Timothy B. Lee

@binarybits53k followers

Reporting on AI and the future of the economy. CS masters degree from Princeton. Newsletter: Podcast:

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Posts 82 posts

#	Date	Post	↓ Outlier	Views	Likes	Reposts	Bookmarks
1	Feb 6, '25	One of the many stupid things about this very stupid discourse: the data on has been publicly available for years. Anyone could have looked up the cost of the government’s politico	320×	4.4M	16k	2k	1.1k
2	Jan 25, '23	I think a lot of liberals underestimate how much this kind of behavior erodes the norms of social trust and solidarity that make societies work well.	69.2×	960k	3.7k	262	187
3	Aug 7, '25	Last month's hearing in Boston on self-driving car was like a parody of the attitudes @DKThomp and @ezraklein critiqued in Abundance.	68×	943k	1.7k	157	245
4	Mar 20, '25	I actually think this illustrates a challenge with the modern-day abundance agenda. What's the expensive thing that rich people today have but isn't "in every home" yet? It's hard	48.6×	673k	6.1k	199	891
5	Mar 21, '25	Did social media rot Elon’s brain? Or does he know exactly what he is doing with posts like this?	42.2×	585k	3.4k	209	98
6	Apr 23, '25	This is pretty bad.	41×	568k	6.1k	308	740
7	Jul 27, '23	Back in April, I set out to write an explainer on how large language models work. First I had to learn how they worked, and that was harder than I expected. This article is the cul	33.4×	463k	1.5k	327	1.8k
8	Nov 8, '24	I bet people under 30 have no conception of how mind-blowing the concept of an infinitely scrollable and zoomable global map seemed in 2005. There wasn’t anything remotely like it	30.3×	420k	8.1k	491	467
9	Nov 28, '23	The scene at the cvs in Columbia Heights, near where I live in Washington DC. Most shelves empty, a few shelves with merchandise behind glass. Talked to a staffer who said people k	29.7×	412k	716	206	69
10	Mar 1, '24	California regulators just approved a huge Waymo expansion: all the way down the SF penninsula and a big chunk of the LA metro area.	28.2×	392k	1k	115	114
11	Aug 19, '23	This is so dumb. Vivek wants to end the Fed's dual mandate (inflation/employment) because it's like "trying to hit two targets with one arrow." Instead the Fed will "stabilize the	26×	361k	622	41	21
12	Aug 15, '23	Some people weren't sure what I meant by superintelligence not being a thing so maybe an analogy would help. Say you've got an college physics major, and every month you chart her	24.9×	345k	657	56	229
13	Nov 2, '25	I'm sorry but this is magic.	21.1×	292k	2k	32	322
14	Nov 15, '25	NYTimes article quotes someone saying they are "terrified" of Waymo in paragraph 6. Waits until paragraph 33 (out of 44 paragraphs) to mention that they are 91 percent safer than h	20.6×	286k	2.5k	264	183
15	Sep 10, '24	It's not just that driverless Waymo vehicles get into far fewer serious crashes than human-driven ones. The crashes that do happen are overwhelmingly the fault of the other driver.	18.9×	262k	788	135	127
16	Oct 28, '25	I was really surprised when I first saw this chart on water use by data centers. Given how much it gets discussed as a supposed problem I would have expected it to be more than thi	18.4×	255k	1.2k	204	350
17	Oct 31, '24	Waymo: $45 billion GM: $55 billion Tesla: $780 billion Tesla sells fewer cars than GM and has worse self-driving tech than Waymo. Hard to see how it could be worth 8x as much as Wa	17.8×	246k	646	49	89
18	Sep 20, '24	I've developed a bit of a reputation as an "AI skeptic," but I think I was just accurately reporting on the slow pace of LLM progress following GPT-4. o1 is a totally different sto	16×	222k	703	53	152
19	Apr 7, '25	I didn’t like it at the time but Chuck Schumer’s decision to duck a confrontation over the continuing resolution is looking better after the last week. The near invisibility of dem	15.1×	209k	1.8k	120	138
20	Mar 23, '25	Man, this could save a lot of lives.	14.4×	200k	2.1k	48	106
21	Sep 19, '23	Elon Musk is an asshole.	14.4×	200k	616	88	23
22	Nov 24, '20	According to the NYT, Facebook knows perfectly well how to slow the spread of misinformation on its platform. It has mostly chosen not to do so because the company is run by a soci	13.5×	0	6.4k	1.9k	339
23	Apr 16, '25	It’s an amazing branding decision to have a model called GPT-4o and another one called o4.	13.3×	184k	4.1k	52	96
