oh God, so many reasons. Not pessimistic, but just there's a lot of other interesting questions. I mean, so the big obvious one is like right now a 3D printer can basically print the walls of a building. That is a pretty small amount of the value in a building, right? It's maybe 7% or 8%, something like that. Probably not more than 10% of the value in a building. Because you're not printing the foundation, you're not printing like the overhead vertical, or the overhead spanning structure of the building. You're basically just printing the walls. You're not even really printing the second story walls that you have in multiple stories. I don't think they've quite figured that out yet. So it's a pretty small amount of value added to the building. It's frankly a task that is relatively easy to do by manual labor. It's really pretty easy for a crew to basically put up the structure of a house. This is kind of a recurring theme in mechanization or it goes back to what I was talking about to our previous lead. Where it takes a lot of mechanization and a lot of expensive equipment to replace what basically like two or three guys can do in a day or something like that. The economics of it are pretty brutal. So right now it produces a pretty small value. I think that the value of 3D printing is basically entirely predicated on how successful they are at figuring out how to like deliver more components of the building using their system. There are companies that are trying to do this. There's one that got funded not too long ago called Black Diamond, where they have this crazy system that is like a series of 3D printers that would act simultaneously, like each one building a separate house. Then as you progress, you switch out the print head for like a robot arm. Cause a 3D printer is basically like a robot arm with just a particular manipulator at the end, right?So they switch out their print head for like a robot arm, and the robot arm goes and installs different other systems like the windows or the mechanical systems. So you can figure out how to do that reliably where your print head or your printing system is installing a large fraction of the value of the building. It's not clear to me that it's gonna be economic, but it obviously needs to reach that point. It's not obvious to me that they have gotten there yet. It's really quite hard to get a robot to do a lot of these tasks. For a lot of these players, it seems like they're actually moving away from that. I think in ICON is the biggest construction 3D printer company in the US, as far as I know. And as far as I know, they've moved away from trying to install lots of systems in their walls as they get printed. They've kind of moved on to having that installed separately, which I think has made their job a little bit easier, but again, not quite, it's hard to see how the 3D printer can fulfill its promises if it can't do anything just beyond the vertical elements, whichare really, for most construction, quite cheap and simple to build. Dwarkesh Patel Now, if you take a step back and talk how expensive construction is overall, how much of it can just be explained by the Baumol cost effect? As in labor costs are increasing because labor is more productive than other industries and therefore construction is getting more expensive. Brian Potter I think that's a huge, huge chunk of it. The labor fraction hasn't changed appreciably enough. I haven't actually verified that and I need to, but I remember somebody that said that they used to be much different. You sent me some literature related to it. So let's add a slight asterisk on that. But in general the labor cost has remained a huge fraction of the overall cost of the building. Reliably seeing their costs continue to rise, I think there's no reason to believe that that's not a big part of it. Dwarkesh Patel Now, I know this sounds like a question with an obvious answer, but in your post comparing the prices of construction in different countries, you mentioned how the cost of labor and the cost of materials is not as big a determiner of how expensive it is to construct in different places. But what does matter? Is it the amount of government involvement and administrative overhead? I'm curious why those things (government involvement and administrative overhead) have such a high consequence on the cost of construction. Brian Potter Yeah, that's a good question. I don't actually know if I have a unified theory for that. I mean, basically with any heavily regulated thing, any particular task that you're doing takes longer and is less reliable than it would be if it was not done right. You can't just do it as fast as on your own schedule, right? You end up being bottlenecked by government processes and it reduces and narrows your options. So yeah, in general, I would expect that to kind of be the case, but I actually don't know if I have a unified theory of how that works beyond just, it's a bunch of additional steps at any given part of the process, each of which adds cost. Dwarkesh Patel Yeah. Now, one interesting trend we have in the United States with construction is that a lot of it is done by Latino workers and especially by undocumented Latino workers. What is the effect of this on the price and the quality of construction? If you have a bunch of hardworking undocumented workers who are working for below-market rates in the US, will this dampen the cost of construction over time? What do you think is going to happen? Brian Potter I suspect that's probably one of the reasons why the US has comparatively low construction costs compared to other parts of the world. Well, I'll caveat that. Residential construction, which is single-family homes and multi-family apartment buildings all built in the US and have light framed wood and are put together, like you said, by a lot of like immigrant workers. Because of that, it would not surprise me if those wages are a lot lower than the equivalent wage for like a carpenter in Germany or something like that. I suspect that's a factor in why our cost of residential construction are quite low. AI's Impact on Construction ProductivityDwarkesh Patel Overall, it seems from your blog post that you're kind of pessimistic, or you don't think that different improvements in industrialization have transferred over to construction yet. But what do you think is a prospect of future advances in AI having a big impact on construction? With computer vision and with advances in robotics, do you think we'll finally see some carry-over into construction productivity or is it gonna be more of the same? Brian Potter Yeah, I think there's definitely gonna be progress on that axis. If you can wire up your computer vision systems, robotic systems, and your AI in such a way that your capabilities for a robot system are more expanded, then I kind of foresee robotics being able to take a larger and larger fraction of the tasks done on a typical construction site. I kind of see it being kind of done in narrow avenues that gradually expand outward. You're starting to see a lot of companies that have some robotic system that can do one particular task, but do that task quite well. There's a couple of different robot companies that have these little robots for like drawing wall layouts on like concrete slabs or whatever. So you know exactly where to build your walls, which you would think would not be like a difficult problem in construction, but it turns out that a lot of times people put the walls in the wrong spot and then you have to go back and move them later or just basically deal with it. So yeah, it's basically a little Roomba type device that just draws the wall layout to the concrete slab and all the other systems as well–– for example, where the lines need to run through the slab and things like that. I suspect that you're just gonna start to see robotics and systems like that take a larger and larger share of the tasks on the construction site over time. Dwarkesh Patel Yeah, it's still very far away. It's still very far away. What do you think of Flow? That's Adam Neumann's newest startup and backed with $350 million from Andreeseen Horowitz.Brian Potter I do not have any strong opinions about that other than, “Wow, they've really given him another 350M”. I do not have any particularly strong opinions about this. They made a lot they make a lot of investments that don't make sense to me, but I'm out of venture capital. So there's no reason that my judgment would be any good in this situation–– so I'm just presuming they know something I do not. Dwarkesh Patel I'm going to be interviewing Andreeseen later this month, and I'm hoping I can ask him about that.Brian Potter You know, it may be as simple as he “sees all” about really high variance bets. There's nobody higher variance in the engine than Adam Neumann so, maybe just on those terms, it makes sense. Dwarkesh Patel You had an interesting post about like how a bunch of a lot of the knowledge in the construction industry is informal and contained within best practices or between relationships and expectations that are not articulated all the time. It seems to me that this is also true of software in many cases but software seems much more legible and open source than these other physical disciplines like construction despite having a lot of th

