HWFO Reading List
HWFO Reading List
A homework list to catch up on the stuff we're talking about in private.
In the wake of the great argument about the “self awareness” of ChatGPT and Bing AI, whether they are true intelligences or glorified autocomplete bots, and whether human beings themselves are likewise true intelligences or just autocomplete bots, it occurred to me that everything in the universe is derivative.
This isn’t an original idea. It is, in fact, derivative.
Everything is derivative. Everything is a remix, and we all stand on the shoulders of giants - a great phrase.
(so speaks the guy who founded Reddit)
He also apparently marred Serena Williams.
But if everything is derivative, then so am I, and so is HWFO, and if you’re a reader and have some interest in learning from whence the ideas in this blog flow, it might be of interest for you to skip one layer past us and look at the source. Below are a set of links to articles, blogs, and scientific studies that I personally have found interesting over the past month, and are being discussed on the HWFO Slack server, to which you can gain access by subscribing to HWFO.
1.
Disaggregating the difference between intelligence and rationality:
Two scientific studies related to this topic:
https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/22105/833.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6338713/#!po=0.714286
2.
“The Kids Are Not Okay” - a deep dive on the overall mental health problem in the younger generation and it’s source, which advocates blaming cell phones:
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2023/03/08/the-kids-are-not-okay/
Related musings from Jonathan Haidt:
3.
“The Political Spectrum Does Not Exist.” A deeply referential post with many linkbacks to supporting pieces which defends the claim that politics are nothing more than tribal affiliation with no unifying core beliefs.
https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/social-science-political-spectrum/
Related - partisan thinking literally impedes rational thought, according to magnetic resonance imaging science:
https://www.libertarianism.org/articles/partisan-brain
4.
A central timeline of the changing narrative of the Lab Leak Theory of Covid-19, routinely updated, with references:
https://ground.news/timeline/lab-leak-theory
5.
IQ only tracks with earnings until you get into the top 5%, after that it plateaus and even drops off a bit:
https://bigthink.com/the-present/highest-earning-men-intelligent/
The original study is here, and seems to align almost perfectly with this classic HWFO post:
https://academic.oup.com/esr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/esr/jcac076/7008955?login=false
BUT there’s a robust rebuttal to the Big Think article and study here:
I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
6.
When did New York start building things more slowly, and why?
This article was data driven and very intelligent, and may signify the beginning of a series of articles. I find Construction Physics to be one of the best Substacks going right now.
7.
Rozado runs the bias test against GPT-4, and find that it has guardrails to seem neutral, which are easily bypassed, and lead to an underbelly even more politically biased than GPT-3.
I hope to make more of these posts on the 15th of every month.
There will be a test.
based on your readings, if you ever felt like “unplugging” and tuning into some boob tube, that you’d probably appreciate the series Legion that appeared on FX (now on hulu). not your typical superhero, yet is marvel (main character is professor x’s bastard son who grew up thinking he was schizophrenic) tangential. it dives deep into delusion with some great visuals and soundtrack along the way.
The test is whether you survive to pass on your genes and memes.