Why AI isn’t an oracle of truth
Reading Time: 5 minutes Big Tech companies eager to find the next big thing have latched onto AI chatbots—but they’re racing ahead of what the tech can actually do.
Too many people
Wealthy, well-developed nations are nearing ZPG (zero population growth), which makes life better for everyone.
The Svalbard seed vault: A survival bunker for civilization
Reading Time: 5 minutes How could we reengineer civilization to be resilient against catastrophe? A vault of seeds slumbering in Arctic permafrost suggests one way.
The deathbed perspective
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s easy to forget that life is temporary. How would you live differently with that knowledge in front of you?
Solar geoengineering: Can we buy time to heal climate change?
Reading Time: 5 minutes We can cool our warming planet by blocking sunlight in the atmosphere. Is this hubris or a way of mitigating the damage we’ve already done?
Are AI art programs ripping off human artists?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Artists erupted in protest when they learned that AI art engines like Stable Diffusion were trained on their copyrighted works. This revelation has ignited a debate about the meaning of fair use.
AI is getting scarily good
Reading Time: 7 minutes Technological advances have made it possible for computers to hold conversations, perform surgery, create art, and more. What room is left for humans?
The middle of history
Reading Time: 5 minutes Why today’s utopian ideologies are unlikely to take us all the way to utopia.
Why degrowth is (still) wrong
Reading Time: 6 minutes Earlier this month, I wrote an essay against degrowth, the position that drastic reductions to the modern lifestyle are our only hope of saving the planet. I argued that, to the contrary, renewable energy promises a future of greater abundance even as we tread more lightly on
Heat pumps will bring secular victory
Reading Time: 3 minutes Fossil fuels pay for Vladimir Putin’s war. The oil and gas that Europe buys from Russia become the bombs and missiles falling on Ukraine. If we had a way to break this dependence, if Europeans no longer relied on Russian gas to heat their homes, we could choke off Putin’s rev
Why degrowth is wrong
Reading Time: 4 minutes Americans are obsessed with bigness. We build bigger and bigger houses. We drive bigger and bigger cars. We even eat bigger portions and consume more calories than anyone else, including more meat, the most resource-intensive of foods. In short, we idolize excess. We’re the r
Against doomism
Reading Time: 4 minutes Doom-laden scenarios get the most attention, but slow, bumpy progress toward a better world has always been more likely.