May and June Updates
Hi friends,
It's been a while since I've sent a newsletter, and something about the end of the world as we know it made me think now was the time to move these updates from annual to a little closer to monthly (rational time-discounting!).
On a professional front I'm excited that in June we launched HASH to the public. HASH is a platform for building, publishing, and remixing multi-agent simulations. You can use agent based models to simulate any kind of situation and get insights about decisions you could make and complex, second order effects.
My favorite simulations I've created so far are a Rational Agent template that implements a reasoning-loop to navigate environments and take actions, and a simulation implementing a simplified version of a civil protest model. Poke around and let me know what you think, I'm interested in any feedback or suggestions.
Writing:
In May I participated in a short writing exercise about futuristic AI; two vignettes I wrote that I'm inordinately proud of are titled Skin Deep and TOS.
I wrote several tutorials and docs explaining how to use HASH and paradigms for designing simulations. I also shared a post on on quickly creating a SIR model with HASH, inspired by Paul Romer's blog posts.
I also organized and listed all of my recent purchases/practices that I recommend.
Selected essays I liked in May and June:
Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find Because of the Burden of Knowledge? It seems like science is slowing down, requiring more scientists per new idea. This essay explores whether we've picked the low hanging research fruits and if we should expect the slowdown to continue.
An Attempt at Explaining, Blaming, and Being Very Slightly Sympathetic Toward Enron: A dive into the culture of Enron and the technically sophisticated, morally complex, and extremely interesting financial scam.
Technology Holy Wars are Coordination Problems: Gwern provides a great model for why people fight so hard to make sure their tech editor, their programming language, is the preferred choice.
Twitter and Tear Gas: Institutions are crumbling and falling to networked crowds, and Zeynep Tufekci digs into the specific dynamics powering social media movements.
I've really enjoyed hearing from everyone over the past few months - if you're working on anything interesting, have recommendations for things to do, or just want to catch up, shot me an email!
Best,
Ben
p.s. did you know Sonic the Hedgehog is the second highest grossing movie of the year?