My goal is to fix the world by focusing on the big problems first. This one is mostly about the USA, its problems, and how to fix them. First, a summary of major problem types, then a list of the largest problems we face in moving society forward, a note on political parties, and a set of solutions. This essay can be used as the basis for discussion or a class on critical thinking, society, and the future.
I am a heretic. A heretic challenges the fundamental assumptions of basic beliefs. In my view, the next thirty years are going…
NOTE: This piece by Willis Eschenbach is reposted here with his permission.
I got to thinking about how little the atmospheric CO2 level has changed over most of the last two thousand years. Here is the CO2 data from ice cores (colored dots) and from the Mauna Loa CO2 measuring stations (red/black line).
Note that there is good agreement between the thirteen different ice cores, as well as good agreement during the period of the overlap between the ice core and the instrumental CO2 data.
Then I overlaid the CO2 record on the Ljundqvist reconstruction of the temperature variability of…
When Bayesians disagree, they bet on a testable/falsifiable outcome of their beliefs. The one who loses pays the price of learning and updates his/her belief system accordingly.
I had to change my belief system the hard way. In 1991, I wrote a book on global warming, explaining the standard greenhouse-gas theory and saying we have to curtail our carbon emissions. 15 years later, when the predicted warming didn’t show up, I started looking into the situation and realized it was simply a mistaken theory that had caught on through repetition, celebrities, and public relations. Of course, people strongly invested in…
I read papers, articles, and watch a lot of videos. Each month, I post my recent meanderings. If you want to follow me, just leave this page open in a tab and come back to watch/read what you haven’t yet, until you’re at the bottom.
An amazing discovery: Radio Garden is a Google map of the earth with thousands of FM stations. Click a green dot and hear what that station is playing, from Kamchatka to Capetown.
Here’s the story of the moving sidewalks of Paris from before 1900:
How energy and growth are connected, while the digital economy and growth are not
UNTIL RECENTLY, my mental model of economic growth was 1) the convenience of electricity coming into the home drove growth during the first half of the 20th century, then 2) there were wars and manufacturing for a few decades, which was good for growth, then 3) things slowed down a bit in the 1970s and 80s, but then 4) computers came along and the digital revolution picked up the pace of innovation and 5) the Internet accelerated it.
I was wrong.
That’s not what happened. What happened was electricity.
The Rise and Fall of American Growth
I learned a lot reading Robert Gordon’s book The Rise and…
Last month, I didn’t publish any links because I was busy writing Ninety Nine Percent of All Conversations on Climate are Wrong, which I hope you will read and share. This month, more content for critical thinkers …
The Unstoppable Momentum of Outdated Science, by Roger Pielke, Jr. — an important paper showing how many “important papers” are based on silliness.
Vitalik Buterin on neutrality.
Yes, deep fakes are good, but some people are creating software that detects them:
Cool: Building a digital version of a city helps it become more resilient.
This is from Inreality.show:
How I changed my mind about climate change. Again.
M y name is David Siegel. I am concerned about the environment and the human enterprise. I wrote my first book on climate change in 1991. In 2015, I looked closer into the data and the messaging, and I changed my mind. I became a skeptic of catastrophic climate change and an advocate for science. Since then, I have written many essays and produced a one-hour movie showing the data. I continue to study climate about 20 hours a week, reading both peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed material (because of the biases of publication). …
Don’t forget, I have a new climate blog and update it several times a day. Please pass the URL to people you know or to your followers: www.climatecurious.blog.
Tony Hsieh. I met him at TED India. He shouldn’t have died, but things were not right. He was suffering. A sad story is unfolding.
This would be funny if it weren’t so freakin’ true and disastrous for US energy: Pentagon Cornerstone commits U.S. rare earth policy and funding to a twice bankrupt mining project with a Chinese part owner.
What is engineered architecture, and why did Google X steal it?
…
Who would want to work at a company so out of touch with reality?
Imagine …
A Zoom meeting with Andy Tryba, CEO of Crossover for Work ...
Andy: “Okay people, we need to hire some new talent for a big client. I’m going to need someone who can get at least 40 questions right on a 50-question multiple-choice test in 15 minutes. Probably have to guess some of the answers because of the time constraint. Do we have someone who can do that?”
Right Hand Man: “Absolutely. Rob has all the test-prep files. I’ll ask him to start memorizing.”
Andy: “Great. Now I need someone who got good grades in school and can write 50…
This is the first in a series of short pieces for Family Office Insights. If you are part of a family office that hasn’t joined, I hope you will subscribe to their newsletter.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
— Mark Twain
My name is David Siegel. I’m a lifetime serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, New York, and Europe. I’ve started more than a dozen companies, written five books, given hundreds of speeches about technology and business, and among other things I was a candidate to be the dean of Stanford business school. I am research…
David Siegel
Provocateur, professional heretic, slayer of myths, speaker of truthiness to powerfulness, and defender of the Oxford comma.
