Blog
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Freeing Thucydides ↗
Wars happen because states cannot credibly commit to the agreements they would both prefer. AIs could supply the missing enforcer, ending competition for control of the future.
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The easiest pathway to control is through executive power ↗
Power is already centralised in the US President and Chinese General Secretary. Whoever seeks control during an AI transition, the easiest route runs through the executive.
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Podcast: How Fast is Post-AGI Growth? ↗
A Forethought podcast interview on how fast a post-AGI economy could grow.
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(Don't fear) the strangelet ↗
Nuclear physics allowed the creation of the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Does new physics provide even more destructive possibilities?
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Destroying the universe: How hard can it be? ↗
The universe is probably not stable, but intentionally triggering its decay might still be impossible.
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The AI Industrial Explosion — Part 4: Cheap power ↗
What's the cheapest energy system we could plausibly build, and could it keep pace with explosive post-AGI growth?
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The AI Industrial Explosion — Part 3: Going faster ↗
How much faster could an AI-automated economy grow without inventing new technology? Reoptimizing across today's frontier plants and considering historical labor-intensive methods cuts the doubling time roughly in half, to four-to-eight months
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The AI Industrial Explosion — Part 2: Transition Dynamics ↗
How fast could an AI-automated economy actually start growing? Today's economy doesn't produce enough of the stuff that makes stuff. Restructuring takes a few years — but then the second doubling comes in half the time, and the economy is many times its current size within a decade.
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The AI Industrial Explosion — Part 1: Maximum growth rates with current production methods ↗
How fast can an AI-driven economy grow? Economists expect a few percentage points; at best those closer to AI development imagine Dyson spheres within years. Who is correct?
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How I currently use AIs for research ↗
I thought I'd document how I'm currently using AI tools, both because it's changed a lot in the past month and also in the hope that someone can look at this, be horrified, and tell me all the things I'm doing that could be better.
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Will whole brain emulation matter for the AI transition? ↗
Whole brain emulation gets suggested as a potential AI-safety lever. Here we investigate two questions: when could we get it relative to superintelligence, and would it matter if we did?
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On far-UVC and air filtration ↗
Discussions of built-environment pandemic defense tend to treat far-UVC as the standout technology and air filtration as an afterthought. I think this gets the ranking wrong.
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What was the biggest state? ↗
Ranking the largest empires by area is a fairly straightforward exercise. Wikipedia puts the British Empire in the top spot, controlling 35.5 million km² at its peak—about a quarter of the world’s land area. Next come the Mongol Empire and...
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Who is the most famous person in history? ↗
Despite our obsession with fame, no one actually keeps track of who’s famous. You’d think someone would have figured this out by now—at the very least to power a listicle perpetual motion machine—but global name-recognition surveys are rare. No one...
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How many people have ever lived? ↗
No one really knows how many people ever lived. Even today, counting people can be hard. Papua New Guinea’s 2024 census was their first in 24 years, with prior estimates ranging from 10 million to 17 million; Afghanistan hasn’t conducted...
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Podcast: Damon Binder on Economic History and the Future of Physics ↗
A wide-ranging conversation on economic history and the future of physics.
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The Ising Model and its Cousins
The Ising Model is a simple system which can be used to study all sorts of physics.
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Molecular Dynamics
How do molecules interact with each other in gases, liquids and solids?
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Simulating Gravity
Solving the N-body problem.
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Conway's Life and Related Cellular Automata
Simulating Conway's Game of Life and other life-like cellular automata in the browser.