papers

Paper by Anders Sandberg et al., on why the Fermi Paradox is not really a paradox. From the conclusions: When we take account of realistic uncertainty, replacing point estimates by probability distributions that reflect current scientific understanding, we find no reason to be highly

Technology and media critic Neil Postman gave a talk back in 1998 about the problems with technological change. The transcript can be found here. This paragraph is a good summary of Postman's view (I've emphasized the key bits): And so, these are my five

This 1975 paper shows why it is so important to have the right incentives in organizations. It's foolish to incentivize one behaviour while expecting another. Here's a notable quote on official vs operational goals in politics: Official goals are "purposely vague and general and

Was there a technologically advanced civilisation on Earth before ours? If there had been one, could we detect its existence from fossil and geological records? This paper discusses indicators that would tell us about the presence of an advanced civilisation that may existed between

This article tells the story of the first known randomized double-blind trial. It was conducted in Nuremberg in 1835 to discredit a homeopathic treatment. Besides a bias in selection of participants (that may have had a considerable impact on the results) the trial was

Statistical testing is hard. Some of the common dangers are well known; repeat a study twenty times and there's a good chance you'll see a significant result at least once. The Replication Crisis was the outcome of such abuses of statistical testing in scientific

The idea that we might be living in a computer simulation began to gain popularity when Elon Musk began talking about it publicly. I believe this paper by Nick Bostrom was the one that really kicked off this discussion. The tl;dr of the

"Creative Life Cycles : Three Myths" is a paper / essay on the relationship between creativity and age. The three myths the author wants to debunk are all around that theme: that creativity is greatest in youththat wisdom hinders creativitythat every discipline has a single peak

This paper talks about how excellent performers come to be, specifically in the context of swimming. The primary takeaway for me was that quantitative improvements in performance result from continuous qualitative improvements compounded over time. For example, the quantitative improvement for a swimmer might