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High signal digest #15

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High signal digest #15

"The Rational Optimist" summary + stuff I read this week online

George Kurdin
Feb 19, 2023
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High signal digest #15

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est. reading time 2.5min

Today at a glance:

  • Summary of “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves” by Matt Ridley. Ridley is best known as the author of a # of popular science books. This one is about optimism and how/why things will get better.

  • Stuff I read online this week that you might enjoy

source: book cover - get it here

Why did I read this?

In 2018 someone in SF recommended The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Ridley. It made me think so I got the next one. The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge and then this one.

Ridley has a few hot takes in this book that many will disagree with.

Raw notes from the book:

  • Exchange of ideas, specialization in craft, and diversification in interests are critical to our progress.

  • Cooking enabled our ancestors to trade gut size for brain size and predisposed humans to swap food (early trade?)

  • Levels of trust and prosperity in society are correlated. Exchange breeds trust and visa versa

  • Agriculture diverts the labor of other species to provide service to human beings. Possible that agriculture worsened sexual inequality

  • Humans make up 0.5% of weight of animals on planet, but take 23% of primary production of land plans

  • Organic farming is low yield and nitrogen difficient. Organic movement insistence to rely on old agricultural practices means it misses out on environment benefits brought by future innovation

  • Urbanism and city design is progressive. Not only do cities help ideas expand, but they are also the right way to efficiently preserve our planet

  • Renewable energy eats landscape. Less land → higher food prices → less food

  • Ethanol is bad for planet. Gained traction in America because of lobbying from Big Co

  • Energy efficiency and energy demand have historically risen. We will come up with new ways (ex. portable nuclear reactors) to get energy.

  • Through ~50K years of history, no country remains a leader in knowledge creation and prosperity for too long. Why? (1) institutions/bureaucrats wrote too many rules to halt progress, (2) overpopulation, but can be solved now.

    • 3rd reason = good times create weak men?

  • Innovators are in the business of sharing. Innovation is bottom-up. Individuals rather than institutions or society leaders create = a theme of this century

  • Pessimism sells. And we might be wired to consume it. Ignore

  • Critical assumption of pessimists is that if we stay course - we die. But we won’t stay course. We will find solutions. Most generations underestimated the potential of new ideas.

  • 2 great pessimist stories of today: Africa and climate change.

    • Africa needs good property rights, abolish farm subsidies/quotas/import tariffs, and encourage growth of free trading cities.

    • Extreme climate outcomes are unlikely because they assume that progress will stop. They also neglect the fact that a warmer world is a richer world. A richer world will find solutions. Richest and warmest versions of future will have least hunger, longer life for all, better education. Richer versions will also find a solution to climate change.

    • Top 4 problems for humans we need to focus on are: hunger, dirty water, indoor smoke, malaria

Big ideas:

  • We live in an amazing world that is healthier and smarter than our past. And there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future. Be positive. Be an optimist.

  • Dark future scenarios may not be true. Important to think independently and based on facts. What are the trade-offs and what is the logic leading to X scenario vs Y.

  • Trust and exchanges of ideas are key to innovation. Share your ideas. Build with others (ex. in person teams?). We will create a better world.

Select quotes

  • Without trade innovation does not happen. Exchange is to technology as sex is to evolution

  • It is my proposition that the human race has become a collective problem-solving machine and it solves problems by changing its ways

  • Not inventing, and not adopting new ideas, can itself be both dangerous and immoral

  • The cumulative accretion of knowledge by specialists that allows us each to consume more and more different things by each producing fewer and fewer is, I submit, the central story of humanity

  • As I write this, it is nine o’clock in the morning. In the two hours since I got out of bed I have showered in water heated by North Sea gas, shaved using an American razor running on electricity made from British coal, eaten a slice of bread made from French wheat, spread with New Zealand butter and Spanish marmalade, then brewed a cup of tea using leaves grown in Sri Lanka, dressed myself in clothes of Indian cotton and Australian wool, with shoes of Chinese leather and Malaysian rubber, and read a newspaper made from Finnish wood pulp and Chinese ink.

Stuff I read online this week that you might enjoy

  • What is ChatGPT doing and why does it work

  • Bing “I will not harm you unless you harm me first”

  • The Maze is in the mouse. What ails Google and how it can turn it around

  • Turkey’s earthquake shows the deadly extent of construction scams

  • Update from Andy Jassy on return to office plans

  • Decoupling is not deglobalization

  • Chemical health risks from the Ohio train incident - what we know so far

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High signal digest #15

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