Personal Blog

Acemoglu and Johnson, in a paper on hand loom weavers’ wages in the early 19th century say: “Recognizing the essential role of choice over the direction of technology and organizational forms is not only relevant for understanding the early decades of the Industrial Revolution; it is also critical to appreciate how and why things started… Read more

In a previous blog post about the industrial revolution as an analogy for AI, I wrote a bit about how someone might end up with a monocausal narrative about what happened between 1750 and now: one that starts with the invention of the steam engine and other technologies and ends with everything else, “revolutions of all… Read more

IIn a widely cited blogpost called “How big a deal was the industrial revolution?” Luke Muehlhauser asks a rhetorical, but important, question: what collection of events is that? Leaving aside current disputes about what a “helpful” definition of the industrial revolution should be, below is a brief exploration of the origin of the phrase. Raymond… Read more

I’ve been reading Steven Lukes “Power, a radical view”. A number of things from the book seem notable in the context of the recent Anthropic-fable-debacle. (Here is an opinionated summary from Dean Ball, for those who haven’t followed it) – So here is a short and oversimplified summary. The book itself provides an overview of… Read more

I really don’t know anything about what makes a good poem a good poem. It feels a lot like asking “what makes a good sound.” But people make playlists of sounds that they like, and I think it should be at least as normal to make personalised anthologies. (Walter Benjamin apparently wanted to submit one… Read more