Category Archives: Month in Review

June 2026 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: The latest paper from Johan Rockstrom and company lays out climate scenarios through the year 3,000. There is plenty still to be figured out about the scientific details, but some major uncertainties are the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases – in other words, how much warming will occur per unit of emissions – and how likely the major feedback loops are, such as melting permafrost releasing massive amounts of methane, loss of sea ice reducing reflection of sunlight in an accelerating loop, and major shifts in ocean currents that distribute and rebalance heat across the planet. These are existential risks, and they can potentially reinforce each other in multiplicative ways. So even though there is scientific uncertainty over whether it will get bad, or really catastrophically bad, there is no logical or moral case for not taking precautionary action now to reduce the risk of these outcomes.

Most hopeful story: If AI does in fact accelerate productivity and create significant new wealth, there are many well-known effective policy options for redistributing this wealth. Some of these have the word “tax” in their names, but there are also less efficient but perhaps more politically palatable options like baby bonds. Perhaps if the rate of new wealth creation is really a major departure from the past, our system may have a chance at implementing some of these.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I wanted to teach my own children not only some basic financial literacy concepts (Johnny wants ice cream today but is trying to save for a new bike) but also how those relate to the idea of a capitalist economy (why does interest exist, what causes inflation, and what the heck is money anyway?) and the real physical world (yes, little Johnny, the consequences of taking natural resources out and putting pollution back into our biophysical system are in fact intertwined with our human economy). A daunting task, considering that Nobel laureates have struggled with this. But the Nobel laureates aren’t going to explain it to the children, so your intrepid blogger waded in and came up with something.

May 2026 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: The people running Palantir and other companies focused on military/security/surveillance applications of information technology seem to have, at best, a faith-based belief that the United States can do no wrong. At worst, their beliefs are based on eugenics and white Christian nationalist attitudes which simply have no basis in fact or logic. I don’t believe the technology itself is good or evil, but pair in with these irrational beliefs and there are many frightening, depressing, dystopian paths I can imagine our country going down.

Most hopeful story: It’s a struggle to find a silver lining to the illegal, unprovoked U.S. war of aggression in Iran, but I mused that the artificial restriction on oil supply might create some long-term gain by accelerating the economic and geopolitical incentives to transition to other forms of energy. Such rational policy almost certainly could not have been achieved through international diplomacy in the current environment. This is not to minimize the very real and very avoidable near-term suffering and death the immoral choices of the Trump administration have caused. Even the cynical economic and financial elites who arguably control most policy have not been served by this irrational violence. In the future, I hope the world has some talented and courageous leaders who can find ways to bring about rational long-term solutions to problems without short-term mass murder.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: On the AI front, I looked at an argument that today’s AIs are pushing people toward the political center relative to social media, which is pushing people toward extreme views. This is true even for AIs like Grok that are demonstrably being trained on data that is intentionally biased toward extreme views. I am not confident this will always be the case, as we are already hearing about a trend toward more customization of AI to whatever the tastes of the paying customer are. And…I looked at David Chalmers’s concept of a “philosophical zombie” which displays all the traits of a human being externally but has no consciousness internally. This would seem to describe today’s large language models pretty well, or at least so the majority of us think at the moment. However, I recall Ray Kurzweil’s argument that there is not and never will be a scientific test for consciousness whether animal/vegetable/mineral (some argue plants are conscious on some level), which is simply a secular counterpart to the idea of a soul, and that over time if AIs act conscious in every respect we will gradually accept them as conscious and stop thinking much about it.

April 2026 in Review

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In fast-moving current events as I write (Saturday, May 2), active so-called “kinetic” warfare seems to have subsided in and around Iran. Let’s hope the trend continues in this hopeful direction. Human rights violations elsewhere and global economic impacts persist.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: We have heard horror stories about U.S. government debt over the decades, many not grounded strictly in evidence. But this time really seems to be different, where the absolute size of the debt at the moment means higher than normal interest rate payments as a fraction of the economy and tax revenue. At the risk of stating the obvious, this means the government has less money for things other than interest payments. Meanwhile the trends are increasing debt level, increasing interest rates, and potentially lackluster economic and tax revenue growth, all pointing toward a runaway train. Hoping for a pickup in economic growth seems to be the main strategy being pursued to counteract this feedback loop.

Most hopeful story: AI science seems to have been a theme of mine in April. We can constraint an AI scientist to actually respect the laws of physics, potentially accelerating scientific and technological progress. AI should also be good at synthesizing past research to form a basis for future progress, and organizing data in an accessible way so that others (human and/or AI) can confirm findings or make new discoveries from that same data. I know some very nice people who work in today’s academic publishing industry, but this may not be an area of rapid future growth. The future of engineering and scientific modeling will probably consist of giving an AI a very detailed specification for what you want it to accomplish, then reviewing/validating the result when it comes back.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Augmented (aka mixed) reality glasses are getting pretty common in China, and slowly catching on elsewhere. Early adopters include cheating students, of course.

