Tom Küffer 🔸

10,000 people across the globe have now taken the 🔸10% Pledge 🚀 > $300M already donated > $1B lifetime committed 10,000 people from 116 countries 🌐 This is a movement of action and optimism, funding work to solve the world’s most pressing problems 🔥 givingwhatwecan.org/pledge

@robertwiblin Do Newcomb's problem with non-philosophers and the divide will vanish. Right? right?!?

Me [a very smart person you can trust with responsibility]: 'Newcomb's problem has an obvious answer - you take both boxes. It's just basic game theory.'

I think that people who assert that current AI models definitely don't have subjective experience are trying to signal that they're 'serious people'. But to me it really just reads as an embarrassing tell that they're completely unaware of the relevant philosophy.

This is actually wise. "The dose makes the poison" is unintuitive to humans. People prefer mechanistic and binary reasoning rather than quantitative reasoning, which is why people can get themselves hyped up about harmless amounts of substances that harm in the right amounts.

@j_bambrick haha, cars 😂

We were in Colorado last week and I was struck by what is now an enormous disparity in wealth between the US and the UK. Spent a couple of nights in a cabin in an RV park - it had pools, slides, mini golf etc, fun for the kids. But the place was packed with RVs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not only that, but it’s clearly a conservative form of vacation, so the average car on site was a pickup truck. These were almost universally less than a couple of years old, and worth at least $60-80k, if not more. I could drive you to the poshest place in Northern Ireland and though you’d see the occasional high end vehicle, the average car there would probably cost half as much as these. And then I was talking to someone and they said: “Yeah, this is the most typical middle class American summer getaway.” Middle class. Our economies used to be roughly on a par when it comes to GDP per capita. And now the American middle class lives at a level than puts the UK upper classes to shame. Sad times for us. Kudos to America for resisting the socialism that has ground our economy to a halt.

Choose posting your best life while quietly falling apart. Choose surveillance capitalism, microdosing attention, algorithms that know you better than your friends do. Choose disappearing into the feed.

Choose life. Choose a username. Choose a profile picture. Choose a ring light. Choose a filter. Choose a niche. Choose engagement. Choose doomscrolling at 3am, eyes bloodshot, brain buzzing. Choose likes, follows, dopamine. Choose comparison. Choose insecurity.

Microsoft claims their new AI framework diagnoses 4x better than doctors. I'm a medical doctor and I actually read the paper. Here's my perspective on why this is both impressive AND misleading ... 🧵

Most of the increase in natural disasters in the late 20th century is due to improved reporting— Tracking the occurrence of natural disasters can save lives by helping countries prepare for future ones. In our work on natural disasters, we visualize data from EM-DAT, the most comprehensive international disaster database. Make a chart of the number of recorded disaster events over time — like the one here — and it looks like the number of disasters rose alarmingly from the 1970s to the millennium. This has led to many media outlets and organizations claiming that the number of disasters has quadrupled over the last 50 years. However, as EM-DAT itself makes clear, most of this is due to improvements in recording. The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, which builds this database, was not established until 1973, and didn’t start publishing EM-DAT until 1988. The number of recorded disasters increased due to more focused efforts to obtain globally comprehensive data and improvements in communication technologies, which allowed more events to be included, even in the planet's most remote areas. EM-DAT suggests that only data from 2000 onwards is relatively complete and comparable. The number of events before 2000 is likely to be underestimated. Note that this data does not tell us anything about the intensity of disasters. (This Data Insight was written by Hannah Ritchie.)

Because philanthropic donors usually prioritize local causes, communities facing the greatest need often end up with the least support. Charitable grants received per capita (2021): Bay Area: $1,031 Central Appalachia: $98

🩺 #EPeeps: We all use ACT🩸 in #ablation procedures—but protocols differ everywhere. 👩‍🔬Help us shed light on global🌏 practice by taking a short, 5-minute survey. Take a look in your lab what ACT-device & cartridge you use prior to starting the survey! forms.gle/wGifUv6an2cjma…

@bryan_caplan Yeah it destroys your clothes, at least over time. (If not one of these stupid toploader washing machines already did it)

Why are clothes dryers so rare in Europe?

@cremieuxrecueil white. but keep the caption bottom right. Title placement? don't know

Examples here. Old (dark) first: Here's another: And here's an example of the new (white) theme: And another:

VOTE: New or old plot style?

@ben_j_todd there you go

How long until AI can redo the last season of Game of Thrones?

@JayMan471 that's not what he wrote in the post

Physical fitness doesn’t extend lifespan, sorry folks and gym bros. Even the effect of wealth on lifespan is limited (not seen in lottery studies and effect of wealth goes away in twin controls).

Today's total fertility rates look very worrisome. Since people today are delaying fertility more and more, they look worse than eventual, completed fertility rate.

Presented at #EHRA2025: In the SINGLE SHOT CHAMPION trial, pulsed field ablation was noninferior to cryoballoon ablation with respect to the incidence of a first recurrence of atrial tachyarrhythmia, as assessed by continuous rhythm monitoring. Full trial results: nej.md/4iH5zQe @escardio

🚨New RCT results out! In the SINGLE SHOT CHAMPION trial, pulsed field ablation (PFA) was noninferior and even superior to cryoballoon ablation in reducing AF recurrence at 1 year — with continuous rhythm monitoring via ICMs. 🫀 Trial: NCT05534581

A majority of bioethicists affirm that "preventing a death is equally important irrespective of age." If you don't immediately see why this is evidence of professional incompetence, compare: "every life-extension is equally important irrespective of its duration."