Month: November 2024

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Interesting articles, November 2024

The pace of Russia’s territorial gains in eastern Ukraine has accelerated.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/ukrainian-defenses-in-east-are-buckling-russian-advance-is-accelerating

However, this is coming at the cost of enormous Russian casualties.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3nv7j1xkxo

One of Russia’s biggest tank storage bases has 75% fewer tanks than it did before the Ukraine War, and most of the remaining vehicles are in such poor condition that they can’t be restored for combat.
https://youtu.be/mUzuAMp73I4?si=6E3JubyT_Xg8fh7B

The Red Army is so low on weapons that Russia’s biggest film studio donated to it dozens of antique tanks and other vehicles that it normally used for making war films.
https://www.twz.com/land/russias-largest-film-studio-donated-antique-tanks-to-the-military

With North Korean help, Russia is recapturing its land near Kursk.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-hoped-force-russia-pick-111953225.html

North Korean artillery pieces are making their way to Ukraine.
https://www.twz.com/land/north-korean-long-range-self-propelled-artillery-appears-in-russia

Russia is giving North Korea more advanced antiaircraft missiles in exchange for its help in Ukraine.
https://www.twz.com/land/north-korea-getting-new-air-defenses-in-return-for-supporting-russia-in-ukraine-official

Many Russians are enlisting in the Army solely for money. The pay is excellent. Problematically, the Russian government is paying for these salaries as well as most other war-related expenses by printing huge amounts of money and handing it out, which is causing very high inflation.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/economics-death-why-russians-poor-161637106.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-signs-law-allowing-russian-171726947.html

After Biden authorized Ukraine to fire advanced, U.S.-made missiles deep into Russia, Putin announced Russia might use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-nuclear-doctrine-putin-91f20e0c9b0f9e5eaa3ed97c35789898

Russia also fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile into Ukraine in revenge. This is the first time such a weapon has ever been used in anger.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-intercontinental-missile-war-putin-d50183ccfc28b10c71e93f3e68159a61

‘Ukraine’s drone units are inflicting 80% of the frontline casualties on Russia, report says’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraines-drone-units-inflicting-80-121327010.html

Israel’s most recent airstrikes on Iran destroyed most of the latter’s missile fuel production facilities, which will effectively limit missile production for years. The jets also destroyed many of Iran’s S-300 antiaircraft missile sites, showing how inferior the Russian-made systems are to American technology. Most of China’s antiaircraft missiles have the same level of technology as the S-300, meaning a U.S.-China air war would probably be more one-sided than people think. The U.S. is unique in that its military pretends to be weaker than it is.
https://youtu.be/oQtRdL36FVs?si=lN40_YCEHMAHJ5i2

2% of Gaza’s population has been killed in the last 13 months.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-lebanon-hezbollah-iran-news-11-20-2024-5da3ce43df8662fe9eeab4ad804bdc0f

A U.N. analysis found that most of the people killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza have been women and children.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/partial-un-probe-gaza-war-094427985.html

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8x5570514o

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and two top leaders in the Israeli and Hamas armed forces for war crimes.
https://apnews.com/article/icc-israel-hamas-warrants-netanyahu-palestinian-arrest-73c854d072e0a1a41b19b2cb2cdd07fa

This video shows how the Israeli Air Force practically destroyed Syria’s Air Force in 1982.
https://youtu.be/F33h9-oUfDU?si=c3yQos_YepVP9ald

The F-20 was the greatest fighter plane that never was.
https://youtu.be/5ypSn108HuY?si=J-cp60LpkDuyjPhd

Here’s an interesting and simple video about how artillery is aimed at targets. The “Fire Direction Center” (7:20) will be made obsolete by intelligent machines.
https://youtu.be/PrullIWGqX8?si=acW-XgN2SQ8a2Z_7

We know of ways to design better shotgun shells, but no one has tried to commercialize them due to path dependence. In other words, there are so many shotguns that use the old shells that we are locked in to continuing their use.
https://youtu.be/3iLSCNtogc8?si=0s8Uqt9nCXQD3YA-

In November of 1950, U.N. forces captured Pyongyang from North Korea’s battered army. At that point, there were two options: 1) Build a strong defensive line north of Pyongyang clear across the peninsula or 2) pursue the fleeing enemy and take over all of North Korea to the Chinese border. In retrospect, we should have chosen the first option because even if the Communists had retained control over the northern mountain region, they wouldn’t have had enough land, resources or people to make a viable country, and there’s no way it would have been able to build nuclear weapons 50 years later.

