Hot Takes

I don't really use social media, and I don't blog much, so I blast my dumb ideas out into the world in this section.

• I think most of the projects looking to do good in the world aren't in a place where machine learning will do them any good.
• I worry about technology as a driver of inequality.
• I think quantitative evidence is undervalued by most and overvalued by some. I think overvaluing it is probably the bigger mistake.
• I'm scared by the fact that things are easier to break than they are to build.
• I think the vast majority of people are good. I think a lot of those people are operating within systems of perverse incentives.
• I think most puns are annoying, but some are good, eg "it's impossible to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they take everything literally."
• I believe logical quotation is correctly named.
• I think complexity should induce a lot more humility than it tends to.
• I think gendered pronouns are as useful as gendered nouns ("they" is the future).
• Something about quantifying uncertainty feels oxymoronic and I like it — "On a scale from 1 to 10, how bad are you at numbers?"
• I think isolation and specialization are rending us at the joints.
• I think the slippery slope argument is a slippery slope.
• I consume more than I produce.