¿Te ha pasado alguna vez programar una tarea y estimar una duración, para comprobar que te pasas de tiempo? 🤦 Una y otra vez, ¿verdad? Es posible que detrás esté la ley de Hofstadter. ¿O tal vez no? 🤔 ----------------- 🏠 efectivida.es

This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). Episode 8: Tao Lin's Mandalas, Repetition Compulsion, and Hofstadter's Labyrinth Today we discuss Tao Lin's recently publicized mandala art as an extension of his literary practice. Known for its simple language, circularity, and psychedelic aloofness – biting yet airy, kaleidoscopic yet concise, concrete yet polymorphic, polarizing yet irresistible – Lin's prose and poetry embody, to some, the fullest and most elegant form of human expression; infinite yet featherlight, redolent of a master's koan. In a 2016 interview with artist Dorothy Howard, the author paraphrases Jung, calling mandalas “psychological expressions of the totality of the self.” As texts and images created by computer-controlled “neural nets” proliferate, Lin's visual art and writing stand uniquely positioned to interrogate the role of human cognition in generating meaningful and aesthetically resonant patterns. What forces inform the unique character of  Lin's work – are they something personal and uniquely human, or a bio-agnostic expression of reality's latent structures, a universal compulsion to repeat certain forms in a certain sequence? To confront this issue, we have trained a neural net to "meow" in a sequence corresponding to Tao Lin's 8x8 = 64 method of mandala generation, converting the 8th sentence of every 8 paragraphs of Godel, Escher, Bach, Douglas R. Hofstadter's seminal work on the primacy of human consciousness, to a correspondingly inflected and contextualized MEOW. The result is a provocative meditation on Tao Lin's work, the ontology of thought, and the sanctity of human reason. MEOW is the first and only literary podcast for your cat, conceived and presented in its native language. This podcast is sustained by sales of our debut book, Meow: A Novel (For Cats). To view and purchase prints of Tao Lin's Mandalas, click here. Praise for Meow: A Novel "Breathtaking... a revelation." - Stubbs, Unaltered Domestic Shorthair "Meow meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow. Meow? Meow." - Joan Didion Follow us on Twitter: @meowliterature and Facebook: facebook.com/themeowlibrary  

Hofstadter's Law: It will always take longer than you think.Staying disciplined when you're training for something important.Dating a girl and can't stop comparing yourself to her past dudes.I lost my temper at work. It may be un-fixable.Trying to get other's on my level.Female coworker lashes out a lot, but otherwise a good worker.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Recap, review, and breakdown of episode 9 of the Big Bang Theory! We discuss super solids, corduroy, and spherical chickens in a vacuum! We also just got a new logo! Come join the conversation! 

One thing that you've probably noticed in life, is that things for the most part take longer than expected. When it comes to running a business, most people think they will reach six figures in the first year but for most people,it will take a while. If it is a home remodel, don't believe the price or the timeline because something will go wrong like finding mold behind the walls that need to be resolved.    When you're trying something new or creating something new, there is no structure yet and most likely it's going to require tinkering with the process until you get the outcome. So don't be too frustrated that things are taking longer than you expected. If you really want this outcome, then this waiting period is the price that most people pay.   This “It will take longer than you expect” phenomenon is known as Hofstadter's Law. So now that you know about the law, it can hopefully readjust your expectations so that when you get that setback that will take longer and cost more money, it will only slow you down for a bit, but it won't defeat you. You will have the hope and faith that if you keep going, you'll reach the outcome that you desire.   Journal Prompts How can you mentally prepare yourself for Hofstadter's Law? How can you take advantage of Hofstadter's Law in your life?

Building projects tend to take on a life of their own. A good rule of thumb is that whatever the time and cost estimate is…you should double it.  In fact, it is a law: Hofstadter’s law. Douglas Hofstadter is a cognitive scientist who has shown, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that no matter how much time you plan for…