September 30, 2026

CHANGE:

Posted at 4:38 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ADAM THIERER: What Hayek Can Teach Us About AI Safety.

This is where a dose of Hayekian thinking is particularly useful. Hayek would tell us that AI alignment is not a computable math equation, and that efforts to treat it as such will lead to the sort of authoritarian thinking and proposals we witnessed with previous efforts to remake economies and humanity according to some grand design.

In his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Hayek warned of the “pretence of knowledge,” or the belief that experts understand society well enough to direct everyone else’s choices according to their supposedly enlightened plans. He argued that the “limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society—a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”

Hayek teaches us that technical “alignment” can be a pretext for dangerous political control of our economy and liberties. Empowering global elites to guide humanity’s acceptable risks and technological future raises other risks in the process. Aligned with whose values? Imposed by whose authority? And at what cost? “Progress by its very nature cannot be planned,” Hayek wrote in The Constitution of Liberty, but instead “civilization [is] the accumulated hard-earned result of trial and error,” and “the sum of experience.”

As a general rule, put your guard up whenever powerful people suggest a political solution to a technical problem.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

PRETTY MUCH, YEAH:

Posted at 3:32 pm by Stephen Green

KRUISER: Dems’ Haplessness Makes Them an Even Bigger Existential Threat to the Republic. “What does worry me, though, is that the Democrats are not unlike an unhinged, cornered rabid animal these days. Because it’s now a party dominated by coastal elites, there is also an almost feral quality when Dem politicians are out in normal America. There is a complete lack of regard for civility and convention that makes them unpredictable and dangerous.”

Posted at 3:19 pm by Stephen Green

MONITOR YOUR HEALTH: KardiaMobile. #CommissionEarned

Posted at 3:02 pm by Helen Smith

EAT MORE MEAT: Nearly a third of Americans eating fewer fresh vegetables after ‘explosive diarrhea’ virus outbreak.

Nearly a third of Americans cut back their produce consumption and nearly two-thirds changed their behavior this summer after an “explosive diarrhea” parasite ravaged rectums across the country, according to a poll.

At least 30% of people said they were buying less fresh produce at grocery stores over the cyclosporiasis parasite outbreak, which left tens of thousands of people cramping on their commodes from vicious bouts of viscous diarrhea.

I like to think I was ahead of the curve on this one. Way out ahead of the curve.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK:

In-flight Starlink ought to be industry standard — it’s just that good.

Posted at 2:01 pm by Stephen Green

CHANGE: Airbus A350F Makes First Flight. “Airbus’ next-generation A350F freighter, which the manufacturer confirmed to be under development in July 2021, has finally conducted its maiden flight.”

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO HATE WHAT GOVERNMENT DOES TO CAPITALISM:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Anti-Gun Orgs Bullied YouTube Into Squeezing Gun Content Creators Even Harder. “Gun control advocates appear to have succeeded in pushing YouTube to change its policies to restrict firearm-related content and tighten its rules governing manufacturer-supported videos. Is it just a coincidence? The implications extend beyond whether “GunTubers” can publish a product review. They reach the increasingly consequential question of when independent firearm coverage becomes corporate advertising.”

Posted at 12:44 pm by Stephen Green

DANIEL GREENFIELD: Bari Weiss is Destroying CBS News.

It would be awful indeed if Bari Weiss were to tamper with the journalistic legacy of CBS greats like Walter Cronkite, Les Moonves (accused of forcing a woman into oral sex), former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Jeff Fager (accused of sexually harassing women), former 60 Minutes correspondent Charlie Rose (accused of sexually harassing women), former 60 Minutes Executive Producer Don Hewitt (accused of sexually harassing women) making “accused of sexually harassing women” into an official requirement for CBS News legends.

At least there was Dan Rather, who broke the network’s curse of sexually harassing women by merely trying to pass off a Microsoft Word document as if it had come from the Vietnam War.

Obviously, Bari Weiss doesn’t belong at CBS News. She hasn’t even raped anyone yet.

Read the whole thing.

When Dick Ebersol returned to produce Saturday Night Live after Jean Dumainian’s disastrous stint replacing Lorne Michaels in 1980, one of his first hires was original head writer Michael O’Donoghue, who returned because he wanted to give the show a “‘decent Viking funeral.’ He thought it would be fun to see the show go out in a blaze of glory, to make one last courageous charge into the banal maw of network TV,” according to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad in their 1986 book, Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live. With the legacy media fading into senescence in general, perhaps Weiss can actually accomplish a well-deserved Götterdämmerung at the formerly self-described “Tiffany Network.”

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MASKS OFF:

Posted at 12:04 pm by Glenn Reynolds