Joseph Noel Walker (@JosephNWalker) / X

Joseph Noel Walker

7,113 posts

Joseph Noel Walker

@JosephNWalker

Host, The Joe Walker Podcast

Sydney

Joined May 2018

Pinned
Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Mar 3, 2025
Australia has relatively high state capacity. That is, our administrative state is unusually effective. This deserves study, but I was surprised to find that very little had been directly written on the topic. So the economist Peter Bowers and I produced a literature review.🧵
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Sep 20, 2024
No author has shaped my worldview more than Nassim Taleb (@nntaleb). I stumbled on The Black Swan eight years ago, then inhaled the rest of the Incerto. I've increasingly come to appreciate the importance of its ideas to prolonging the human story. Was an honour to speak with
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Sep 20, 2024
What is probability really? Nassim Taleb (@nntaleb) explains to me how he understands it:
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Nov 21, 2022
Peter Thiel presents a new explanation for the Great Stagnation: in the mid-twentieth century, drably dystopian narratives about science and technology began seeping into the culture. People don't want to feel as if they're building the machines that will destroy the world. 1/3
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Dec 20, 2023
David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) on the poverty of 'P(Doom)': "If you ask somebody, 'What's your subjective probability for AI Doom?', well, if they say anything other than zero or one, then your interlocutor has already won the argument. Because even if you said 'one in a
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Mar 17, 2020
All clear 👊🏻
Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Dec 19, 2023
David Deutsch and Steven Pinker debate whether AGI will be truly sentient, in their first ever public dialogue. I'll be publishing the full conversation tomorrow. In case you aren't subscribed, you can do so here so you get a notification as soon as it's published: Apple
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Oct 11, 2025
Manning Clark’s attic, where he wrote his history of Australia:
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Mar 27, 2020
I’m wearing a shitty hardware store mask (not N-95) as I duck out for some necessary supplies. Why? It costs nothing, reminds me not to touch my face, gives me a (tiny) chance of not catching or (if I’m asymptomatic) spreading the corona, & helps make masks socially permissible.
Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
May 4, 2025
Ken Henry: " I remember I had a conversation with Kevin Rudd shortly after he became Prime Minister in November, 2007. He said, just out of the blue, 'What do you think the sustainable population of Australia is?' At the time, the Australian population was probably about 22,
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Dec 19, 2023
It was an honour to host the first ever public dialogue between David Deutsch (@DavidDeutschOxf) and Steven Pinker (@sapinker). They are longstanding admirers of each other's work. I view Steve's defence of the Enlightenment as more empirical, whereas David's is built more on
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Aug 27, 2025
If you search for “stomach” in the letters of Charles Darwin (link below), you’ll see that for most of his life he was tortured by stomach pain. It made him miserable and a recluse. We now know the cause. In an exceptionally niche scoop for my podcast, Nobel laureate Barry
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Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Nov 29, 2020
My favourite example of emergence, via @NAChristakis:
Joseph Noel Walker
@JosephNWalker
Oct 25, 2021
One of my favourite @tylercowen quotes from my 2020 conversation with him: josephnoelwalker.com/104-back-to-th… Thanks to @peterhartree for reminding me of it!