Finally saw Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was better than I thought it would be. I'm a bit biased though as I'm a sucker for those types of movies. My question: When we hit AI parity with Terence Tao in terms of mathematic competence (2027 ish) what barriers do you see to automating the rest of science? Compute? Running enough experiments for the data?
I’m looking to see how you would reduce living costs by 10x. If software is much cheaper but you still gotta pay just as much for anything in real life, that’s really lame
Hey Alexey, you probably don't know me. I'm @thewritingdev on Twitter and following you since 2019ish when I used to save your posts to my Kindle. If you're coming by London and just wanna hang - I'd love to chat about science, philosophy or just life in general!
i don’t necessarily recommend it unless you’re interested in americana surrealism. but it was my favorite film, and relatively subversive with respect to the dominant culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sweet_East
I really enjoyed Nobody 浪浪山小妖怪 (trans. The Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain), a 2025 Chinese animated film about some small-time monsters trying to get by. It takes place on the margins of an episode from Journey to the West, similar to, for example, how Rozencrantz and Guildenstern takes place on the margins of Hamlet. A really sweet and touching movie about the other guys.
My question for 2026 is a variant of the Needham Question--why did Chinese science fall behind the West despite the headstart in technological advancement? My hypothesis: at least one principal cause is that Chinese science, like Aristotelian science, was built on explanation of natural phenomena in terms of the intrinsic natures of natural kinds. But for the new science to emerge, natural philosophers needed to abandon intrinsic nature-based explanation in favour of mechanistic explanation, where all entities are basically of the same kind and natural phenomena are to explained by mathematical regularities. If this is right, then the suitably specified Needham Question is: why did the mechanistic worldview develop in early modern Europe and not in China?
Rewatched some favorites: Céline and Julie Go Boating (Rivette), The Wind Will Carry Us (Kiarostami), Only Angels Have Wings (Hawks)
Curious what you coded up your journaling app to do! Do you have something written about it?
It's fully private now but will consider publishing if I'm still using it a few months in the future!
would be super interested as well!
Happy almost new year, Alexey - appreciate your writings very much
Finally saw Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was better than I thought it would be. I'm a bit biased though as I'm a sucker for those types of movies. My question: When we hit AI parity with Terence Tao in terms of mathematic competence (2027 ish) what barriers do you see to automating the rest of science? Compute? Running enough experiments for the data?
Naked gun was my favorite movie of the year.
I’m looking to see how you would reduce living costs by 10x. If software is much cheaper but you still gotta pay just as much for anything in real life, that’s really lame
спасибо за музику)
Hey Alexey, you probably don't know me. I'm @thewritingdev on Twitter and following you since 2019ish when I used to save your posts to my Kindle. If you're coming by London and just wanna hang - I'd love to chat about science, philosophy or just life in general!
1. F1 the Movie 2. Will more money solve my problems?
i don’t necessarily recommend it unless you’re interested in americana surrealism. but it was my favorite film, and relatively subversive with respect to the dominant culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sweet_East
I really enjoyed Nobody 浪浪山小妖怪 (trans. The Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain), a 2025 Chinese animated film about some small-time monsters trying to get by. It takes place on the margins of an episode from Journey to the West, similar to, for example, how Rozencrantz and Guildenstern takes place on the margins of Hamlet. A really sweet and touching movie about the other guys.
My question for 2026 is a variant of the Needham Question--why did Chinese science fall behind the West despite the headstart in technological advancement? My hypothesis: at least one principal cause is that Chinese science, like Aristotelian science, was built on explanation of natural phenomena in terms of the intrinsic natures of natural kinds. But for the new science to emerge, natural philosophers needed to abandon intrinsic nature-based explanation in favour of mechanistic explanation, where all entities are basically of the same kind and natural phenomena are to explained by mathematical regularities. If this is right, then the suitably specified Needham Question is: why did the mechanistic worldview develop in early modern Europe and not in China?
1. Nashville (Altman), feels like it could have been made today with all its culture war fault lines.
2. What lessons can modern state capacity focused reformers (e.g. Progress Studies, Abundance) learn from the Progressive Era reformers?