Favorites June 1st 2023

Pacifica, February 2023

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More people need to read Steven Pinker's Better Angels, violence is down over both the short and long term. The archeological record is pretty clear on this.

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From the abstract: "the world would have needed 3.4 percent additional cropland to keep global agricultural output at its 2019 level. We also find that bans on GM cultivation have limited the global gain from GM adoption to one-third of its potential."

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Here's the article, Noah Smith's optimistic take on this is that you won't build skynet accidentally, because the precursor AI will also exhibit evilness.

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Prop 13 is bad, land value taxes are good. Here's the full paper. In related news, Detroit is going to go ahead and implement a land value tax, amazing!

Threads

• Thread about the analysis that found sending HIV drugs to low-income countries, and how it turned out to be wrong.