24	Sep 30, '20	Perhaps the most damning thing Trump said in the debate was that they were ready to vaccinate 200,000 people per day. At that rate it would take more than 4 years to vaccinate the	12.7×	0	7.2k	1.5k	58
25	Nov 18, '25	News: Waymo just announce driverless testing in Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Meanwhile, legal barriers are preventing expansion to Boston, NYC, or Washington D	12.2×	170k	709	82	64
26	Nov 13, '24	Guys I really don’t think “scientific studies that can be made to sound ridiculous if you summarize them uncharitably” is a major contributor to government waste.	12.2×	169k	3.7k	162	106
27	Oct 13, '24	Maybe blue states should let people build homes.	11×	153k	3.6k	215	72
28	Jan 8, '21	Email from Twitter spokesperson: "This Tweet is not in violation of our policies." Cc: @jbarro	10.8×	0	3.6k	1.7k	132
29	May 30, '25	This quote made me wonder if Dario has ever seen a train.	10.3×	142k	2.2k	56	135
30	Apr 13, '25	No, this is wrong. Waymo's overall crash frequency is 3-5 times lower than the average human, suggesting that Waymo anticipates and prevents many human-caused crashes. But there ar	9.5×	132k	1.6k	59	128
31	Nov 14, '23	I think the most plausible explanation for why Joe Biden is so unpopular is that we've developed a media ecosystem that's good at convincing everyone that everything is bad all the	9.1×	126k	883	100	27
32	Apr 13, '25	A large majority of serious Waymo crashes are "Waymo scrupulously following the law, lunatic human driver breaks the law and crashes into the Waymo."	9.0×	124k	854	81	69
33	Jan 8, '21	Maybe Twitter should alert it's users that some of the claims in this tweet are disputed.	8.6×	0	4.9k	1.1k	73
34	Apr 28, '25	I still think it's weird that so many people are like "I was radicalized by policy mistakes the government made in 2020. So in 2024 I voted for the guy who was president in 2020."	7.6×	106k	6.2k	542	175
35	Jul 23, '24	People who think agi is imminent aren’t overestimating how quickly ai will improve. They are underestimating how complex the world is. Being an expert on deep learning doesn’t nece	7.0×	97k	747	98	71
36	Oct 4, '24	I wish the "Waymo isn't scalable because they need maps" people would do some back-of-the-napkin math. The SF metro area has 43,000 lane-miles of roads. Say it costs $10 to map eac	6.7×	93k	681	19	60
37	Feb 6, '25	It wasn’t considered a scandal before because subscribing to services like it is a normal thing many large organizations do.	6.5×	90k	1.8k	44	21
38	Feb 20, '23	The average American enjoys one of the highest standards of living in world history but a lot of people think we live in a “late stage capitalist hellscape.”	6.3×	88k	793	37	17
39	Jan 21, '21	Population of the last 10 states at admission: Montana (1889) 140k Washington (1889) 350k Idaho (1890) 90k Wyoming (1890) 60k Utah (1896) 250k Oklahoma (1907) 1.4M New Mexico (1912	6.1×	0	3.4k	810	62
40	Oct 11, '24	Tesla fans put a lot of weight on the premise that lidar is going to be expensive forever, and therefore Waymo requires "niche hardware" that can never reach a mass market. But one	6.0×	83k	786	42	58
41	Jan 25, '23	I do not want the US to become like Greece or Italy where the general view is that you're a sucker if you fill out your taxes honestly. Fare jumping isn't exactly the same but I th	5.4×	75k	703	33	13
42	Jul 30, '25	I am not as talented as Luke Farritor, but 22-year-old me had a lot in common with him (programmer, hard-core libertarian, very online) and I'm grateful nobody gave 22-year-old me	5.1×	71k	1.9k	67	82
43	Jun 29, '25	I hate this pattern. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, now this. Our Constitutional system only works if Senators are able to occasionally oppose a president from the	5.0×	70k	778	74	31
44	May 8, '20	The data here is really striking. A lot of Americans seem to assume it's impossible to eradicate the coronavirus and we'll just have to live with it until a vaccine arrives. Experi	4.6×	0	1.7k	895	91
45	Jan 13, '21	"I'm am not a terrorist. I'm just a guy whose actions perfectly fit the dictionary definition of terrorism."	4.3×	0	2.5k	523	35
46	Feb 27, '21	Sorry, if you earn $150k/year, you are rich. That's 3 to 4 times what a typical worker makes.	4.0×	0	2.2k	91	77
47	Feb 7, '25	I don’t know how any constitutional conservative could root for a guy who casually describes constitutionally protect speech as criminal.	3.7×	52k	855	69	35