February 2026 in Review

In fast-moving current events as I write on March 1, 2026, the United States (executive branch, which is unconstrained in this moment by the other supposedly co-equal branches or public opinion) has launched an unprovoked military attack on Iran, in crystal clear violation of the UN Charter and domestic law. Theoretically, there are mechanisms both international (International Criminal Court) and domestic (impeachment – which can apply to cabinet members, agency heads, and federal judges in addition to the President and Vice President; and court martial which applies to military officers who follow illegal orders) that could eventually hold the criminals involved accountable for their crimes. Lots of people have lots to say and we will see how this unfolds. I am just documenting that I am present at this particularly sad moment in history.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: I hadn’t heard of mirror life, technology we apparently have right now which can destroy all life on Earth. This new, shocking, theoretically existential threat narrowly edged out the usual stream of depressing climate disaster news, the existential threat known to be currently unfolding, but which I suppose I am somewhat desensitized to.

Most hopeful story: Falling consumer prices in China might represent a new industrial revolution analogous to the age of railroads and electricity in the west in the late 1800s, rather than a textbook financial recession which seems to be the (propaganda-tainted?) conventional wisdom. I put this in the win column because if it is true, I am hopeful we will see it spread peacefully to the rest of the world rather than representing a threat.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Ray Kurzweil predicts broad consensus that Artificial General Intelligence has arrived by 2029 (defined as AI equal to the leading experts in all fields), “longevity escape velocity” in 2032 (which would reverse the US slipping in recent decades), universal basic income in the U.S. sometime in the 2030s, and the Singularity in 2045 (defined as 1000X human intelligence – always pronounced TIMES according to me), but most importantly and the only thing that truly matters, robots doing my dishes in a couple years.

January 2026 in Review

Well, I seemed to be in a political mood in January. I try to stay on the policy side of the line, but that is hard when bad politics makes good policy impossible. Inspired by a Nate Silver post, I took a look back at what I see as key moments in the last 25 years of U.S. history, and there were just so many that were on a knife edge and ended up going the wrong way, in my view. Maybe there are other universes where things went better, but remember my scientific theory that once they make a Spiderman movie about a scientific theory, it is almost certainly wrong. I find it depressing how we got here, but there is no sense crying over it. We need to learn from the past yes, but then face up to the present moment and start picking up the pieces from where we are.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Evidence is crystal clear that sabotaging R&D spending is a very effective way to sabotage economic growth and progress. Attaboy to the fools, assholes and traitors currently in nominal charge of the U.S. government. Meanwhile, if a more rational administration ever takes hold, research on learning curves might provide some clues on where to concentrate our efforts for the greatest gains.

Most hopeful story: New York City congestion pricing was a hard-won U.S. transportation policy win in 2025. This is just good, economically sound urban policy that would be apolitical in a more rational world.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I reviewed book reviews from 2025, one of which was Ezra Klein’s Abundance (not the 2012 book Abundance by Peter Diamandis, which while I am not a huge fan I continue to be puzzled how Ezra Klein could either not be aware of that book or intentionally choose to name his book the same thing.) I still find it hard to summarize that book in a sound bite, which would need to be done if it were ever going to serve as the basis for a political campaign. But here is an attempt: (1) Continuously review and streamline federal regulations, (2) increase public and private investments in critical technology and infrastructure, including recommitting to clean energy, and (3) address market failures in housing, health care, and education. #3 is a doozy of course, but the un-sexy answer just has to be understand and implement the latest evidence-backed policies. I would think ramp up housing supply, Medicare for All, and free (tax-funded) college or trade school for all. And um, if we want a chance for any domestic agenda to succeed, we also need serious plans to manage international risks including war, ecosystem collapse, famine, and massive refugee flows that may be coming. Now, I just want to acknowledge that there is a rosy future scenario where AI magically solves all these problems. The way that could work is that technological progress and economic growth suddenly pick up so drastically that we are awash in cash and resources to the point that even the wildly suboptimal operations of our dysfunctional political system are adequate to solve the problems. I don’t think it is safe to put all our eggs in that basket! We better assume that we will need to continue doing the hard work of allocating scarce resources to manage difficult problems for the foreseeable future.

December 2025 in Review

2025 is in the books! I covered a number of “best of” posts by others in December so I will highlight a few of those below. I still have some “best of” posts queued up so they will continue to roll out in January.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Global progress on poverty reduction stalled around 2020. Gains in Asia are offset by losses in Africa. Meanwhile, gains in crop yields may have plateaued and are expected to decline as climate change drives increasingly extreme weather.

