independent AI researcher and philosopher. Previously, I was a research engineer on the AGI safety team at DeepMind and worked on the Governance team at OpenAI. https://www.richardcngo.com/

book (Design Fiction?) by Adrian Hon ASIN:B00EX8QRPM http://ahistoryofthefuture.org/ (more)

Technology that can be key Infrastructure either pre-Civilization (Africa) or post-Collapse. (more)

Cedric Chin: Improv and the Search for Product Market Fit. Here’s a funny thing that happens with frameworks. If you read a framework first, and then look for cases afterwards, you’ll inevitably start seeing cases through the lens of the framework. Worse, you’ll try to force cases into the shape of the framework. (more)

Cedric Chin: When Action Beats Prediction. One of the big ideas that we’ve covered in the past couple of weeks is the notion that ‘management is prediction’ — the W. Edwards Deming observation that you cannot run your business effectively if you are unable to predict the outcomes of your actions (more)

My friend David Schmaltz's new book The Blind Men And The Elephant ISBN:1576752534 is coming out. David Schmaltz brilliantly identifies the true Root Cause of the difficulties in project work: "in-Coherence" (the inability of a group of people to make common meaning (Shared Vision) from their common experience)... Schmaltz exposes such oft-cited difficulties as poor planning, weak leadership, and fickle customers as poor excuses for Project Failure, providing a set of simple, project coherence-building techniques that anyone can use to achieve success. He explains how "Wicked-ness" develops when a team over-relies on their leader for guidance rather than tapping their true source of power and authority-the individual. I'm definitely buying it. (more)

The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's law[1]) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence, or competition, and greater odds of continued existence into the future.[2] Where the Lindy effect applies, mortality rate decreases with time. Mathematically, the Lindy effect corresponds to lifetimes following a Pareto probability distribution. The concept is named after Lindy's delicatessen in New York City, where the concept was informally theorized by comedians.[3][4] The Lindy effect has subsequently been theorized by mathematicians and statisticians.[5][6][1] Nassim Taleb has expressed the Lindy effect in terms of "distance from an absorbing barrier". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect (more)

David Manheim, Gregory Lewis: High-risk human-caused pathogen exposure events from 1975-2016. (lab leak, biowar). Biological agents and infectious pathogens have the potential to cause very significant harm, as the natural occurrence of disease and pandemics makes clear. As a way to better understand the risk of Global Catastrophic Biological Risks due to human activities, rather than natural sources, this paper reports on a dataset of 71 incidents involving either accidental or purposeful exposure to, or infection by, a highly infectious pathogenic agent.

International Control of Powerful Technology: Lessons from the Baruch Plan for Nuclear Weapons (pdf): The invention of atomic energy posed a novel global challenge: could the technology be controlled to avoid destructive uses and an existentially dangerous arms race while permitting the broad sharing of its benefits? From 1944 onwards, scientists, policymakers, and other technical specialists began to confront this challenge and explored policy options for dealing with the impact of nuclear technology. We focus on the years 1944 to 1951 and review this period for lessons for the governance of powerful technologies, and find the following: Radical schemes for international control can get broad support when confronted by existentially dangerous technologies, but this support can be tenuous and cynical. Secrecy is likely to play an important, and perhaps harmful, role. The public sphere may be an important source of influence, both in general and in particular in favor of cooperation, but also one that is manipulable and poorly informed. Technical experts may play a critical role, but need to be politically savvy. Overall, policymaking may look more like “muddling through” than clear-eyed grand strategy. Cooperation may be risky, and there may be many obstacles to success. Analogy to development/control of AI/AGI/ASI. (See AI-2027, x-risk.) (more)

aka existential risk

Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms. New DNA is obtained by either isolating and copying the genetic material of interest using recombinant DNA methods or by artificially synthesising the DNA. A construct is usually created and used to insert this DNA into the host organism. The first recombinant DNA molecule was designed by Paul Berg in 1972 by combining DNA from the monkey virus SV40 with the lambda virus. As well as inserting genes, the process can be used to remove, or "knock out", genes. The new DNA can either be inserted randomly or targeted to a specific part of the genome.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering cf GMO, biotech

Future Shock Levels, by Eliezer Yudkowsky, 06/10/99. A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without exhibiting future shock. (more)

aka FiveFactor, OCEAN - Personality Test - In psychological trait theory, the Big Five personality traits, also known as the OCEAN model is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits,[1] developed from the 1980s onwards. When factor analysis (a statistical technique) is applied to personality survey data, it reveals semantic associations: some words used to describe aspects of personality are often applied to the same person. For example, someone described as conscientious is more likely to be described as "always prepared" rather than "messy". These associations suggest five broad dimensions used in common language to describe the human personality and psyche.[2][3] The theory identifies five factors: openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious); conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless); extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved); agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/callous); neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits (more)

Why Competent People Disappear: Functional Stupidity and the Invisible Professional. Picture a meeting you’ve been in — probably more than once. The agenda is ambitious, the stakes are real, and you’ve done your homework... And somehow, again, the meeting moves around you. The person who delivered three confident-sounding sentences about “alignment” and “moving the needle” gets the nod. Your point — the careful one, the one with the nuance and the caveats and the actual evidence — gets a polite “that’s interesting” before the conversation cheerfully rolls on without it. (mediocrity) (more)

Jim Highsmith frames Practitioner Voice. I've been called a Thought Leader. I don't love the term. But I've used it, because there wasn't another one. (more)

Ian Alexander: Book Review: Donald Schon - The Reflective Practitioner. Readers of my reviews will know that I have been interested for some years in the dialogue between action (do something) and reflection, discussed admirably by John Heron and Peter Reason, and put into practice in their Co-operative Inquiry method. Donald Schön is one of the seemingly few people to have written about reflection and its role in professional life; it is a tricky subject, as it lies between the domains of academia and industry, and must be both theoretically accurate and practically useful to succeed fully. (reflective thinker) (more)

Neurotic Behavior: Meaning & Coping. A neurotic personality is when somebody experiences intense emotional reactions and constant worry, even over small things that would not normally deserve such a strong response. (more)

Todd Nief: Four Tendencies + Five Factors. I’ve found it helpful to understand a variety of different frameworks and attempt to relate them back to the more evidence-based big five model of personality. (more)

Can You Make Yourself Less Neurotic? ...thought patterns, relationships, lifestyle factors, and perhaps medication. There is typically a biological component to neuroticism, meaning that some people are just physiologically more sensitive to stress (more)

What Is Narcissism? Science Confronts a Widely Misunderstood Phenomenon. Up to 6 percent of the U.S. population, mostly men, is estimated to have had narcissistic personality disorder during some period of their lives. And the condition manifests in confoundingly different ways (more)