Tom Chivers

"Far too nice to be a journalist": Terry Pratchett. Lead writer, Flagship. Semafor. chiversthomas(a)gmail. Third book, Everything is Predictable, out now!

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

A small announcement: my next book, Everything is Predictable, about how Bayes' theorem is the most important little equation in the world, is out in April and will look like this! If you'd like to pre-order, you can do so here https://t.co/3NJT7ey1Rr and I will be very grateful

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@IncitatusAlpha @DevinGoure yup. (Or Warhammer 40K, of course)

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DevinGoure but again, Adams worked almost entirely in service of the joke. He wasn't, imo, interested in making his sci-fi allegorical like Pratchett did fantasy; Pratchett loved to insert moral lessons, and did so brilliantly, but Adams was generally an absurdist rather than a moralist

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DevinGoure The Deep Thought thing is a joke playing on the silliness of an "ultimate question". If a modern AI was asked to answer one, that would be daft. But AI clearly CAN solve specific things like the planar unit distance problem, with a perfectly sensical and useful answer.

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DevinGoure yeah, I think you've gone off the deep end with this one tbh

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DevinGoure If you think he's making a serious point about AI and that we shouldn't outsource our thinking to computers and that the philosophers are the heroes of that section, I can't prove you wrong, death of the author and all that, but it seems utterly mad to me.

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DevinGoure I think the lesson of the story, and Adams' whole point in writing this bit, is that it's a silly joke about how a philosophers' strike is obviously ridiculous and that it's funny to have philosophers talking about demarcation like a bunch of 1970s miners.

[Dr. Jane Clare Jones @janeclarejones]

This is the most 2026 thing I have ever seen.

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@mr_james_c well, they can't say that, because that's not known. The trial is to find out if prostate cancer is more aggressive in black men. And it'd be mad to delay a potentially lifesaving trial over a separate policing row! It's reverse "not a good look" wokery https://t.co/0E88TSMZdF

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

AIUI this is false (there's a trial to see if this SHOULD happen) but also, there are lots of differing treatments between races! eg NHS guidelines suggest ACE inhibitors as first-line treatment for hypertension in white people, calcium-channel blockers in black people

[Zia Yusuf @ZiaYusufUK]

On the day the whole political establishment claims we do not live in a two tier country, they announce this.

Note, the NHS makes NO drugs available exclusively to white people.

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DavidDPaxton was it ever prioritised? It's all about being able to say your opponent is bad in some way

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@DavidDPaxton amazing that in 2020 it was the left arguing that it didn't and now we've just reversed the polarity

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

now we're doing it again the other way around. Different races have different medical risks! Afro-Caribbean and subcontinental people have higher risk of diabetes, for eg, so it makes sense to treat them differently. We've just reversed the polarity on the stupid racism claims

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

that's because white people are more likely to respond to ACE inhibitors! I find this all annoying because back in 2020 a book came out claiming (among many other things) that that was evidence of medical racism, rather than just evidence-based medicine https://t.co/us9LMkrYic

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@CesareGArdito it's calling for restrictions and limitations and warning against its impacts on career development, AI slop, etc. I'd say it's AI-sceptical, even if it's not literally calling for an end to all AI use in maths

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

mathematicians signing a declaration against AI use in maths reminds me of the philosophers in The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy threatening to go on strike over Deep Thought https://t.co/y9123nsaEw

[Daisy Christodoulou @daisychristo]

I am just back from the Oval and I regret to inform you that London has in fact fallen.

More Arsenal shirts than Surrey shirts. Forget about Palace or Charlton.

Arsenal fans everywhere in South London. Yesterday I was in East London at my parents - their local pub had more Arsenal fans in it than West Ham fans for the Conference League 3 years ago. Lots more. Not even close.

The "London FC" people are right. I don't like it, but they're right. And given the way that London tends to eat the world, don't get smug if you're outside of London. If we have half a decade of Arsenal dominance, by the end of it they'll have taken over Liverpool and Manchester too and the economy will be one giant Arsenal merch store with a few farms and data centres tacked on.

Foreign leaders will grant profitable trade and visa deals in return for being allowed exclusive pre-access to the new Declan Rice hologram experience in the Emirates Museum.

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

The irony of Burnham's bollocks about Right to Buy and council housing is that the secret of Manchester's housing success was literally the exact opposite - prioritising maximum private building over number of subsidised units. Here's (Labour) council leader Richard Leese.

[Tim Shipman @ShippersUnbound]

Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions:

- welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap
- defence spending is too low
- the triple lock is unsustainable
- without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution
- we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea
- migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state
- any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement
- we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable
- Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly

Blair basically says all that.

The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind:

- judges and quangos have too much power, are unaccountable and without redressing the balance in favour of parliament it is very difficult to do anything big fast
- the bare minimum that needs to change in this regard is to reform judicial review and planning law so we can put building and economic growth ahead of newts and NIMBYs

None of that above really ought to be up for discussion. It is all common sense but not one of our politicians will publicly say all of it

Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement.

Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others

[Tom Chivers @TomChivers]

@_bezpilotnik But the author of that obviously does read many other books and has written about it regularly.

[Keith Humphreys @KeithNHumphreys]

Eliminating standardized admission tests hurt low-income kids and people of color. A well-intended disaster for which those responsible should apologize, but won't.