Carl Shulman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…One thing I was trying to think about more recently for the podcast is, I would like to have a better world model after doing an interview. Often I feel like I do but in some cases after some interviews, I feel like that was entertaining but do I fundamentally have a better prediction of what the world looks like in 2200 or 2100? Or at least what counterfactuals are ruled out or something. I'm curious if you have advice on first, identifying the kinds of thinkers and topics which will contribute to a more concrete understanding of the world and second, how to go about analyzing their main ideas in a way that concretely adds to that picture? This was a great episode. This is literally the top in terms of contributing to my world model compared to all the episodes I've done. How do I find more of these? Ls I’m glad to hear that. One general heuristic is to find ways to hew closer to things that are rich and bodies of established knowledge and less impenetrable–I don't know how you've been navigating that so far but learning from textbooks and the things that were the leading papers and people of past eras I think rather than being too attentive to current news cycles is quite valuable. I don't usually have the experience of — here is someone doing things very systematically over a huge area. I can just read all of their stuff and then absorb it and then I'm set. Except there are a lot of people who do wonderful works in their own fields and some of those fields are broader than others. I think I would wind up giving a lot of recommendations of just great particular works and particular explorations of an issue or history Do you have this list somewhere?…

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