Most hopeful story: From Our World in Data, carbon dioxide emissions in the US and most developed countries peaked around 2006 and have been falling. Global internal combustion engine vehicles peaked around 2018, while electric vehicle sales are rising. Renewable electricity generation is growing exponentially as costs of existing technology fall, and there are some promising advances in materials science that could improve wind turbines and batteries. There is hope for fusion power, although it still seems to be the proverbial two decades away.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: BBC lists 25 most important scientific ideas of the 21st century. Highlights include various genetic technologies (stem cells that don’t come from babies, mRNA vaccines, tissue engineering for human organ transplants), attribution analysis, and of course large language models. Science magazine echoes some of these and adds gene editing, new antibiotics, and progress on heat-resistant rice strains as 2025 breakthroughs.

November 2025 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Wait, I actually had trouble coming up with a frightening or depressing story this month! It’s not because I was in a particularly good mood. Okay, I’ll go with all the terrible things identified in Project Censored’s yearly roundup of terrible things. These include PFAS, melting ice sheets, police violence, and the generally sorry state of the Native American community.

Most hopeful story: RENEWABLE ENERGY IS NOW CHEAPER THAN FOSSIL FUELS, AND ANYBODY WHO CLAIMS OTHERWISE IS EITHER MISINFORMED OR LYING. Note I said “misinformed”, because I try to be nice and “ignorant” is not a nice word. But they are synonyms. Despite the propaganda coming from the U.S. fossil fuel industry, government, and press, the renewable energy transition is happening and the fossil fuel stranded assets problem (for that industry) is real. Speaking of propaganda, Noam Chomsky is 96, still writing, and surer than ever that people don’t want war and only acquiesce to it because of the propaganda machine.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: The Tyranny of Small Decisions posits that many small but well-intentioned decisions made at inappropriately low levels within an organization can cause it to stray from its mission.

October 2025 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: The evidence for an increasing worldwide collapse in insect diversity and abundance continues to mount. What’s that you say, you don’t actually like bugs? Well, they are the base of the food chain (after plants) and generally indicators of biodiversity and healthy ecosystems more broadly. That’s right, the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” may have actually been a cockroach. There was also news this month that another “planetary boundary” has been breached. The biodiversity one that would cover insect collapse was already breached a long time ago, and this new one has to do with ocean acidification. Only two more to go for a perfect score of 9/9!

Most hopeful story: The seems to be some mixed evidence, tainted with industry and government propaganda in my opinion, but overall there are some hopeful signs that the global transition to renewable energy is real. It may be too slow and too late to avoid consequences, but it may also avoid the worst possible consequences.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I mused about what it was like to be a child in the distant past of novels I have read, during my own youth, for my own children today, and for young adults I have interacted recently. We hear children are “anxious” and experiencing various crises, and I am not denying there is hard evidence of this, but with my own eyes I also see kids being somewhat safer, kinder, and gentler to each other than in the past. I hope it is possible to mitigate some of the negative effects of technology and other negative influences on kids today while also building on the positive trends.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/830502.It

September 2025 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: We are most likely on a path to the AMOC tipping point. I distinguished between the tipping point, which is when collapse becomes inevitable, and the actual collapse itself. These are separated in time, which means the tipping point may only be called in retrospect when it is too late to prevent the collapse. This why being “on the path to the tipping point” is important, because we can still do something.

Most hopeful story: Spain has been so successful at rolling at solar power that the price of solar power has “collapsed”. I’ve been beating a drum lately that economic incentives have tipped in favor of renewable energy worldwide and this fact is being largely hidden from us in the US by propaganda.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Brain-machine interfaces have been quietly advancing behind the scenes.

Wikipedia

August 2025 in Review

Good bye summer 2025!

Most frightening and/or depressing story: A gigantic incoming object could be the alien ship that will put us out of our misery. Okay, probably not. The interesting and scary thing is that as our ability to look at the nearby universe improves, we are seeing more surprising stuff. But how are we supposed to think about let alone do anything about a very low probability existential threat like this one? We are not even responding to the “somewhat likely” (nuclear war, pandemics) and “likely happening right now” (a climate tipping point leading to future collapse) existential threats in front of us. I suggested that the tipping point will be called in retrospect, and 2025 might be a nice round number for the history books.

Most hopeful story: No matter what impression we are being given in the U.S., economic forces continue to push towards renewable energy and electrification worldwide.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Designer babies are here, and the trend towards the rich and powerful accelerating their own evolution (and a few governments making this available to the masses) can only accelerate.