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An inspiration engine for ideas
In 2011 Cowen published a digital pamphlet in which he argued that since the 1973 oil-price shock, America had experienced a hidden crisis of lost growth that would be resolved only by the development of new technology. He called this period the “Great Stagnation”, and he proposed a cultural solution rather than an economic one: raise the social st... See more
archive.ph • Tyler Cowen, the Man Who Wants to Know Everything
I know that many of these virtues have to do with the ways in which the pieces handle and respond to the tsunami of available fact, context, and per-spective that constitutes Total Noise. This claim might itself look slippery, because of course any published essay is a burst of infor-mation and context that is by definition part of 2007’s overall r... See more
David Foster Wallace • Deciderization 2007—a Special Report
To Pollak, this was a demonstration not of Bill Baker’s cruelty but of his acumen—in this case to push his deep belief that science rests on a foundation of inquiry rather than certainty. Also, it revealed how nimble Baker’s mind really was. “A very small number of times in my life I’ve been in the presence of somebody who didn’t necessarily answer
... See moreJon Gertner • The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
The first bottom-up attempt to untangle the riddle of design was to search for a profound mathematical truth at the kernel of existence. The second line of attack, multiverse cosmology, also relied on timeless metalaws, but augmented with the anthropic selection of a habitable island universe.
Thomas Hertog • On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory
“Most or all of what I do takes off from looking at the description of the world we have… like an art critic—saying, how could this have been better? And then trying to improve the equations …to explain things that don’t seem to fit,” he says. “Aesthetic guidance has been very crucial in trying to formulate new laws—and sometimes it’s worked.”
Gabriel Popkin • The Universe According to Frank Wilczek - John Templeton Foundation
EV likes to emphasise its search for “moonshot” projects – high-impact ways of changing the world. Take, for example, Recidiviz, a criminal-justice non-profit that Cowen funded. It has helped free 70,000 parole-eligible people, using data tools, who would otherwise have remained under supervision. Yet if you browse the winning projects, it becomes ... See more
archive.ph • Tyler Cowen, the Man Who Wants to Know Everything
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time (Helix Books)
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