Halting our troops north of Pyongyang would have also left us much abler to repulse any Chinese counteroffensive, which some in the U.S. military high command correctly believed was coming. In any case, not advancing to the border would have signaled to the Chinese that our goal wasn’t to eventually invade them, and that we were willing to leave rump North Korea as a buffer zone. General MacArthur really blew it.
https://youtu.be/VWlZ6Xf4Bp8?si=5f1gtV8rRLvhzHAA&t=524

In a shocking turn of events, rebels captured the second-largest city in Syria, Aleppo, after just a day of fighting.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly27r5p0yno

From this February: “There’s this very powerful and seductive narrative around a soft landing, and we’re just not seeing it in the data,” Citi’s chief US economist, Andrew Hollenhorst, said in a CNBC interview.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/no-soft-landing-us-economy-022146984.html

Does Joe Biden believe in the Singularity?
https://x.com/i/status/1838721620808208884

“Search engine optimization” worsens political polarization by providing people with political articles that support their existing biases.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241031-how-google-tells-you-what-you-want-to-hear

Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The vast majority of polls showed a tied result up to the day of the vote, and were badly wrong: Trump won the popular vote and the electoral vote count by healthy margins. Here’s a roundup of right and wrong predictions.

The saga of veteran Democratic strategist James Carville:

Elon Musk’s 2023 prediction right after it was announced Trump would be charged with a felony in New York and forced to have his mugshot taken:

In September 2023, Tucker Carlson predicted Trump would be assassinated. In 2024, there were two attempts on his life, one of which nearly succeeded. “They indicted him three times, and every single time his popularity rose. If you begin with criticism, then you go to protest, then you go to impeachment, then you go to indictment, and none of them work, what’s next? Graph it out, man! We’re speeding toward assassination, obviously. No-one will say that, but I don’t know how you can’t reach that conclusion.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12470861/Tucker-Carlson-breathlessly-says-speeding-Trump-assassination-liberal-establishment-running-options-stop-president-Russian-propagandist-says-ex-Fox-News-host-dead-man-walking.html

A robotic guard dog is patrolling Trump’s Florida estate.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30p16gn3pvo

Trump has vowed to negotiate and end to the Ukraine War, even if it means forfeiting conquered territory. A cease-fire would allow Russia to rebuild its forces faster than Ukraine, and then attack again in a year with a large advantage. Trump should not substantially lower U.S. aid to Ukraine for the first year of his coming term to ensure that Russia burns through the remainder of its Soviet-era weapons stockpiles, making rapid rearmament after any cease-fire impossible.
https://youtu.be/cZoJKFfZ7nw?si=dzoVreJXTfp2EAlt

NVIDIA’s market cap is now over $3 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nvidia-rides-ai-wave-pass-211002574.html

In his final book, Henry Kissinger warned of a future where technologically enhanced humans and machines rule the world. ‘In a section titled “Coevolution: Artificial Humans,” the three authors encourage people to think now about “trying to navigate our role when we will no longer be the only or even the principal actors on our planet.”’
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/nov/19/henry-kissinger-final-warning-prepare-superhuman-p/

‘A painting by an AI robot of the eminent World War Two codebreaker Alan Turing has sold for $1,084,800 (£836,667) at auction.’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqdvz4w45wo

An online variant of the Turing Test showed humans can barely tell human-made art from AI-made art anymore.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-art-turing

‘AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-76900-1

AI-generated music is now as good as what most human musicians can make. The two are also indistinguishable in most cases.
https://youtu.be/qj1Sp8He6e4?si=JLpjUDh91kKkV4mY
https://youtu.be/u2pYNRNdcNc?si=ChwlfJj7bgk3jmYD

This high-res simulation of Rome is almost indistinguishable from reality.
https://youtu.be/Qhucdyzkeis?si=xJrIQElA53R7ru_K

Machines can recognize emotions from the facial expressions of goats. Someday, they will be able to empathize and communicate with animals better than humans.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241107193106.htm

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts machines will probably surpass humans in all areas of thinking by 2030. Roadblocks to that milestone are unlikely to appear.
https://youtu.be/GrloGdp5wdc?si=aGM_PDGv0vXNQqvr

The anonymous tech analyst “Gwern” predicts AGI could be invented as early as 2028.
https://youtu.be/a42key59cZQ?si=opLEiYab3pZmkAJr

Even the eternal pessimist Yann LeCun predicts AGI could be invented in as little as five years.
https://youtu.be/JAgHUDhaTU0?si=hpMZqC30F22U_EVM&t=4410