48	May 24, '18	If the NTSB's diagnosis of the Uber crash is right, this is totally insane.	3.4×	0	1.1k	651	13
49	Oct 8, '21	Nobody is going to want to hear this but George W Bush’s proposal to partially privatize social security would have worked out well for workers. Stock market returns over the last	3.4×	0	1.9k	260	52
50	Jun 17, '20	I made a chart. On average, blue states have seen steadily declining coronavirus infections since mid-April. On average, red states have... not.	3.3×	0	1.3k	493	73
51	Feb 9, '22	I don't understand why fact-checking sites twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels like this.	3.3×	0	1.8k	233	73
52	Jan 25, '23	In functional, high-trust societies you don't need much formal enforcement of the rules by law enforcement because most people comply voluntarily based on shared social expectation	3.1×	43k	773	28	1
53	Jun 9, '21	In 2013, the Washington Post made me sell 56 bitcoins for $112 each. They'd be worth $2 million today.	3.0×	0	1.6k	216	72
54	Sep 12, '25	I might have to steal this line.	2.9×	40k	1.2k	28	118
55	Dec 16, '22	I don't find Elon's excuses about how he's blocking journalists to protect his privacy at all persuasive, but the real tell is the fact that they're indiscriminately blocking Masta	2.8×	39k	568	60	7
56	Mar 20, '25	On the one hand this is why we need an abundance agenda—housing, health care, etc. are more prone to regulatory bottlenecks than televisions or telephones. But on the other hand it	2.8×	39k	1.2k	21	39
57	Jan 8, '21	My story on this	2.7×	0	1.2k	474	49
58	Jan 25, '23	When that breaks down, institutions have to fall back on much more expensive and intrusive enforcement mechanisms. Think drug stores where you have to ask a clerk to get you razor	2.5×	34k	636	16	5
59	Mar 20, '25	Rich people live in nicer neighborhoods, send their kids to nicer schools, go on nicer vacations, and get better health care. But the manufactured goods in their homes isn't that d	2.4×	33k	1.7k	20	42
60	Jan 21, '22	This might be the single most important chart for understanding the current inflation situation. For 25 years prior to 2020, the prices of durable goods like cars, washing machines	2.0×	0	889	262	113
61	Nov 11, '20	Interestingly, Democrats in the House passed legislation last year requiring post-election auditing (not specific to mail-in ballots). The bill died in the Republican-controlled Se	2.0×	0	1.1k	283	22
62	Aug 22, '20	Meme lawn sign.	2.0×	0	1.3k	160	14
63	Feb 14, '21	This is a remarkable level of dishonesty from the Times. Scott Alexander once expressed agreement with Charles Murray on a topic unrelated to race and IQ. The Times wrote a paragra	2.0×	0	1.2k	145	52
64	Jul 8, '18	@elonmusk @JaneidyEve I've seen some reports that the narrowest part of the cave is roughly 72 cm by 38 cm (see attached diagram for instance). What is the diameter of the tube? If	1.8×	0	994	246	8
65	Sep 27, '16	Clinton's most effective tactic: bring up a controversy from Trump's past and let him incriminate himself with his "defense."	1.7×	0	795	321	0
66	May 8, '20	Here in the US, some states are doing well. A lot are... not.	1.7×	0	592	309	24
67	Mar 5, '21	People are dogpiling @mattyglesias for his completely reasonable view that copyrights should last for about 30 years. One of the more ridiculous counter-arguments is that royalties	1.6×	0	832	41	30
68	Jan 21, '21	Compromise proposal: Democrats agree to preserve the filibuster for this Congress, Republicans agree not to filibuster DC and PR statehood.	1.6×	0	561	42	8
69	Jul 10, '20	I see this sentiment a lot and it's remarkably childish. People seem to think that coronavirus-fighting efforts are favors the public does for public health experts, rather than pr	1.5×	0	1.1k	109	12
70	Nov 24, '20	Most CEOs report to a board that in turn is accountable to shareholders. So a CEO risks getting fired if he fails to maximize profits. But Zuckerberg has super-voting shares that g	1.5×	0	1k	135	5
71	Jun 30, '22	I went through all 1,566 pages of the 1980 Sears catalog to find items I could easily compare with present-day products. Almost every item I looked at saw significant declines in t	1.5×	0	723	145	57
72	Apr 14, '21	Before I became a parent I had no idea what an insane feat of endurance single motherhood is.	1.5×	0	1.2k	48	5
73	Jan 8, '21	I have emailed Twitter to ask whether the tweet violates Twitter's rule against hateful conduct.	1.5×	0	913	160	10
