Ajay Shah: “The Indian state lacks the strategic depth of having access to vast resources if faced with a special moment. When faced with a crisis such as the pandemic, the Indian state is down to hand wringing: An economic response like that seen in the US is inconceivable. A state that cannot borrow massively when faced with a crisis is a state that cannot defend the nation. Reforming public finance and earning the respect of private lenders are not merely matters of economic efficiency. They are requirements for nation building. A capable state requires low baseline debt and deep institutional trust so that it can have the strategic depth of borrowing on a massive scale a few times per century.”
WSJ: “We need a science of the AI Mind…There has never been a more promising time in history for making rapid scientific advancements. If we want the next few years to go well, we must allocate the best minds we have—in science, law, government and increasingly in the data centers themselves—to the problem of understanding the nature of what we’re building and the consequences of building it.”
Ryan Streeter: “Hume criticizes “parties from principle,” those organized around ideology. “Parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phaenomenon, that has yet appeared in human affairs.” He contrasts them with parties “from interest,” which form around professional and geographical interests. The interests of farmers and sea merchants are different, which is reflected in their political allegiances. Parties of interest are alive and well on K Street in Washington. Parties from principle produce fanatical behavior in a way that parties from interest don’t, Hume observed. Parties of interest compromise to get what they want, but ideological purists don’t.” [via Aronold Kling]
FT: “Two years ago quantum physicist Dolev Bluvstein opted for a post in academia rather than the business world. Practical quantum computers, he had concluded, were “too far away to commercialise”. Today things look very different. Oratomic, a company Bluvstein helped found and now heads, recently raised $300mn — the largest first financing round for a quantum start-up — and is racing to build a full-scale machine before the end of the decade. The about-turn reflects a surge of optimism that has swept through the sector, as a series of technical breakthroughs raises hopes that the dream of harnessing the quirky world of quantum mechanics to power a new form of computing, first proposed in the 1980s, is finally close to reality.”