Greg Brockman has returned to OpenAI.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/12/openai-co-founder-greg-brockman-returns-after-three-months-of-leave.html

There are rumors GPT-5 is not as good as was hoped, leading to questions about whether AI progress is slowing down.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/09/openai-reportedly-developing-new-strategies-to-deal-with-ai-improvement-slowdown/

“[Today’s investments in AIs and data centers are] the biggest gamble in business history”
https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2024/11/18/will-the-bubble-burst-for-ai-in-2025-or-will-it-start-to-deliver

‘US government commission pushes Manhattan Project-style AI initiative’
https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-government-commission-pushes-manhattan-project-style-ai-initiative-2024-11-19/

Despite all the jokes about it, the Tesla Cybertruck has rapidly become the #1 bestselling electric truck in America.
https://autos.yahoo.com/data-shows-tesla-cybertruck-dominating-110031477.html

The “Jellyfish UFO” was probably a bundle of party balloons.
https://youtu.be/ojotsKjshHc?si=80VvDR50SsQ4xIBq

The U.S. military says the “GoFast” UFO was probably a balloon and only seemed to be moving fast because the jet that filmed it was moving fast.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6364948499112

‘Researchers can use this framework to answer complex questions, find gaps in current knowledge, suggest new designs for materials, and predict how materials might behave, and link concepts that had never been connected before.

The AI model found unexpected similarities between biological materials and “Symphony No. 9,” suggesting that both follow patterns of complexity. “Similar to how cells in biological materials interact in complex but organized ways to perform a function, Beethoven’s 9th symphony arranges musical notes and themes to create a complex but coherent musical experience,” says Buehler.’
https://news.mit.edu/2024/graph-based-ai-model-maps-future-innovation-1112

‘We took the standard human model (75kg), and made smaller and smaller models down to 100 grams. We also made the models bigger, up to 2,000kg, and challenged them to run as fast as they could.

Several fascinating things happened when we did this.

First, the 2,000kg model couldn’t move. Nor could the 1,000kg model. In fact, the largest model that could move was 900kg, suggesting an upper limit to the human form. Beyond this size we need to change shape in order to move.

We also found that the fastest model was not the biggest nor smallest. Instead, it was around 47kg, a similar weight to an average cheetah.

…Interestingly, many of our fastest long distance runners such as Eliud Kipchoge weigh around 50kg.’
https://theconversation.com/not-too-big-not-too-small-why-modern-humans-are-the-ideal-size-for-speed-241668

China has now produced more greenhouse gas emissions than Europe has since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/19/climate/china-emissions-fossil-fuels-climate.html

The FDA is finally prohibiting the sale of the decongestant “phenylephrine” because it doesn’t work. There were indications of its inefficacy as early as 2007. It took them this long to do anything.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-proposes-ending-use-oral-phenylephrine-otc-monograph-nasal-decongestant-active-ingredient-after

Lead poisoning is pervasive among Afghans.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-022-00431-y

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The coming baby boom

Something that has been getting an annoyingly large amount of attention recently is human population decline. While this is old news for some rich countries like Japan and Italy, whose populations started decreasing around 2010, the same phenomenon has struck even middle-income countries like China and Brazil many years sooner than demographers projected. This is causing alarm as people ponder the ill economic consequences of having fewer working-age people but more elderly, and the changes in demography and the global balance of power as African and Muslim countries become the most numerous. 

Rather than tread the same ground that the mainstream media has on this topic, I’m going to consider how future technologies and the cultural changes that go hand-in-hand with them will mitigate the effects of population decline. Below, I’ve listed each of the main depressors of birthrates along with how they will be counteracted.

Women

Female empowerment is probably the biggest reason why birthrates have dropped. Women across the world want more for themselves than being housebound mothers who are dependent on their husbands for money; they want education, careers, and the option to prosper independently. To a modern woman, the opportunity cost of having children, in terms of delayed or abandoned matriculation and forfeited lifetime salary, is massive. As a result, women delay starting families until they’ve finished their degrees and gotten good jobs, often pushing the start of motherhood to 30 (as is the average age for a first-time American mother). Because their fertility windows close around 40, it’s common for mothers to not have as many children as they wanted. 

This ties into ANOTHER topic that has been getting an annoyingly large amount of attention recently: job automation. The last four years of rapid advances in LLMs have inflamed worries that machines will soon get smart enough to take all of our jobs. I think this will happen eventually, though the length of time it takes (30 years? 100 years?), the order in which jobs are automated (White-collar managers before blue-collar laborers or the reverse? Artistic jobs or scientific jobs first?), and how societies respond to the transition are totally uncertain. Regardless, if every human loses their job, then by implication every woman loses her job, which eliminates a major impediment to having children: With no possibility of having a gainful career, there will be much less of an opportunity cost for women to have children. Without jobs to worry about, men will also have more time for fatherhood. 

