Libido Sciendi
The desire to understand the world deeply. Deep dives on AI & complex adaptive systems.
Journal
all →Notes, field reports & reactions
Apr 6, 2026 Climate Change May Cost 6x More Than the Nobel-Winning Estimate
Adrien Bilal, France's best young economist of 2026, swapped one variable in the standard climate damage model. The estimated cost of warming jumped from 1-3% to over 20% of global GDP per degree. In… read → 1 min
Apr 6, 2026 Reading What Is Intelligence? (1): Life Is Computation, and AI as the Next Symbiogenesis
Notes on Chapter 1 of Agüera y Arcas's What Is Intelligence?, where von Neumann reverse-engineers biology from pure mathematics, and Dawkins turns out to have told only half the story. I am currently… read → 7 min
Apr 2, 2026 A Greying World, and a Continent Asleep at the Wheel
The world has reached peak child. AI and robotics are maturing fast enough to help care for ageing societies. China and the US are building. Europe, the continent that needs it most, is barely in the… read → 10 min
Top reads
AI Moats Are Different: A Framework for Competitive Advantage deep dive Why traditional moats fail in AI, and a four-level framework for building defensible positions: technical foundation, product depth, market position, sustainability. · 15 min
On Systemic Errors: Probabilistic LLMs at Scale deep dive When your system is wrong 2% of the time but processes a billion requests. · 10 min
Foundation Models in Biology Hit the Noise Floor journal A new benchmark of 600+ model configurations reveals that biological foundation models do… · 10 min
Market Sizing for Founders deep dive A practical framework for sizing markets when you're building something new. · 10 min
Deep Dives
all →Analysis, summaries & research
Latest
Power Density: The Spatial Constraints Behind Every Decarbonisation Bet Apr 2026 Vaclav Smil argues that land will determine how fast civilisation can decarbonise. A decade later, his framework explains why hyperscalers are buying nuclear plants. · 19 min
Energy and Civilization: The Physical Constraints Behind Every Technology Bet Mar 2026 Vaclav Smil reveals why transitions take generations, why welfare saturates at 110 GJ, and why energy enables but never determines. · 17 min
Library
all →Recently read
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty ★★★★★
The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations ★★★★★
Power Density: A Key to Understanding Energy Sources and Uses ★★★★★
Technology and the Rise of Great Powers ★★★★★
Strategy: A History ★★★★★
Intelligence artificielle; intelligence humaine : la double énigme ★★★★★
These Strange New Minds ★★★★★
How To Think Like Socrates ★★★★★
Reading list
Atlas of AI
Chip War
L'Évangile selon Pilate
La mort et le printemps
The Investment Philosophers
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization
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