Nate Silver

One example given in the book is that there was a puppy, a poodle, who got stuck in the New York City subway system a few years ago. And should we stop the entire F train to rescue Dakota? And they decide to stop the F train. But like, you wouldn't do that for a squirrel. You'd run over the fucking squirrel or like a cat probably gets run over.

And a dog, we just assign enough moral value that it gets weird. They're like, OK, well, look at the number of neurons an animal has.

And a dog, we just assign enough moral value that it gets weird. They're like, OK, well, look at the number of neurons an animal has.

And a dog, we just assign enough moral value that it gets weird. They're like, OK, well, look at the number of neurons an animal has.

All these solutions to COVID were terrible. It was terrible to have all these people get sick. It was terrible to shut down schools. But you have to make trade-offs.

All these solutions to COVID were terrible. It was terrible to have all these people get sick. It was terrible to shut down schools. But you have to make trade-offs.

All these solutions to COVID were terrible. It was terrible to have all these people get sick. It was terrible to shut down schools. But you have to make trade-offs.

And people like don't respect the boundaries enough. I'll worry if I'm making a model in baseball or politics or basketball. Oh, this player is 10% underestimated, but the data is very good and we know how the system works. We know the rules of the game, literally. You have little errors and mistakes, but pretty accurate.

And people like don't respect the boundaries enough. I'll worry if I'm making a model in baseball or politics or basketball. Oh, this player is 10% underestimated, but the data is very good and we know how the system works. We know the rules of the game, literally. You have little errors and mistakes, but pretty accurate.

And people like don't respect the boundaries enough. I'll worry if I'm making a model in baseball or politics or basketball. Oh, this player is 10% underestimated, but the data is very good and we know how the system works. We know the rules of the game, literally. You have little errors and mistakes, but pretty accurate.

Whereas in these big open-ended problems, you're just kind of making shit up on the back of an envelope and sometimes the best you can do. We had to make these decisions again under COVID and maybe if we'd been more thoughtful about them, like what is the cost of shutting down school in Los Angeles for 19 months?

Whereas in these big open-ended problems, you're just kind of making shit up on the back of an envelope and sometimes the best you can do. We had to make these decisions again under COVID and maybe if we'd been more thoughtful about them, like what is the cost of shutting down school in Los Angeles for 19 months?

Whereas in these big open-ended problems, you're just kind of making shit up on the back of an envelope and sometimes the best you can do. We had to make these decisions again under COVID and maybe if we'd been more thoughtful about them, like what is the cost of shutting down school in Los Angeles for 19 months?

You know, we probably should have done more back of the envelope math there, which I think would have said probably a bad idea even given these uncertain, But people don't know when they go from these closed problems that are amenable to modeling to these open problems where it's just regurgitated assumptions over and over and over again.

You know, we probably should have done more back of the envelope math there, which I think would have said probably a bad idea even given these uncertain, But people don't know when they go from these closed problems that are amenable to modeling to these open problems where it's just regurgitated assumptions over and over and over again.

You know, we probably should have done more back of the envelope math there, which I think would have said probably a bad idea even given these uncertain, But people don't know when they go from these closed problems that are amenable to modeling to these open problems where it's just regurgitated assumptions over and over and over again.

So what's happened, though, with EA, the mandate kind of expanded for various reasons from charitable giving to any problem involving utility, meaning how do we make the world better? More questions. Who's deciding what constitutes better and for whom? What if I make myself infinitely happy and the rest of you are my slaves?

So what's happened, though, with EA, the mandate kind of expanded for various reasons from charitable giving to any problem involving utility, meaning how do we make the world better? More questions. Who's deciding what constitutes better and for whom? What if I make myself infinitely happy and the rest of you are my slaves?

So what's happened, though, with EA, the mandate kind of expanded for various reasons from charitable giving to any problem involving utility, meaning how do we make the world better? More questions. Who's deciding what constitutes better and for whom? What if I make myself infinitely happy and the rest of you are my slaves?

You can say, well, Nate has infinite units of utility and you guys have 0.01 because you're not physically dead. Maybe you get to watch TV once a week or something. You get to nap. You're so generous. Yeah, you get to eat at Arby's now and then, right?