In the far future, it’s also unclear if higher education will continue impeding parenthood. Aside from the pure pursuit of knowledge for one’s own gratification, there will be no point in getting a college degree at some point because machines will be much smarter than even the smartest human. Even if you had a PhD from the best university, you would not be able to contribute anything useful in your field since machines would be so much more advanced and faster than you. The value of a college education would plummet, and more women (and men) would rightfully find it a better use of their time to have children during early adulthood. 

Therapies that delay or even eliminate menopause will be particularly popular because they will not only extend female fertility, but they also promote youthfulness, beauty, and other aspects of personal health. The added luxury of more time and youthful energy to have children will of course raise birthrates.

These therapies could eventually be subsumed by more advanced treatments that slow, halt, and reverse the aging process as a whole. The benefits would accrue to men just as much as to women, and would further raise birthrates by granting everyone the strength and stamina to bear and raise children well into what we’d today consider old age. Medical immortality is the ultimate cure for population decline. If everyone lives forever, even if the average person has one child a century, it’s only a matter of time before Earth is literally clogged with human bodies. If you believe in the feasibility of medical immortality–and there’s no reason not to–and that biological humans won’t go extinct for some reason in the relatively near future, then you should acknowledge overpopulation as a likely long-term prospect. 

Infertility

Aside from menopause, there are many kinds of health problems that can render both sexes infertile. Additionally, same-sex couples and single males who want to be fathers face obvious roadblocks to biological reproduction. Again, science will offer solutions. In the future, we can expect cures for most diseases, including infertility. This will include better ways to surgically repair or replace damaged or malformed sex organs, or replace defective DNA inside of some tissues through CRISPR. Genetic engineering and greater use of IVF screening will also ensure that fewer people are born with fertility problems to begin with.

An illustration of a fetal lamb inside the “artificial womb” device, which mimics the conditions inside a pregnant animal.

In the shorter run, techniques that allow sterile people to create eggs and sperm of their own by inserting their DNA into empty donor gametes will be developed and help raise the birthrate. In the very long run, artificial wombs will be created and will let anyone have a biological child, probably at much lower cost and risk to the fetus than the “traditional” method. The logical place for artificial wombs is in medical labs, but there’s no technological barrier to eventually putting them into female androids, allowing for true robotic surrogacy.

Time and Money

A second cause of reduced fertility is the high cost and time commitment of raising children. Bigger housing, babysitters, healthcare, tutoring, clothing, and a slew of other expenses accompany a child, and typically run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in rich countries. These costs dissuade many young and middle-aged adults who already feel stretched, or who don’t want to give up the modest financial cushions they have, from having as many children as they want, or from having any at all. Additionally, cultural norms have shifted so that adults accept children will be monumental time commitments whose emotional and intellectual development and personal interests will have to be nurtured. Long gone are the old days when children were largely ignored and most households were authoritarian. 

Our old friend mass job automation again offers solutions. Though it would, at first glance, seem likely to depress birthrates since people would no longer have jobs and hence money to pay for child expenses, machine labor would make every good and service cheaper, allowing humans with a modest universal basic income (UBI) to afford things that only the rich can today. Importantly, this would include babysitting, tutoring, house servant services, and autonomous transportation, which would greatly ease the parenting workload and make it more enticing to have children. Having a house robot that was infinitely patient, fair, and had an encyclopedic knowledge of parenting skills and communication styles would be very beneficial to any family, and at scale would create social benefits.

Going a step further, it’s just a matter of time before robotics and AI get advanced enough to allow for the creation of androids who could function as spouses and foster parents. This would entice even more humans to have children by reducing the parenting workload substantially. With almost no exceptions, marriage rates dropped and divorce rates rose across rich countries from 1990 – 2021, and unsurprisingly, this has contributed to the birthrate decline since fewer people are interested in shouldering the burdens of parenthood alone. Robot spouses will fill the gap, in what might, counterintuitively, be a positive development for the human race.

Conclusion

While the decline in birthrates across upper- and middle-income countries will hurt the economy for decades, there’s no reason to think the negative trends will continue beyond this century, let alone reach the logical endpoint of human extinction. Future technologies and their attendant cultural changes will raise birthrates, reviving older fears of overpopulation and overcrowding.