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Apr 17, 2021Liked by Byrne Hobart

Surfing Uncertainty has me absolutely hooked right now.

It’s a compelling unified theory of how our minds work, approximately “hierarchical systems of neurons all try to predict the near-future sensory input of those below them, and bring it into agreement with more abstract predictions from above.” Or more pop-sci stated, we perpetually dream the near future and run a balancing act between the structure imposed on the dream by prior knowledge and errors in the dream signaled from the sensory periphery.

The idea extends wonderfully far to memory, complex motor control (the lower level generative models pushed out to sensorimotor systems are, approximately, task-specific “firmware” which can run lower latency control loops locally), and to the question of how such a system could evolve and bootstrap itself providing adaptive benefit all along the way.

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My own longreads on why mRNA is not necessarily the future of vaccines: https://trevorklee.com/are-mrna-therapies-the-future-of-pharmaceuticals/ and why pharma loves oncology studies: https://trevorklee.com/why-oncology-is-so-popular-for-pharmaceuticals/

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These constant Taiwan takes from the US are fascinating and weird while living in Taiwan. Taiwan has been facing this framing of "what if?" with the China threat for decades. There were real military conflicts even. Most of the Taiwanese friends I have and family don't pay attention to it. Perhaps this is pragmatic (what are you going to do about it) but it is weird that 100% of the people that bring it up are Americans and some Westerners. It does seem a bit weird how it has become such a popular topic at the same time while sentiment against China has fallen off a cliff. I've got to imagine Chinese propaganda likes seeing these takes. I've never really read anything all that good on these dynamics but would certainly love to read something if people have it.

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I'm now wondering if Delta's recent moves towards treating cash tickets and miles tickets the same are a prelude to pricing every seat in miles and then using an exchange rate to price in cash and some financial engineering to shift more revenue to SkyMiles, where lower volatility implies a higher valuation.

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I'm curious what Byrne thinks about the whole "ARPA was better when it was hands off" slant of The Dream Machine. Also about the contingency of history argument about the internet— Waldrop seems to suggest that without Lick, the internet might have been pretty different (but does clearly hedge in the discussion), yet there are many examples of independent researchers coming to the same conclusion about certain designs (Bob Kahn and Shannon both had contemporaries with analogous ideas).

What did Waldrop miss in his review?

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