Cameron Wade

@Afinetheorem Is Sonnet better than Opus for writing tasks?

Good writing is tough but I will say: I took a few recently published research papers, a .md file with very specific style notes (think New Yorker Editor), and Sonnet 4.6 + 5.4 Thinking, and asked for the introduction to be rewritten. They were *much* better. Try it yourself!

@Rory_Johnston Rory I’ve really appreciated your analysis on this - thank you! Curious how you square the relatively tame price shock we’re seeing when you compare it to past conflicts in real terms x.com/jasonfurman/st…

I think that a big part of the reason that people still think Trump will be in for the Iran War long haul is that they don’t appreciate how truly, insanely unhinged the energy market is about to get if this doesn’t end soon.

@atrembath I love the annual Cembalest paper, but he's making me tap the sign on this one.

@Leigh_Phillips Congrats Leigh! Hope you are well

I’ve just this week landed a deal for my third book, a radical defense of humanity as the most precious thing in the universe, contra the misanthropy of the green left (“We are the virus”) and the tech right (“We are the beta test for AI”). The book aims to construct a secular version of the Judeo-Christian Imago Dei doctrine. In place of revealed truth, my attempt at an objective, scientific argument for human dignity and value draws on geology, evolutionary biology, comparative cognition, and the history and philosophy of our understanding of ourselves. I want to re-affirm our Promethean, pioneering, tool-making, meaning-making essence — we are indeed Homo faber, man the maker — while critiquing those practices, technologies, and political economies that are already diminishing or degrading our humanity, well in advance of artificial general intelligence. The book is no dismissal of climate change, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution or any of the myriad other real and severe environmental problems we face, but instead argues that green-left misanthropy, founded upon an unscientific belief in a balance of nature (a species of the orthogenetic fallacy, the notion that there is a direction or purpose to evolution) ironically results in policies and politics that undermine effective ecological action and harm people. Similarly, the book goes beyond the vulgar animus toward AI that trades in narratives of critique that are easily fathomable, familiar (perhaps even cozy in their familiarity) yet easily shown to be false or straightfowardly corrigible (eg water consumption, carbon emissions). The book leaps over these cheap, disposable, quasi-luddite arguments to discuss the far deeper threats to our humanity from AI and adjacent technologies — *threats that are already here* — that most of these quickly out-of-date critiques miss: the risk of loss of human meaning-making, the erosion of the self-domesticating gains of civilization, and the market-driven reduction of people to mere animals, to biological desire-satisfaction machines. AI can be a great boon to humanity if we ensure it remains our tool, not our master, and we can indeed overcome all our ecological challenges, so long as we recognize that we are stewards, not vandals. Above all, we need to rediscover what it means to be human — and fast.

This is great. What should middle powers do on AI? Axiom 1: you need frontier AI. Axiom 2: you don't control the full stack to do so, nor even foundation model capability. What to do? The one thing I'd add from when we advised Canada is: be essential to stack to gain leverage 1/2

@TheStalwart @tylercowen

Who is a person for whom we have a lot of public speaking transcripts as well as a lot of written work?

@xiaowang1984 @duncancampbell Would love to know more details on the raspberry pi setup!

Well it's 9F outside and this Chinese Gree built minisplit is blowing out 85F air at the high fan speed and 650W power consumption. Not bad for a $700 piece of equipment (plus taxes)

@fatboiThomas @Eddie_Steele97 Congrats Jake!

@Eddie_Steele97 Appreciate it @Eddie_Steele97 Hope all is well

Seamless @fatboiThomas 👊🏽 Congratulations on a great career man!

@DenySully I wouldn’t read too much into that map. I’m bullish on EGS, but it likely overstates Nova Scotia’s resource strength/potential. Regional work paints a more tempered picture: cascadeinstitute.org/technical-pape… netzeroatlantic.ca/research/phase…

Fascinating to see Nova Scotia stick out on this map 👀

starting to think polymarket may be presenting this info in a way to encourage buying and selling of prediction contracts

@DenySully Great piece! My favourite instance of new, high FAR, Halifax aesthetic builds is the initial stretch on Princess Place just off the Commons. I didn't realize for years that they were new builds (part of the adjacent condo). Would love to see more of this.

New blog!

This was a fun chart to make - Halifax's old low density homes are ~twice as dense as more recent construction. And yet people LOVE the old stuff!

that’s a terrible name for a baby

@DenySully Thank you for your service 🫡

JRTA report thread 🧵real action on transport - or deja-vu all over again?

@macrocephalopod sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

The best academic finance paper I ever read was a working paper (ie pre-preprint) that I found on a well-known researcher’s website after googling for related terms and filetype:pdf The paper was dated 2015 and I saw it in 2017. I just checked, and the (simple, but quite niche) alpha it describes still works and could probably generate $10m+ annually. The paper was never published.

New blog features this chart on @VIA_Rail train speeds on the Ocean, linkinbio

Car headlights are too damn bright, and I'm doing something about it. Brightness has doubled in the last decade, but manufacturing standards haven't budged in 40 yrs. Drivers AND oncoming traffic deserve visibility – it matters for seniors & rural roads. youtube.com/watch?v=9YoV-Q…

@PeterMassie @globeandmail This is great Pete!

Ottawa and Edmonton don't always see eye to eye. But geothermal power can create common ground. Geothermal uses O&G expertise to make clean power and can help Canada become a conventional & clean energy superpower. My latest in the @globeandmail theglobeandmail.com/business/comme…

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