74	Jul 22, '22	😕	1.5×	0	1.1k	53	10
75	Apr 27, '20	One of the most ridiculous common beliefs in Silicon Valley is the idea that online instruction is going to replace face-to-face learning. It's like predicting that instructional v	1.5×	0	865	91	39
76	Nov 24, '20	People responded to this thread by asking whether we can trust Zuck to decide what news people should read. But he's already deciding. He's delegating day-to-day decisions to an	1.4×	0	948	125	8
77	Jan 29, '21	This is exactly backwards. The GME fiasco demonstrates that short-term swings in the market are often driven by random, arbitrary factors. But if you buy into an index fund and pla	1.4×	0	867	123	22
78	Aug 29, '22	I feel like people who think there's something uniquely inefficient about government bureaucracies has never had to deal with a private-sector bureaucracy.	1.4×	0	931	99	10
79	Mar 21, '21	It's ludicrous that the party that represents Wyoming, Alaska, and North Dakota in the Senate is describing it as a "power grab" to give DC voters like me the same rights as voters	1.4×	0	827	176	6
80	Jan 22, '22	I don't think people appreciate what a big accomplishment this was. We easily could have had another lost decade.	1.4×	0	800	114	45
81	Jul 23, '20	Joe Biden thinks market forces, not government bureaucrats, should determine what kind of housing gets built. And a lot of Republicans aren't happy about it.	1.4×	0	859	97	29
82	Nov 29, '20	The fact that three different companies have apparently made COVID vaccines in ~8 months makes me wonder if there's room to be a lot more ambitious about other technology projects.	1.4×	0	881	54	13
83	Jul 15, '22	This is a good @mattyglesias take on the musk/Twitter situation.	1.3×	0	761	113	55
84	Jun 25, '22	Some 🔥from @mattyglesias. (If you aren’t subscribed to his substack you are missing out)	1.3×	0	833	87	61
85	Jan 18, '18	This is the sassiest lead I've ever seen in a NYT news story.	1.3×	0	728	186	0
86	Jan 11, '22	One of the worst aspects of current politics is the bipartisan consensus that America kind of sucks. On the left you have the relentless negativity of woke politics. On the right y	1.3×	0	795	60	27
87	Dec 10, '20	Elon Musk is convincing me I've underestimated how big of an impact a single determined individual can have on the world even without political power.	1.3×	0	858	62	38
88	Jan 6, '21	The House should impeach Trump tomorrow and the Senate should convict on Friday.	1.2×	0	709	149	3
89	Nov 1, '19	For a "tech" candidate, Andrew Yang has an uncanny knack for forming bad opinions about technology. We don't need PowerPoint in the State of the Union. Blockchain voting is a terri	1.2×	0	688	91	9
90	May 4, '18	My hobby: writing extremely polite responses to angry emails. Often the person realizes they were being a dick and apologizes.	1.1×	0	703	105	1
91	Aug 16, '17	@StevePaulo @dsantat @ericgarland	1.1×	0	595	144	0
92	May 21, '22	If Tesla became seen as a right wing brand that would be a win for the climate. Liberals will buy an electric car from somebody else. Conservatives are more likely to be switching	1.1×	0	722	46	11
93	Nov 4, '21	Finally got to listen to Ed Snowden's book and it's really good. The man is a hero and Joe Biden should pardon him.	1.0×	0	614	104	11
94	Apr 25, '22	I think Elon Musk buying Twitter is like a normal billionaire buying a major-league sports franchise. The business may or may not make money, but the point is to be a famous patron	1.0×	0	709	57	12
95	Aug 18, '22	In 1972, the median family income was $11,116, or about 2,800 times the cost of a KFC family meal. In 2020, median household income was $84,000, or 3,200 times the cost of a KFC me	1.0×	0	634	57	23
96	Feb 27, '21	There are households pulling in $400k/year in Manhattan struggling to cover the mortgage on their $3M house and the $40,000 tuition on their kids' private schools. They'll insist t	0.9×	0	633	30	9
97	Jan 6, '21	Buying milk that will outlast the trump administration.	0.9×	0	678	47	1
98	Mar 6, '20	@WillOremus If you "don't feel competent to even attempt math," maybe you shouldn't be making claims involving math on national television.	0.9×	0	662	33	1
99	Nov 24, '20	@mattyglesias This NYT report is suggesting the opposite! They have a switch they can throw that feeds people more real information and less garbage. Zuck is just choosing not to f	0.8×	0	599	34	5

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