Frank Knight: “Freedom in society means, in short free (that is, voluntary) association, on terms freely agreed upon by the parties involved, in contrast with dictation by any prescriptive authority or law.” [via CafeHayek]
Atanu Dey: “The simplest and the broadest definition of technology is that “technology is knowledge of how to do” something. We generally associate technology with high technology — the innumerable electronic gadgets and gizmos that we use all the time, and the cars, trains, planes, nuclear reactors, and so on. But those are just objects that have technology embedded and embodied in them, not technology themselves…We think that technology is some new-fangled feature of the modern world. Actually technology, accurately and broadly understood as knowledge of processes that achieve some chosen end, is as ancient as humanity itself. Technology predates two fields related to it, namely, science and engineering. It is helpful to distinguish between those three concepts.”
WSJ: “[Mr. John Agresto] classifies the death of the liberal arts as “suicide,” not “murder.” Americans, regarding themselves as a “practical” people, have always been suspicious of the liberal arts, Mr. Agresto says. Today’s inflated prices make them even more so: “A liberal education, thanks to the infinite wisdom of university and college administrators, costs as much as getting an engineering degrees, but with little in the hope of secure future recompense,” he writes…He worries that students are “making themselves small too soon” by picking a major without first getting a broad education.”
Dan Shipper: “Linus Lee is an independent researcher focused on building better interfaces for people to interact with generative AI models. He wants to replace today’s prompt-based interfaces with affordances that provide greater predictability and control—things like pinch-to-zoom or drag-and-drop interactions for AI. It’s important research, and his output is wildly prolific because his workflow is a loop. He researches generative AI, and uses what he discovers to build AI tools that will help him think better and get more done. He uses publicly available AI tools as well as a suite of custom-built models that help him read faster, search through information more quickly, and take better notes.”
Anticipating the Unintended: “There’s the commitment problem among political parties. People are never convinced that a political party will stay the course on a particular policy. This is borne out of experience. Parties are less guided by economic ideology these days. The same set of politicians who might advocate a higher tax today and ask you to tighten your belts may change their tune tomorrow when they sense a change in the air. Also, politicians aren’t permanent. There is turnover among them within a party itself. And the newer set might renege on previous commitments. So, for the citizens, paying short-term costs because you believe in the political commitment of a party now is fraught with risks.”
