aka RFKJr

Zvi Mowshowitz On the UBI Paper. Would a universal basic income (UBI) work? What would it do? Many people agree July’s RCT on giving people a guaranteed income, and its paper from Eva Vivalt, Elizabeth Rhodes, Alexander W. Bartik, David E. Broockman and Sarah Miller was, despite whatever flaws it might have, the best data we have so far on the potential impact of UBI. (more)

Azeem Azhar: Turning UBI on its head. UBI should not be just about survival or consumer spending. Instead, it should be seen as a catalyst for driving technological change. A kind of long-form state support could shore up social cohesion and lead to better governance. That would have a halo effect. (more)

Venkatesh Rao: The New Systems of Survival. About a decade ago, I was briefly obsessed with Jane Jacobs’ Systems of Survival model from her 1992 book of that name. (more)

Nick Bostrom (/ˈbɒstrəm/ BOST-rəm; Swedish: Niklas Boström [ˈnɪ̌kːlas ˈbûːstrœm]; born 10 March 1973 in Sweden)[4] is a philosopher known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, whole brain emulation, superintelligence risks, and the reversal test. He was the founding director of the now dissolved Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford[5] and is now Principal Researcher at the Macrostrategy Research Initiative.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bostrom

Explicit knowledge (also expressive knowledge)[1] is knowledge that can be readily articulated, conceptualized, codified, formalized, stored and accessed.[2] It can be expressed in formal and systematical language and shared in the form of data, scientific formulae, specifications, manuals and such like.[3] It is easily codifiable and thus transmittable without loss of integrity once the syntactical rules required for deciphering it are known.[4] Most forms of explicit knowledge can be stored in certain media. Explicit knowledge is often seen as complementary to tacit knowledge.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicit_knowledge (more)

The concept of tacit knowing comes from scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi. It is important to note that he wrote about a process (hence Tacit Knowing) and not a form of knowledge. However, his phrase has been taken up to name a form of knowledge that is apparently wholly or partly inexplicable...as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge (more)

Michael Nielsen and Shan Carter: Using Artificial Intelligence to Augment Human Intelligence (Augmenting Human Intellect). What are computers for? Historically, different answers to this question – that is, different visions of computing – have helped inspire and determine the computing systems humanity has ultimately built (more)

Paul Seabright: The · Aestheticising Vice: systematic knowledge. In the Languedoc there is a vineyard that teaches us an important lesson about textbook learning and its application to the world. In the early Seventies it was bought by a wealthy couple, who consulted professors Emile Peynaud and Henri Enjalbert, the world’s leading academic oenologist and oenological geologist respectively. Between them these men convinced the couple that their new vineyard had a theoretically ideal microclimate for wine-making...If life were reliably like novels, their experiment would have been a disaster. In fact Aimé and Véronique Guibert have met with a success so unsullied that it would make a stupefying novel. (more)

Jason Crawford: Two mini-reviews: Seeing Like a State; the Unabomber manifesto. (more)

Michael Nielsen on Collaboration, Quantum Computing, and Civilization's Fragility (Ep. 213) (with Tyler Cowen). (more)

Spalding Gray on NYC: It's an insane angel; New York defies observation. It is completely, hugely in your face and what it is for me still is a human miracle, because if you go out in it, as I do, the fact that existence is - is the miracle. The fact that New York continues in the face of all of the chaos, of the crime, of the madness, you just think that it would just pop and vanish, just explode... What's so fascinating about New Yorkers is that each person has a whole lexicon of personal logic in the way that they decipher and do what has to be done to enjoy, stay alive, take pleasure in this place. It's one of the few living cities where people are living in the city that they work in. You know, that's amazing in itself.

Context: joining a start-up that has launched its MVP but not yet reached Product-Market Fit. (more)

the fallacy that the next feature you add will suddenly make people want to use the entire product. (more)

Open Source Systems Thinking/Systems Dynamics modelling/Simulation system. (more)

ThinkingTool: SystemsThinking (Diagram of Effects); MindMapping? DisputationArena? https://kumu.io/ (more)

Founder of Systems Dynamics Group. Developed the computer model for the Club Of Rome which led to the Limits To Growth report. (He later refined this for his WorldDynamics book.) The fact that we haven't had the Big Die Off yet has not improved the reputation of Systems Thinking. (more)

virtual learning marketplace

Andrew Chen: The Next Feature Fallacy: The fallacy that the next new feature will suddenly make people use your product. (more)

Joshua Porter: The Next Feature Fallacy (or, the case for simple, working systems). Tell me if this sounds familiar: You released the first version (MVP) of your product some months ago and it was an exhilarating experience. You went through the highs and lows of launch and had moments of excitement and pride when people started using your product for the first time. But...as the weeks wore on it started to become clear there just wasn’t enough usage. (more)