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Albert Wenger – Apr 13, 2017
Disruptive innovations often start out as worse versions of something that already exists. Worse along all dimensions except for one, but one that turns out to really matter because it unlocks a new use case for which the incumbent does not work at all or is not affordable. The PC was slower, had less memory and less storage than a minicomputer. But it was massively more affordable and could be set up and run without the help of the centralized IT department ... Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Recap
Albert Wenger – Apr 12, 2017
Today in Uncertainty Wednesday I want to provide a big recap of the series which I started last August. The key takeaways so far should be that Reality itself is not directly accessible to us. All we have to go [...] Read more
Changing Everything: Basic Income is Not Enough
Albert Wenger – Apr 10, 2017
One of the criticisms leveled against Universal Basic Income is that it is too big a change. But if anything it is not enough of a change. Why? Because it is just one part that needs to change and human [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Sensitivity and Specificity (Cont’d)
Albert Wenger – Apr 5, 2017
Last Uncertainty Wednesday, I introduced sensitivity and specificity as measures of how good a test is (or using the language of our framework, how strong a signal is). We derived the following formula P(B | H) = P(B)/P(H) * P(H [...] Read more
Hooray for Lab Grown Meat
Albert Wenger – Apr 3, 2017
In my draft book World After Capital, I have a section on Human Needs. I am currently in the middle of rewriting that section (so don’t go read it now) because it suffers in parts from a confusion between needs [...] Read more
EarthMatch: Matching Donations to Earthjustice
Albert Wenger – Apr 1, 2017
As regular readers of Continuations know, I believe humanity urgently needs to act on climate change. In this context it is particularly appalling that the current administration wants to unwind the advances of the Clean Power Plan. The atmosphere is [...] Read more
Brain Interfaces: Another Great Example of the Duality of Technology
Albert Wenger – Mar 31, 2017
In my book World After Capital, I open with a section on the duality of technology: since the days of inventing fire we can use technology for good and for bad. The technology itself simply broadens the space of what’s [...] Read more
Uncertainty Wednesday: Sensitivity and Specificity
Albert Wenger – Mar 29, 2017
Today’s Uncertainty Wednesday is a further continuation of the PSA Test example, but I got tired of the boring title and wanted to give the post as more, well, specific one. Last Wednesday I wrote that sensitivity and specificity are [...] Read more
Some Things I Have Learned About Email
Albert Wenger – Mar 27, 2017
A non trivial part of my time is spent reading and writing a lot of email. Here are some things that I have learned and that work for me. There are only two legitimate uses for bcc. First, explicitly moving [...] Read more